This is my violin studio, May 2008. Left to right are Catherine, Ben, Rebbeca, Brenna, Alyssa, Mycah, Maddie, Jennie, Katie, Elizabeth, Maia, Maddie, Gabby, Connor, Isabel, and yours truly.
I have a story to tell.
When I was an impressionable little girl, I tended to engage in some pretty serious hero-worship. My heroes were always my teachers–my choir directors, my orchestra conductors, my private viola instructors. (I guess I never really left the habit behind because I always had a pretty healthy respect for my favorite college professors too, but in a less extreme sort of way.) When it came to these people (most of them women) a kind or praising word meant I was happy forever, while a rebuke meant tears and self-loathing to the nth degree. As a sixth-grader, I thought it was quite nearly the end of the world when my favorite choir director moved to Delaware.
Some of my unwitting role-models acquitted themselves more admirably than others. Of course, it is the “others” that stick out in my mind. Once when I was about eleven, my orchestra conductor absolutely grilled me about homeschooling, insinuating that I was getting an inferior education and outright saying that I would be a socially inept, relationally stunted adult. I was eleven. This was highly inappropriate. My mother was furious when she heard. My heretofore-unwavering trust in this woman was pretty damaged by that episode. But she wasn’t a malicious woman, just a confused one who had a lot on her plate. Perhaps by denigrating my parents’ educational choice for their children, she was trying to justify her own decision to send her kids to Christian school. I even think it’s possible that spending over 3 hours a week with an intelligent, well-rounded, sweet kid like me made her insecure about her own kids. When I grew older our paths crossed again. I took private lessons from her and she taught me a lot about playing and teaching the violin. I now consider her a colleague and do my best to keep in touch. I know that if I need violin-related professional help or advice, she’s always willing to chat.
And then, there was Miss H.
Miss H was my high school private viola teacher. My parents paid a ridiculous amount of money for her to spend half an hour a week telling me how much I sucked at the viola and what I could do better. Miss H, although she had a fairly large studio, was NOT in it for the warm fuzzies. Looking back, it’s painfully obvious to me that she taught private lessons because symphony musicians get paid diddly-squat and she desperately needed the extra cash in order to keep up with the rent on her dumpy apartment and pay back her student loans (which I can only assume were huge, considering she went to a highkaflautin’ music college, and music students rarely work their way through school because they’re too busy practicing.)
But in spite of her dorky glasses and her dumpy apartment, I still admired her and desperately wanted her approval. After all, she was a really good violist and she was in the Grand Rapids Symphony. (Still is, actually.) And at that point in my life, being a starry-eyed fifteen year old, I wanted to be in the symphony when I grew up, too. (This was when I was young enough to believe I could do anything.) One day, she told me I would never, ever be good enough to be in even the Grand Rapids symphony. I cried all the way as I walked home that day.
I mean, seriously. What would possess a teacher to do that??
(I believe now that I could have gone to school for music and become a professional musician, had I tried. I’m glad I didn’t because then I would have missed out on lots of other lovely things. But I still resent her for taking away from me even the possibility.)
I wish that was the worst, but there’s more.
One day, during my lesson, she swore.
Not at me–she was in conversation with her roomie. But she swore all the same, in my presence. And this wasn’t a ‘lite’ swear word, like darn or crap or even sh*t. Now, to my virgin 15-year-old homeschooler ears, these words were horrible of themselves. You have to understand something, here. When I was fifteen, I didn’t even know the f-bomb existed. Strange, yes, but beautifully true. So you have to imagine my shock when my adored teacher let out with a full blown, “J—- C—–!”
It was bad. It was bad, bad bad. Shocking. Again, I went home from my lesson in a tizzy. I don’t think I cried that time. I was mad. Grossly offended. I had recently made profession of faith at church, so at this point in my emotional young raised-in-the-church life I was pretty much at the peak of my spiritual fervor. And she had taken My Lord’s name in vain. In my mind, this was something that people only did in really evil movies. (OK so yes. I was a bit sheltered as a homeschooler. But really, was that all that bad?)
