Along Comes a Spark

I'm an excitable human. It's true.

But I've maybe never been as professionally excited as I was today.

Today I had a student, now a senior in high school, come to job shadow me. She's going to college in the fall to study music ed, and for her senior project, she's required to spend 5 hours with a professional in her chosen field.

So, first, it was, "Can I spend 5 hours?" and then it was, "Can I spend a day?" and today it was, "I'm coming tomorrow too, and I have these two periods back to back that I could come in, and..."

That's crazy flattering, let's be super honest. But, this is someone who, after talking to her, doing the "interview questions" she had to fill out, is going to be amazing in the classroom. Not just because she has that need to teach music, but because she understands so much more than I expected an (almost) 18 year old to, and in such a deeper way.

The student becomes the teacher in a new way.

She jumped right into teaching kids. She had to - I felt it. I know this feeling, I was the exact same way. Young. Hungry. Needing to learn from doing it.

She listened to why I was doing things and recalled things from being in my class, making connections with what she did then and what she was seeing now. She got to see the progression of a lesson through three classes, and at the end she remarked, "By the end it was so polished!" She got to see how a teacher reflects mid-lesson. Adjusts on the fly. Is constantly improving, refining, yes, polishing a lesson.

I got to explain the why to someone with background knowledge too. Not from being my student, but from being a musician. I have observations, and the principals are usually like, "Wow. You cram a lot of stuff into 30 minutes," or "You talk over kids. You should always wait for them to be quiet before you begin," or even, "I don't know what you were doing, but it looked like fun." I can't explain why I use stick notation to them. Or, I mean, I could try, but it's not something they're steeped in.

And herein lies a very special thing: with her enthusiasm for music, and the need to share it with people, children, not as a superstar-performer-idol-BFD, but as a person who wants to give people experiences and opportunities that they may not have again after they're out of school, I got a big dose of why I'm a teacher.

This year has been hard for me. I needed today (and tomorrow! yay!) so, so much. I needed a reminder, from another person, that, "you've touched 8,000 lives" and I needed to see another person celebrate the victory - another person to see the spontaneous celebration that erupts in class - when students know they nail an ensemble and have made music together. I needed to teach. Teach hard. Justify my teaching to someone curious. Be questioned - not about stupid stuff, but about the nitty-gritty of my teaching. My art. My craft. My science.

Teaching feels so good. This was a new kind of teaching for me, and I need it. I loved it. It's going to be tough to hang on for three and four years until the good ones I know are coming get here. I've got to make it though - I was just reminded of another great thing I have to give.