The minute hand now swings easily around the clock on my Monday afternoons at Paraclete, and each class whizzes by at a speed I never could have anticipated a month or two ago. And somehow now that the boys are playing the violin the entire time, now that they are handling these violins that still feel foreign and special, now that they can just begin to feel their own progress and catch a few of their own mistakes, I seem to have much more clout in their eyes. I have the answers to all the questions, I know how to do everything, and they all want my approval. I could get used to this.

Each week I now look forward to working with the kids, to watching them learn and laugh and begin to figure things out on their own. They are beginning to help each other. They have different strengths and weaknesses. They get excited by playing “Skip to My Lou” even though they only know five of the notes so far. And discipline suddenly became easy. When David starts a noisy tremolo because I’m working on Terrence’s bow hand, I make a “ssshht” sound at him and he stops. When Andrew sits down every five minutes and says he can play just fine that way, I tell him then he can play that way by himself, at home, without the violin, and he stands back up. When David and Patrick leave the room to work on a few things that David is having trouble with and Andrew looks at me and says, “You know, I really want to say something really mean about David right now. I really want to say – ” I tell him, “Andrew, you are not going to say anything at all about David right now, or ever in this room. In this room we respect everyone in the class. Do you know what respect is? You can think whatever you want, but thinking bad things about people is not going to get you where you want to go in life, and you will be able to do all sorts of things with your life. Got it?” Subdued, he nods and looks at me, then at his violin, and I realize that he really is not going to make fun of David any more. Ms. S just became Queen Bee.

And so it goes. Patrick still comes to help out, which is tremendous, and I continue to learn from him and from all the boys, in different ways. Afterwards we work together on his latest music assignment from school and I love to watch him think, to teach him how to practice by what we do, to feel him get better. When he looks at me I realize that he trusts me. It is such a strange feeling, to be trusted by someone so quickly. And yet, lovely, too. Afterwards he wants to tell me all about his weekend plans, the ice hockey rink he built with friends in an empty lot, the teacher at school that assigns too much busywork. Not only is it rewarding to watch him grow and open up to me, but it is a wonderful surprise to see how my initial project has morphed – and, as these past couple of months have show, even continues to change – as I have transitioned from teaching middle-school boys about music appreciation and violin to group violin lessons to group violin for the middle school-ers and a private lesson for the high schooler. And it is so fun to have added another dimension to what I am doing at Paraclete, and to see how the two components enhance and help each other and further refine my own abilities as a teacher.

I don’t need to see Terrence’s furrowed brow to know how hard he is working, but it is a sweet addition to his straight bow and sometimes-good sound, his tendency to forget to begin each bow “near the frog,” and the way his knees spring on every beat, keeping his rhythm with his body. I certainly remember my own days of bouncing to the beat! Across the room, Andrew is quiet, and not a single sarcastic comment or attention-getting joke has escaped from his lips all semester. Before we begin each line, he looks up at me to insure that I have checked out his bow hand (flawless), his left hand, his curved pinky and good posture. Although I am often correcting James’ bow hand (“no claw, remember?”), he is quick to point it out in others, and I encourage them to help each other, to go through their own checklists mentally before they begin each time. I see them all muttering under their breath as they set up: “pinky curved, violin more to my shoulder, no pizza wrists.” While last semester I was struggling to keep them quiet and to focus their attention on the lesson, the time is much easier now, and the vast improvement in their violin-playing stamina is a trusty witness.

I began the semester with a bit of review, some games, some questions, and collecting ideas of what they wanted to do this semester (all of which involved learning to Play, already!), but right away brought all the violins to the first class. I had made binders for each student, and I quickly learned this was also a good way to keep them on task (a lesson from the previous semester: more work for me outside the classroom means less work inside the classroom!). The first class with all of them playing was a bit rough (and followed a class in which only James showed up – again getting a head start and a private lesson with me, which was a pleasure for both of us!), and I felt I would go through the roof if I heard another scratchy A or D String. But it improves each week, and the boys improve each week – making the teaching both more delightful for me and more tolerable for my ears! I worried tremendously that they would not all progress at the same speed, and wondered how I would manage to continue to keep them all playing together even if some things were easy for Andrew and nearly impossible for Terrence. Never fear, Patrick appears.

