"To teach is to touch lives forever."
Here's a story of a teenage boy I know.
He's now 14 years old and in junior high school. Born as middle child, he has that comparison syndrome, which means that he has a big brother and a little brother to compete with, resulting in a lack of self confidence. In primary school, he was bullied for the whole 6 years by his classmates, and his parents were either too indifferent or too stupid to realize this and move him out of that school. He has developed a defensive posture and was constantly tensed that he forgets his normal posture. Now he walks with a bent back, his shoulders lifted, his arms never hang loosely beside his body (they are either folded in front or lifted on the side just above his waist). It's almost impossible to teach music to someone with this kind of physical problem.
This boy, is a student of mine. He's my underachiever, but I love him dearly.
He is a sensitive kid and when I put him in concerts several times, he managed to play beautifully. He loves romantic pieces and although he puts a devil-may-care attitude as a teenager would do in front of me, his tormented soul connects immediately to this kind of music and he would sing inwardly and project the most beautiful sound through his stiff fingers and arms and shoulders. But each piece is a struggle, although he doesn't mind working hard and taking my frustrated wrath every now and then, poor boy. Every single session we have is always a mix of music, psychology, dance, yoga, breathing, gymnastic and philosophy lesson. And in every session we only manage to do one piece because he doesn't have enough time to do more than one nor enough motivation and strong will to want to do more. And as his grade goes up, I feel the hill we both climb is getting steeper.
A lot of times, after an unsuccessful lesson where we both ended up hating each other, I would think he might not be coming the following week, but although he always misses at least one lesson every month, he keeps coming to my studio. Which I think is a miracle, knowing how tough sometimes I am with him.
If things like this happens to other student, who doesn't have his psychological baggage or his familial background or who is plain lazy, I would have called his parent and dismiss him out of my class. But although I lost my temper with him, never for once I told him that he cannot come to my class again.
I just can't give up on him. If I do, he will give up on himself. So I'll stick around. And I think he knows that I'll stick around until he won't give up on himself, on anything.
Many times, teaching is really not about doing the theory and the science. Many times, I feel that it's about teaching how to think, how to feel, how to do things better and how to be good at something. Many times, music comes much later, usually after they solve all these non-musical problems. If we're really involved, it can be very tiring, because it can be very intense, but it can also be very rewarding, because as we do that, we fix something and build human connection, which is a rare and precious things these days. I guess that's why I always go back to teaching at some point. I love building that bridge, and I love getting inspirations from my students (although they also give me headaches!). And teaching always makes me grateful for the inspiring teachers I have had in my life who changed my life for the better.
