by Linda Silva
Ten takeaways of teaching outside music classes:
1. It feels like being a kid playing in your backyard, but with everybody watching.
2. Young children are more independent than I’d given them credit for, even after all my years of working with the under-seven set. They can find the right instruments in their buckets, turn on their own keyboards, and remember to dance near their own squares of carpet.
3. Paper worksheets and flashcards aren’t a great choice because: wind.
4. Young children don’t waste energy worrying about what can’t be changed. They don’t fidget with their masks the way I’d expected them to, nor do they complain about them, as we adults tend to do. They accept how things are so they can concentrate on galloping like horsies across the lawn.
5. In addition to being a teacher, I’m now also a one-woman Special Ops force, geared up and dropped into the middle of Westchester. On my person are a mask, a headset mic (to be heard over the mask), a portable amplifier (connected to said mic), glasses (which I have to take on and off because they fog up), an ipod (it’s like a phone that can’t call, as you may remember) and a headband (because I haven’t had a hair cut in a long time). There was a moment in my first class where my mic was over my forehead, my headband over my eyebrows, my glasses fogged up, my waistband pulled down by the amplifier, and my ipod at my feet. A low point, but I recovered.
6. There’s a wonderful community feel to doing things right out in the open. Neighbors say hi, walkers stop to watch, people wave from cars. I feel part of something. Also a little scrutinized.
7. Schlepping instruments back and forth reminds me of teaching Back In The Day, when I had to haul instruments from one job to another. Although I’d imagined that was behind me when I opened a school, here it’s come again. But the nostalgia it evokes makes it okay. Plus it’s great exercise.
8. People want to help. My fellow tenants have been accommodating, my landlord flexible, and the Musical Beginnings families supportive and willing to try something new. Even LAUSD, if you can believe it. When I requested of their Operations and Maintenance Department that the groundskeeper at Wright Middle change the time he roared his power mower across the lawn opposite our music area, he very kindly did. (So far, anyway. I hate to jinx it.)
9. A wagon is indispensable. So are thick-soled sneakers, whether or not they go with your outfit.
10. Flexibility is an asset. With several instruments at the students’ disposal at once (no more passing out or putting back) I don’t have the same control over the order of events I used to have. Sometimes we end up waving our scarves during a rhythm echo or playing our shakers during drum time or taking out crayons instead of duck puppets. But it ends up working out. Because it’s still music, and after six long months apart, we’re making it together again.