In December, Sister Ann pulled me aside during the music breakfast so that she could tell me about Patrick. A Junior in high school, Patrick graduated from Paraclete and is now enrolled at Boston Latin, where he plays viola in his school orchestra. He wanted to meet me and she thought I should get to know him as well. I found him and invited him to the table where I was seated with my quartet, and we all talked a bit – good kid, kind of shy. In early January I got his phone number from the Center and called to ask if he would be willing to volunteer to help with my class, in exchange for a private viola lesson afterwards. He was onboard immediately (bless these new schools that require community service hours!). And he has made an absolutely UNBELIEVABLE difference in my days. The boys respond to him — an older boy who shares their background, who speaks their language, who can talk about video games and schools and hockey in the same Southie accent.

And he can certainly talk about the violin. It was clear to me from the start that he was taught well (he began in school, and now plays in orchestra there while also taking private lessons, theory, string technique, and orchestra at the Community Music School of Boston on Saturdays), and he could easily explain things to the boys that sometimes I struggled with. All those catch-phrases and gimmicks you hear when first learning the violin have been buried in my consciousness for years, but are still swirling in the upper levels of Patrick’s consciousness, and run through his head on a regular basis. He seems to be a natural teacher, and after some initial hesitation at the first class, when I felt his eyes questioning me about what to do, and when, and with whom, he quickly was able to jump in and work on his own. Now we make a good team, and it is easy to split the boys up when James needs extra help with his note-reading and Terrence needs some note-value review. This week David burst into class after a close-to-heavenly forty-five minutes, announcing loudly, “And now, David is here and the music class can begin. This is what you’ve all been waiting for.” First I experienced extreme irritation – he had already missed the first month of classes, and I never felt like he really cared about it that much anyway . . . and now here he was, disrupting my moment of achievement. And then I quickly tried to catch him up in a few minutes to the other boys, but when I realized it was not working and the others were getting restless, it was easy for me to take David to another room and leave the rest – who had previously been working and behaving like saints – with Patrick. Now I am experiencing what others have told me all along – sometimes you just need someone else to help you out. Amen.

This past Sunday morning the skies shone a brilliant blue, the air was crisp and cold (winter, finally! For better or for worse…), and I headed over to the Paraclete Center with my quartet to play in a “Music Brunch” collaboration between the “Kids Can Cook” class and myself. Sister Ann and I had talked about such a concert in the early fall — on the second floor of the Center is a lovely chapel leftover from the convent days, with stained glass windows along one side and beautiful wood-paneled walls – the perfect venue for an intimate recital or an informal concert. And now it was happening! The Center had been decorated beautifully, dressed in pine garlands and holly, and the place was bustling with people when we arrived at 10:30am. Long tables had been set up in the main hallway downstairs with a buffet breakfast, and kids, parents, people from the South Boston neighborhood wandered about with plates of popovers and quiche. We rehearsed a bit and then had our breakfast with a boy who graduated from the Paraclete Center and now is a freshman at the Boston Latin School (one of the “exam” schools the Center prepares the middle-schoolers for) and is playing the viola there! Small world. Soon we invited everyone upstairs for a little morning music, and received a tremendously warm welcome for our presentation and performance.

We talked a bit about ourselves and the instruments – standard fare – and then transitioned into discussing the voicing of Bach chorales, which imitate the natural range of the human voice, and by playing a chorale we demonstrated how the violin-violin-viola-cello instrumentation of the string quartet evolved and became standardized. Next I talked a bit about the natural tendency to move to music, and how dance and music are organically interwoven together, and how dances often inspired composers to write (or required composers to write!). I told them a bit about the dance of the Minuet and Trio and next we played a pair from Beethoven to demonstrate. The performance ended with our presentation of the fugue finale of Beethoven’s third Op 59 quartet, which we compared to a conversation among many people. Of course, the lucky thing about music is that more than one person can talk at once, and yet everyone can understand each other! So we demonstrated how the subject of the fugue passes around the quartet and becomes inverted and elaborated upon throughout the movement, how we sometimes agree with each other and sometimes find ourselves in a heated argument, trying to outdo one another, and finally we performed the entire movement for the crowd.