I couldn’t abide by it, so I wrote Miss H a letter explaining that I was a Christian and by saying such things she had grievously offended me. Well, my letter grievously offended her and she made my poor mother come and be present in her dingy apartment while she tried for half an hour to explain it away (”she wasn’t swearing; in her brand of Christianity it was allowed to use Jesus’ name as an expression of amazement”) and said I was a bad and insolent student for eavesdropping on her conversation (I was in the room for my lesson, for goodness sake, what was I SUPPOSED to do?) and THEN having the nerve to call her out on something I was wrong (”The Bible says to respect your elders.”) Eek. I think right then and there, my mom wanted to quit having me take lessons from that witch-with-a-b, but for some reason I still wanted to (and on top of it all there was some sort of stipulation in the studio contract which essentially locked us into finishing out the year or–wait for it–paying a large sum of money.) At the end of the meeting–which involved me crying a lot–there was a strained truce that included a super-awkward hug.
I did not go back for lessons that summer.
For a long time after that, whenever I remembered Miss H and that incident I would inwardly cringe and feel very embarrassed, and think to myself how stupid I was for writing that letter and correcting my teacher. Eventually the memory faded and it didn’t come up for a very long time until just recently. And this time as I remembered it, for the first time I didn’t feel embarrassed. I was justified in calling her out on it. A little forward maybe, but still. Teachers shouldn’t swear in front of students. End of story. Looking back on it now, from a teacher’s perspective, I can see that Miss H reacted so vehemently because she knew I was right and didn’t want to admit it. Possibly she even felt foolish for having had a student to call her out on it. So she turned it around and made me feel foolish instead and I believed her. For years.
As I mulled it over this time, I realized something:
I am the teacher that I am today, not IN SPITE of these incidents, but BECAUSE of them.
Last year I taught almost 30 students (some of them in private lessons, some of them in classes). At the moment, I’m down to private lessons with “just” 9 kids, who I fit in after work in the evenings. When I am around these kids, I am quite painfully aware of two things:
1. They are WATCHING my every move and word. Like little hawks. Even one bad or denigrating word, spoken in frustration or anger or just laziness, could severely damage their trust (not just in me but in all teachers.)
2. They all look up to me. Some of them admire me. They may try to emulate me. Are my actions, ways, words, attitude, life, worth emulating?
It’s a huge (sometimes overwhelming) responsibility. Teaching goes a lot deeper than just conveying concepts, especially when you’re working with impressionable minds (and generally the younger they are, the more impressionable.) Sadly, this is not recognized by much of the general population, so teachers are often under-appreciated. But even more sadly, many teachers in schools today don’t recognize this–or they simply don’t care. I know so many good and kind schoolteachers (and orchestra leaders, and coaches, and private instructors) who work tirelessly to “make the world a better place” and I am so thankful for these people. But there are also way too many “teachers” out there who aren’t that way. So on the most visible level you end up with scandals in schools–the stuff of newspapers. Less obvious but no less damaged are the kids who are demoralized by a teacher’s careless word or needlessly harsh (or even simply needless) rebuke.
So in light of that, and remembering my own issues with teachers as a kid, and how important they were to my growth as a person, I teach. I may likely never churn out a concert violinist, but I teach kids how to appreciate music and enjoy using their own talent, whether they have a lot or just a little. (And I never TELL a kid he or she has very little talent. haha.) Along the way we learn things like diligence and perseverance and respect. We tell stories. We talk about non-musical things (but we DON’T talk about whether or not they should be homeschooled!) The way I see it, my job during each lesson is to give The Kid my full and undivided attention and equally important with teaching them how to play the violin (or do Latin) is letting them know that they are special and worthwhile. My job outside of lessons is to love and follow God so that mine will be a life worth watching.
The world will break our children down soon enough; it will batter their dreams and threaten their innocence. They certainly don’t need me to do it.
