Teachering

Teaching is hard, not because there's so much material to teach or because there's so many children we have to differentiate between.  But being a teacher is much, much harder.  I didn't realize there was a difference until Tuesday on my way home from a really tough day at work.  On my way home, that evening, I was finally able to start processing what had happened at school.  I'm still kinda processing it.

I haven't reached a full conclusion, but I have come to realize that there's this heart teachers have.  It's this teacherly heart; this heart enables us to love each student deeply, even if I can't name them all, all while seeing their faults as a human and believing that they can become so much despite the flaws.  This teacherly heart tells us to keep at it even though the federal government oppresses us into a frenzy. This teacherly heart breaks when a student has the cops called on him.  This teacherly heart rises up when others, who aren't teachers, insults us for not focusing on the right things as teacher.  This heart that I have loves my students, and students who are not my students, in an incomparable way to any other love I have for others.  I don't want to be these kids mothers, I just want to offer them what I can: a safe music environment and the kind of love only a teacher can give.

Although I'm often driven to look for other non-teaching jobs because of my disdain for the bureaucracy added by the government, county/state/federal, I always know that teaching is what I should be doing.  It's what I've wanted to do for most of my life, since I was five, and I hope to be doing it for the rest of my life.  So here are some things that I love about being a teacher.

1) Joyful Children.  When an autistic kid can't hold in his giggling all class (I don't ask him to) because he loves my class, and most things we do in it, and ends up holding his stomach from this fountain of joy coming from with; when a child who speaks next to no English, but can actually accurately answer a question in my class and they can't stop smiling and can't wait to tell their homeroom teacher and parents that he answered a question correctly in English; when we're listening to music with our eyes closed and a wide grin breaks across his face and he starts to wiggle and snap.

2) Inspiring Children.  When a girl asks me for one of my journals so she can write her songs in it; when a boy asks what the name of the group was so he can YouTube them, he wants to do vocal percussion like the guy from the video we watched; when a girl says she's been practicing this song all week and knows all the words by heart.

3) Connecting Children.  When we're listening to Indian dance music and a child says his Indian dad listens to it and translates the song for us; when we sing songs in Spanish and the Spanish speakers are able to help others on pronunciation and meaning of the song; when they're in groups working on a project and they use their strengths to create a great final product they're proud to perform in front of the class.

4) Growing Children.  When a student, with several delays and deformities who literally lived on the streets of an African nation for the first 4-5 years of her life and never had a word spoken to her until she was brought to the USA goes from yelling and pounding the ground in my class to singing back the exact notes I sing her name in (even though she's deaf in one ear) which is better than her 'typical' kindergarten classmates; when a boy goes from telling me he doesn't dance to leading the class in a dance; when I prepubescent boy goes from showing disinterest in everything about my class to being the first to raise his hand and answer questions.

5) Loving Children.  When a boy doesn't want to take his hat off because he's self-conscious about his hair and his classmates say his hair is super cool because it looks like Robin's (Batman's sidekick) hair; when a child messes up singing something solo and classmates tells others to not tease; when children groan because my time with them is up and they have to go back to their homeroom teacher.

It's hard to put into words, this teacherly heart, but it's so real.  Even though there are many things I don't like about the educational atmosphere of this country, the children make it worth it.  Education isn't about: global/local competition, science/math, reading/writing, or the government.  Education is about growing people who are to be true stewards of the world and each other.