The morning simply could not have gone better, and could not have been more satisfying, more fun, more exhilarating! The people who came to hear us were tremendously appreciative, and so many of them came up afterwards - thanking us for playing, and especially for talking about the music, for explaining the instruments and the pieces. I felt like we were being showered with gratitude and compliments – and yet I felt incredibly lucky to have such a beautiful place to play in, to perform for people who were excited, inspired, and curious to hear us – some of whom had never heard such music live before! I felt like it was such a treat for us to be reminded of why we are really doing this – to share something we love deeply with others, to use music to forge connections with people of all ages and backgrounds. We all left grinning.

Monday I arrived back at the Center for class, feeling rejuvenated and excited, with a sense of warmth for the place that my frustration from the few previous weeks had been slowly blotting out. I talked with Sister about making the “music-and-something” idea into a sort of informal series at the center – sometimes offering a brunch and sometimes coffee, perhaps occasionally collaborating with kids from another of the non-academic after-school classes, but certainly continuing to play and to talk about the music being performed. As I’ve been thinking about it more this week, I want to suggest a Valentine’s Day Musical Dessert – and perhaps have a few of my boys play as well – nothing like the motivation of a public performance to get them to concentrate! Performing at the Paraclete Center, for so many people I see and work with there, but also for so many new faces, was deeply important to me. The warm reception, the enthusiasm of the audience, the genuine appreciation from everyone I spoke with has certainly changed me this week – and I can only hope that it has done the same for the rest of my quartet (thanks guys!!!) and for the rest of the audience. This, after all, is why we are here.

Another class has gone by without casualties, but there were certainly a few moments today when I had my doubts…. Everyone was back from the holidays and full of energy, so I thought that the prospects for a good class playing “Musical Cranium” were promising. Right and wrong. As usual. The game was a big hit for the first round, which lasted between half an hour and forty-five minutes. I should have stopped there – the boys had mostly been paying attention and, while they were not exactly learning from each other, they were engaged on their own turns, thinking about the questions and mostly getting them right. (Mental note: work more on teaching them about the instruments and instrument families of the orchestra. Begin to talk about the concept of a scale. (How?!)) In my dream-world, I had hoped they would listen to all the questions, learning from each successive turn…not the case, of course, because pushing all the chairs together, yelling at each other, and playing the electric guitar are all WAY more fun…. When I decided to go for Round Two, I began to dig my own grave, because shortly after starting the round, most of them began to lose interest, to play their own games, to throw the pieces at each other and nickname them (Cindy and Bob and I’ve already forgotten who else) and make up (loud) stories about them. I really need to work on the discipline thing. But how?!! Today I threatened that I wouldn’t give out any more candy if I had to tell them to be quiet one more time.

I told them to be quiet about one hundred more times, and no candy. This didn’t seem to have a tremendous effect, except that they all complained, moaned, and groaned about how it wasn’t fair that James got a piece of candy (he won the first round) and no one else did. I told them, “Tough luck, life’s not always fair.” I figured that it’s never too soon to begin learning that lesson. A few more minutes into Round Two and David announces that he doesn’t want to play any more, he’s tired of it and not feeling well, and can he take Andrew with him to go get a drink of water and plus he’s bored. Andrew then chimes in with his usual “Teacher, Teacher” (which generally precedes some kind of sarcastic comment or knock knock joke) but this time tells me “you, know I don’t even know your name. I just call you ‘Teacher.’ And I don’t really care.” Great, thanks for the ego boost. But it gets better, when at this point I give up the game to begin the violin lessons, and proudly whip out half a dozen worksheets and Escher designs for them to color or trace while I work with them individually. I spread them out happily on the table, longing for a bit of peace and semi-quiet so that I can teach. “You want us to do WHAT?!?!” demands Andrew. (“What?! What?! What?!” shouts David. David is always shouting.) “That’s totally lame. You’re lame. I don’t want to do that. I want to go home.” Shattered, I begin to wish vaguely that he would just go home, that they would all go home. I have no idea what to do with them, and I have run out of ideas of ways to get them to settle down, to care, to listen to me, to be quiet when I’m trying to teach. By this point in the class my head hurts from all the noise, I’m beginning to feel like the rest of the school must hate Mondays, and Ms S’s class of NOISE, and I want to go home, too.

