Thank you to the Heart of Texas Suzuki Organization for inviting me to teach at their weekend workshop again this year. I got to teach 20 Book One and Two students masterclasses each day and give two parent lectures.
Lecturing feels so strange to me, because there are more than a few moments each day when I could use my own parent guru and there I stand the babbling idiot in front of fifty parents seeking insight. Getting it on the table from the get go--that I'm still looking for the answers myself, and that more than once I hauled my child off to his room screaming and kicking during practice (not lately--he's too heavy) and we have survived--is very liberating. We haven't just survived--we've come out of the room whole. You can take a break but you always come back. We are in this for the long haul and we're going to have to learn from each other how to make it work. I guess that is an important message. You can screw up and still be in love with your kid and have him love you back. Perhaps that is why the parents at the parent lecture still took notes in spite of all my confessions. Either that or it was free babysitting for an hour.
Teaching Book One and Book Two masterclasses is both easy and hard. The goals are easy--get set up correctly at the instrument, have a little fun, and find the message in the music. Implementing them in 15 minute snippets is hard. I've said it before--it feels like the final exams of teaching: here's the kid--show us what you can do. But thankfully it isn't an exam, it isn't about me, it is only about the child. Perhaps if we lessen our expectations from trying to give them some life altering information, to just trying to share a new game or idea, we will feel more successful. Sometimes all you can do is plant a seed.
Can I just say, that coming back to Austin is such a blessing to me. It feels a little like a This Is Your Life episode. Virtually every college teacher I had is teaching at this workshop as well as my own Suzuki trainer Doris Harrel. Again and again (mostly while watching the faculty recital) I have asked myself what the heck I'm doing here. Why do they want me to teach next to these gods of collegiate teaching? I don't feel worthy to make small talk at lunch.
Suddenly (again during the faculty recital) my value, my function, my role became clear to me in a little phrase of vocabulary: perhaps I am their translator. Perhaps I can take their musical message and translate it into pictures and words a child can understand and express. I had these teachers under the pressure of full faculty juries--I know what their message is. Young children deserve to hear that message and they can totally get it. It just needs a little translating. I can do that.
Back to the this is your life--my Austin student Kristen was there too. Except she is all grown up and graduated and teaching Suzuki piano. She has fifty students and is hoping to get her own place soon. Congratulations Kristen!
She was my very first Suzuki student. She and her brother Brian (who also showed up very tall at the dinner and is studying architecture at Texas A&M--to my feigned chagrin) were five and three when I started them in my apartment in Austin. Whatever mistakes I made and I'm sure I made millions, she ended up loving it enough to make a life of it. I consider that a success. Love covers a multitude of mistakes and we don't have to be perfect to be of great value.
Thank you Mary, Janie, and the gang from HOTSO, I'm so thankful for y'all and your friendship. Thank you Doris, Betty, David and my other teaching heros. Kristen, good luck and don't get a roommate if you can possibly afford it and don't teach piano in an upstairs apartment. Brian, I'm fine with the architecture thing--but did you have to be an aggie?
I love you all. Without you I would still be a girl with a boyfriend--playing in a rock and roll band.
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