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.