Not so lucky! It’s time for the violin, regardless of what the rest of the kids are doing. And working with them individually is still, fortunately, quite wonderful – even rewarding. I love watching them concentrate; I am constantly amazed at how different each of their “natural” approaches is to the instrument. I marvel at how Terrence seems to think so hard about what he is doing, but then seems to have no memory for physical sensations – he’ll be playing, then stop to scratch a mosquito bite, and then put up his left hand again, but on the wrong side of the instrument. Sometimes I wonder if I told him to pick up the violin on his own, if he would remember which hand holds the instrument and which, the bow. So this is a good thing to think about, as I work on how to develop his physical memory. (The problem with this, of course, is that it requires a great deal of Patience, and of desire, on his part…a bit more difficult to come by.) While Terrence doesn’t quite remember right from left, Andrew naturally holds the violin spectacularly well, but seems to have a good bit of trouble understanding where the notes are on the violin. He remembers the strings with some thought, but despite our lessons on the notes of “musical alphabet,” despite all the spelling games and flashcards and things we spent the first month or so on (which seemed to teach the other boys almost effortlessly), he doesn’t seem to get it that “B” follows “A,” or that there is more than one “D” on the violin. Another challenge! How do I reinforce that? He has great ears, so would it be best to begin him with more ear training, to begin doing things aurally, and then transition into note-reading? Or would that just intensify the problem? As a teacher, I am beginning to love and look for these unique challenges that each student presents, because not only do they keep my life interesting (like I need anything else!), but also because on some level the boys recognize what they are not good at . . . and they want to get better! And THIS seems to be the best motivation, the best way to get them to pay attention and to work. So my task for the week, perhaps, is to find a way to incorporate that into the first hour of the lesson. It would be nice, after all, to keep up the “no casualties” record.

Well, I certainly had no problem with discipline this week! I also only had one student show up. Good news: he’s my favorite. Bad news: teachers aren’t supposed to have favorites. And yet, even a few weeks ago I found myself struggling with this concept – it is just so hard to treat each kid the same, when one really wants to learn and another thinks that he’s the most amazing thing since sliced bread. James is a bit of an introvert, is always early to class, and on the first day said that he really wanted to learn the violin because his dad is Irish and played fiddle music around the house when he was growing up. He also told me that he thinks “music is amazing and can make a bad day good.” Who couldn’t love this kid, with his green-hazel eyes peeking out from a head of long and shaggy hair? A few weeks later we were talking about goals and he said he wanted to be a musician, a pilot, or a “computer guy” when he grew up. He’s not the best violinist out of the boys, but he concentrates hard and well, and he’s a quick learner. And (on the days when all the boys attend) it is so difficult not to favor him, to treat Andrew (who last week told me he didn’t like me: “So what are you going to do about that, huh?”) with the same respect, acknowledgement, encouragement as I give to James. Similarly, it is difficult not to give extra attention to Terrence, who the others often make fun of, who is a little slower but truly thinks about what he is doing, and cares about it, and is simply so genuine in his actions and words that you can’t help but want to give him that extra piece of candy even though he’s missed the last twelve questions.

So this week I had planned to play “Musical Cranium” (after a bit of thought I threw the “Jeopardy” idea out the window), and had made cards and categories, questions and prizes. But I couldn’t just play it with one student. A few minutes into the class I realized the others weren’t going to show up and felt a mild internal anxiety begin to rise. What in the world was I going to do with this kid?! We couldn’t possibly spend the entire time going through flashcards, talking about the instruments of the orchestra…I couldn’t just quiz him on musical terms or vocabulary for the whole lesson. I had no back-up plan. So what was I going to do?! After a few more minutes of chat I realized that we were just going to play the violin. And talk about playing. And if he started to get tired, then we’d break out the rhythm games or work on note-reading. Miraculously, it was one of the fastest and easiest classes of the year! It has been amazing to the watch the boys’ progress on the violin – despite the fact that they don’t take the instruments home and/or practice at all, despite the fact that they have one brief lesson each week, in which they are trying to concentrate after a long day at school and while the room resounds with noises of cowboy games, they still get better from week to week! Yes, the progress is slow, and each week I re-evaluate how much or little I can truly expect from them by the end of the year, but it has been so precious to be a part of their discovery of what it is to play the violin. The expressions on the boys’ faces when each held the violin for the first time, and drew a scratchy bow across a string (or, well, two strings…and maybe the bridge, too) was utterly priceless. As much as they goof off in class, as much as they want as much candy as possible, as much as they talk right through my own words, they still want to learn the violin, and they are incredulous when I play something for them, when they watch their own fingers making a sound. I hope to bring in some young performers this year, too, so that they can see some kids their own age playing, because I know what an impression that made on me when I was younger. Any suggestions? Any of you out there have students who need performance opportunities (for other kids)??

But back to James and this week. We had a lovely time! And by the end of our lesson, he was playing “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star” and reading through lines of my sight-reading book fairly easily (we’ll see how much he remembers next time!), figuring out how to make a good sound (this is so hard to teach! As I am learning. But then again, what isn’t hard to teach?!) and correcting his own bow hand. It was amazing!! Last week we were playing duets that only required the students to play open strings (still fun for all of us, I have to admit – it was also fun to witness their first introduction to chamber music, to that feeling of amazement when you realize that you are playing something with someone else, making something together!), and this week James was telling me that “next should be a high two, which is a C-sharp, and is close to the third finger.” And that may not sound like much if you are not a musician, but it’s a big step if you are an almost-middle-school boy in your second month of violin lessons. And it’s a big step if you are a post-middle-school girl in your second month of teaching beginning violin lessons!

Today was certainly an exercise in patience, but I suppose we need those kinds of days to balance the picture perfect ones (wait, picture perfect ones? Do those exist?). However, there is a lesson to be learned in everything – and I learned today that Mr. American Man is the favored hero of the class, and that Mr. American Man is awesome. (I am also still working on learning exactly who Mr American Man actually is…) Chris Farley, Minnie Me, Chuck Norris, Donald Trump, and a video game character named Makar are also up there on the list of heroes with my boys. But as much as the list didn’t quite include the kind of people I was envisioning, when we really discussed these favorite people and the attributes of their personalities or lives the boys found inspiring or attractive, they still managed to come up with a hoard of respectable answers. I think the kids even surprised themselves a bit, as they realized that many of their heroes were people who made others feel good, were people who gave of themselves and surpassed the expectations of those around them.

But apparently making lists of the “qualities of a hero” while talking about Napoleon and Beethoven wasn’t exactly enough to keep them quiet today, because at least every third word from my mouth was directed at trying to get one of the boys to stop talking, yelling, throwing things, making fun of someone else, crawling onto the table or under the chairs. More lessons of today: I need to find a better way to exercise authority as a teacher. I need to find another way to keep them quiet(er, at least) while I work individually with each student and the violin. (Which, by the way, is going better and better! Today we actually read music for the first time, while playing! They could do it! They hadn’t done it before! And I played little mini “duets” with each boy, thrilling them to no end. But then I proceeded to panic internally when I realized that open strings were one thing, and how I would get them from ‘A A E E’ to using their fingers was about as terrifying – and huge – as anything I could imagine…. More on the violin lessons coming next week.) Those music word searches, crossword puzzles, and hangman worksheets that I’ve been making for them have now worn off, and after circling “bassoon” and “timpani,” they are more interested in throwing their shoes at each other. (Lesson #4: bring a hard helmet to class?)

And I need to do a better job of planning a lesson that speaks to my kids on their level – but preserves a subject that I want to share with them. Of course, this has always been a goal of the class, but it turns out it is also a constant work-in-progress. I certainly don’t want to give up all of my own ideas about what I want them to learn this year, and cater entirely to their interests (a bit of this does happen every week as I plan the lesson, which I think is healthy? but I don’t want it to take over completely). Perhaps what I most need to work on is how to understand the mind of a 12-year-old. My roommate pointed out to me last night that, while I might find making a list of adjectives of the qualities of a hero fun (“But we were using different colors of markers!” I protested. “And they did think it was cool that parts of the 4-minute clip of ‘Eroica’ that we listened to could be described with those same adjectives!”), a 12-year-old boy wasn’t going to find it so fun. “You have to get inside their heads,” she counseled me. “Because my 12-year-old head tells me that I am not interested in adjectives and list-making. That sounds kind of boring, actually. My 12-year-old head needs something that is concrete, and something that is obviously relevant. Something that makes me engaged, too.” But I know this! I silently protest. That’s what I’m trying to do! “Maybe you could think about being less creative in your lesson plan material, and more creative in the presentation. If you want to talk about Beethoven, talk about Beethoven. But talk about him in a fun way.” [Insert a pained look from me here…] “And listing adjectives is not fun,” she insisted.

Right. So, lesson learned, and I think that next week we’ll be playing music jeopardy. (Anyone care to join?)

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Part one! NEC meets blogging, boys from South Boston, and the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship

Today I learned that stickers do not impress boys. I also learned that saying “I said so because I’m the teacher” does. And, as it turns out, this is quite a powerful tool when you are a 25-year-old girl trying to control a group of slightly rowdy 10 and 12-year old boys in an after-school classroom. I have quickly figured out that these boys are not nearly as interested in the relationship of Picasso to music or in the difference between a canon and a fugue as I was hoping (included in my initial curriculum plans, of course!), but their uncensored reactions to the things I present are so honest and insightful that I am constantly surprised (and often delighted!) by their responses.

I am a violist at NEC, studying with Martha Katz for the second year of my Graduate Diploma, and fortunate enough to be one of the 2006-07 Boston area Albert Schweitzer Fellows. The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship was founded in 1940 to support Dr. Schweitzer’s medical work in Africa during World War II, and has since expanded to include programs across the United States, encouraging students in health-related professions to follow the example of Dr. Schweitzer in living a life of service. Dr. Schweitzer wrote extensively on topics from philosophy to nuclear testing, music to politics, and is especially known for his belief in service and in setting an example through this service: “[my philosophy of life] does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful to the community in so doing. It does not permit the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many by its means. It refuses to let the business man imagine that he fulfils all legitimate demands in the course of his business activities. It demands from all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others.” (Civilization and Ethics, p. 269.) The mission of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship is to reduce disparities in health and healthcare by developing “leaders in service” – individuals who are dedicated and skilled in helping underserved communities, and who influence and inspire others by example. [Lots more info! Go to www.schweitzerfellowship.org, and check out the bios of current fellows and project descriptions, inspiring Schweitzer quotes, Fellowship news.]

And good news for all of us musicians, because a few years ago, the Fellowship became interested in including a few students from NEC in its mix of students from med school, PA school, optometry school, dental school, and every other traditional “health profession,” as well as many that are less-traditional. My Fellowship project involves teaching an interdisciplinary music class at an after-school center in South Boston called the Paraclete Center (www.paraclete.org). An old convent-made-after-school community center, once I stumbled upon it (after the perhaps prerequisite lesson on “how things never work out as you would expect”), the Paraclete Center now seems like the ideal place for me this year. The Center is the brainchild of Sister Ann Fox, who is exactly what you might expect of a Sister: quiet, compassionate, humble…and a powerhouse. She began the Center in 1997 as a place that could offer the neighborhood middle school children of South Boston an enriching, diverse learning environment to supplement their daytime education and provide them with the extra assistance and tutoring needed for them to gain acceptance into one of three “exam” Boston public high schools. Through the Center’s various after-school offerings, its mission is to provide its students with the possibility of an alternative future. 40% of its students live in public or subsidized housing, and 35% come from immigrant families that do not speak English in the home.

And so what am I doing there? Teaching my class of 10- and 12-year-old boys about Bach and Beethoven, about Janis Joplin and Dave Brubeck, about meter and rhythm and musical form and modes and melody. And to play the violin. (or, sort of how to sort of play the violin!) I believe so strongly in the power of music, and in the need for it especially in the lives of children, as a part of their development, as an emotional outlet, as a way to stimulate creativity. And while many schools have some sort of music program, band class, or after-school choir, I believe that music is not often taught to children in a way that relates to their lives or to their other academic subjects, and so it is often difficult for them to connect to music in a meaningful way. This year I wanted to design a curriculum that integrated music with life – with art, politics, history, social dynamics, literature, science – so that the kids I taught would find a way to connect with music and would develop a lifetime involvement in and appreciation for the arts.

And of course things do not proceed entirely as planned (back to lesson #1), and after several curriculum-writing (and site-identifying) pitfalls, I quickly learned that if I was truly going to engage the minds and spirits of these boys, I was going to have to do it with a lot of activity, a lot of interaction, a lot of hands-on. Me lecturing on the connections between music and Shakespeare was going to get me about as far as a car with a flat tire. Offering violin lessons, however, in conjunction with some music appreciation that both explored various kinds of music and also covered the basics of musical form and theory, of note-reading and violin-playing – now this has proved to be a much better plan. So each week I spend hours and hours planning my classes (lesson #2 – as much as I respect and admire music teachers in public middle schools, I could never be one. Good to know), which go by in a whirlwind of exercises, games, violin-playing, flashcards, quizzes, boy-talk, singing, viola-playing that to me feels like some sort of nervous mayhem and to my boys feels (I hope, I think) like a pretty cool, pretty fun, pretty interesting, not-too-serious music class with Ms S.

And in these following blogs, I will be recording various thoughts and impressions from the class and the opportunity, insights into the Schweitzer Fellowship and dips into days at the Paraclete Center, reflections on how this particular effort of mine to find a way to get my music out of the practice room and into the community has been working (or not). I began teaching in September, so the first few entries date back to those earlier days of teaching as I reported them to my mentors at the Fellowship and at NEC. So I hope you enjoy! Welcome to the ride.

And another month has flown by! And with each day and week that passes, I find myself learning an unbelievable amount – about how to teach and what to teach, how to approach kids and how to read them, even about what things I do and don’t want in my future as a musician and an educator.

The classes at Paraclete are going well, although I need to find a way to reduce the planning time for each class. Currently it feels like I spend an inordinate amount of time planning each class, each of which happens in a flash and feels like a whirlwind. Then another week flies by and it’s Sunday night or Monday morning and I’m cramming in four or five hours to plan the upcoming lesson. But I’m learning: I don’t want to be a full-time middle school music teacher! Teaching well is ridiculously hard work! And I am learning so much about working with kids, and about these kids in particular – they are so full of inconsistencies! Many days I feel surprised by each and every thing – they remember things I told them the previous week, even though I thought they seemed bored at the time; they love watching clips from “The Sound of Music” and want to sing “Do is a Deer” a countless number of times. I read them a quote about rhythm and ask for comments and they come up with all these amazing parallels between heartbeats and speech patterns, the thunder of an elephant herd and the tides of the ocean. On the other hand, there is so much work to be done…we are learning the instruments of the orchestra, slowly, and it’s hard not to feel discouraged when I play an excerpt of a cello section and David declares that it is certainly the flutes. Oy vey. I am learning that games are good and that candy is better (but gets expensive). I am learning that if you give out candy at every class, they begin to expect it (bad news). I am learning that if you really want them to learn something, your best bet is to teach the same thing for four weeks, in four different ways. Repetition is a good friend. And the boys are becoming some sort of friends. They want to share with me what they can do, the songs they have figured out on Andrew’s guitar, their favorite jokes, what each of them plans to be for Halloween. But best of all, of course, is watching them slowly become more comfortable with the violin, witnessing their wide-eyed wonder at the first notes they play, feeling proud when they remember things week to week, believing in their genuine excitement when they come to class.

Am I making a difference in the lives of these boys? Am I setting an example that I am proud of? Is this class teaching them to believe in what they want, in what they love Are they becoming more confident, self-aware, emotive? I have no idea. Are they going to be able to play the violin without me standing there, or read music, or figure out rhythms all on their own? Most likely not. Are they going to be examples in their own schools of kids who are learning self-discipline and the art of practicing, kids who are more self-motivated, communicative, and well-adjusted than the others? Probably not. But I still believe that somewhere this is affecting them, that the music, the mentorship, the class we have together on Mondays is slowing seeping into their bloodstream, traveling to their hearts.

September is already drawing to a close! It has been an exciting month, filled with Schweitzer Fellowship activities and project progress at Paraclete. Before my first class, I attended eight hours of teacher training at the Paraclete Center, which was a fantastic, overwhelming experience – two of the other new volunteer teachers and myself met with a team of Paraclete volunteers and spent the day discussing teaching strategies and behavior modification tactics, lesson plan writing and lesson plan critiquing, learning to make a game out of anything and how to get the most out of field trips. The other teachers are both recent college grads, supported by Teach for America fellowships, and the teacher trainers included Shelia, the woman I’ve had the most contact with at the Center, as well as my mentor, Carol (a retired Boston Public School teacher who is now on the board of Young Audiences-Boston, among other organizations) and Ellen, an ex-principal and teacher. The day was incredibly informative and useful (although exhausting), and I realized just How Much there is to learn about teaching! But we had a good time, too, and it certainly made me both excited about teaching and also confident in my ability to manage a classroom. Even though I knew that my group at the Paraclete Center would be small, it made me feel like I could get up in front of a roomful of kids, no problem.

Turns out, I have a lot to learn!! The month continued – NEC commitments certainly expolded full force, and were accompanied by a trip to Florida to play with the New World Symphony; an afternoon of volunteering for the Jimmy Fund Walk with the Schweitzer Fellowship (a 26-mile walk that raises funds for cancer research); countless hours spent brainstorming, planning, preparing for my first class; phone conversations with Shelia (You’ll be great!), Carol (just remember three questions: What worked? What didn’t? How can I make it better?), and my Mom (Don’t talk too much. Let them talk); the monthly Schweitzer dinner meeting.

Then: the First Class. I had about 6 hand-written pages of notes, plus several typed information sheets and handouts to pass around and read aloud. After ten minutes I had covered about half of the hand-written pages – of course not at all in order and jumping around from topic to topic – and was playing Bach for the kids (“but this is supposed to be in the second half of class!” squealed my brain). Oops. My students were six boys, three of them eager to learn the violin (and two of them dying to talk about the rock band they had started, their progress in learning Stairway to Heaven, and the current debate about a band name (“Do you like Stupidity or Unknown better?” I volunteered a combination of their choices) and three of them who seemed to have ended up in the class accidentally and displayed only a vague interest. (To my surprise, two of them signed up to return and take the class!) So the first class flew by, mildly related to my initial plans, and much fun, and completely exhausting. I can tell this job will have a quick learning curve. A few things I learned on day one: it really is true that you need to have some sort of activity, writing response, clapping game, something every fifteen minutes or so. Boys actually do like to talk. Playing for them is good. Talking to them too much isn’t good. They are not so interested (yet!!) in classical music – or certainly in dead European composers. They have also had no exposure to classical music (No, Bach actually isn’t genetically related to Elvis. You must be thinking of someone else). I need to find a way to memorize names – fast.

So, it began well. I talked with Shelia for an hour afterward – planning a Sunday morning music brunch for December and a November musical prelude to the dinner that the Kids Can Cook class hosts for neighborhood families, not to mention the possibility of starting an adult music appreciation class at the Center in addition to my class of middle-schoolers. (How fun!) And that’s the basic story. Nothing has gone quite as planned and nothing has gone wrong! I am excited to develop relationships with my boys (No, Ms S hasn’t heard of any video games. She’s too old and she’s a girl!), excited to see how the class develops, how they grow (I hope they grow!). I’m also learning a tremendous amount about myself – already! Teaching is hard! Can I be a teacher? (no answers yet, although I’m open to suggestion!)

My first class at Paraclete is coming soon, but I admit to an entire dinner party of mixed feelings about it – everyone that I have talked with at the Center has been incredibly enthusiastic and supportive, and everyone has reassured me not to worry, and that things will work out, that basically I should wait to plan any classes until they figure out some things about enrollment and know how many kids have signed up (and what kinds of kids those are). And while I know that this is true, the “Type A” part of me wants to write out lesson plans for the first three months. I’m also a little anxious because the description of my class that has been posted on the Paraclete website is a little different from the kind of class I had envisioned teaching. (No, “Ms’s House of Rock, a class exposing students to music from hip hop to classical; bring your own violin or one will be provided for you” wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.) However, I am trying to reassure myself that actually whatever work I will be doing there will be worthwhile and appreciated and will challenge and grow me drastically, and whether it is specifically what I originally envisioned or not does not matter much. So I know that I just need to find some patience and curiosity and sort of go with how things work out and with whatever happens, with whatever kinds of kids I get, and that any situation will be a great one.

But part of me is still a little worried – what if no kids sign up? What if the ones who do are expecting a class on rock, on hip hop, on jazz, and don’t care about classical music or learning to play the violin? [wait, isn’t that what I am planning to instill in them – an appreciation (if not love) for classical music, even if they have no background in it?!] What if I can’t hold their interest? What if I’m not cool enough for them? So, yes, part of me is worried, but part of me is also trying to learn just to accept whatever happens, to go with it, and to look for a balance between maintaining my own vision while allowing it the flexibility to adapt to the kids and the situation.