Except the person who, unlike my students, might know more than me.  Okay, with a doctorate in choral conducting, he knows way more than me.  So much more that I’m majorly intimidated.  Oh, who am I kidding?  I’m freaking out.

Relax, I tell myself.  Breathe.  Sing.  You love to sing.

I do.  I love to sing.  And I know I have a gift for it; I thank God for my voice.  But until last month, I’d been skating by on tips and tricks I’d picked up from hanging out with musicians.  You know, really impressive terms like “glottal stop” and “diaphragm support,” standing with an open rib cage, over-pronouncing consonants.  Stuff I really didn’t understand, but was happy to throw around as if I did.

Until last month.  Suddenly, while sitting through a grad school lecture and wishing my classmates were not quite so verbose, I decided I was tired of being insecure about my singing voice.  I’d never actually had a voice lesson.  In a twisted kind of way, I was proud of that, the way I was proud of never having dyed my hair.  Then one day I just decided, who cares?  I feel like a change.  And I had my stylist put in highlights: 3 different colors, but wonderfully subtle.  I loved them.

So I guess this was similar.  What was the distinction of an untrained voice worth?  Certainly not more than the distinction of a trained one.  I looked up Suzuki voice teachers, found one in the area, and asked if he’d be willing to take on a piano teacher who had never really learned to sing.  He responded enthusiastically.  We set up the first lesson.  Here I was.  Learning, just like my students.

Also, like my students, completely overwhelmed, anxious and neurotic about every little thing.  Stand up straight.  Feet apart.  Hands and arms down.  Shoulders back.  Jaw loose.  Belly full of air.  Pure, clean vowels.  In a foreign language.  And for goodness’ sake, RELAX!

I saw it from the other side: my teacher patiently corrected all my errors, one by one.  Breathe deeply.  Give more support to the lower, richer notes; back off on the higher ones.  Relish the consonants.  Slide from lower to higher register seamlessly.  Let the volume expand; fill the room with sound.  And just as I was getting it, really getting it, I’d forget to breathe again.

“What did you learn today?” he asked after an hour.  (Only an hour?  Not three?)

“Singing is a lot more complicated than I thought!” I said.

He looked disappointed. “Then I’ve been talking too much,” he said.

No, no.  You’ve only forgotten, because I fake it well: I’m starting from zero.

Well.  I hereby present Ten Pens.  It’s way more fun, and just as free.

Take ten pens from around your house.  They must be free promotional pens.  If you’re short a few, I’ll lend you some: I rounded up 58 just by looking in the study.  They’re all going to school, in case anyone there wants to play (and because, seriously, they seem to multiply exponentially every 13 days or so.  I’m worried about the load-bearing capacity of my desk.)

Now, try to imagine how they might have entered your house.  Word limits are lame, but keep it short or your audience might fall asleep.  (All three of them.) Here are mine:

1. Mini Cooper: Let’s Motor. This is one of those cool moving pens; when you tilt it, the little red car sliiiiiiides back and forth from the Hollywood sign to the Statue of Liberty.  And it was completely free!  All we had to do was buy a car.
2. Revlimid capsules. Please see accompanying full prescribing information, including Boxed WARNINGS. I guess these prescription drug giveways must work, or no one would continue doing them.  I just have one question: “Boxed warnings”?  They don’t sound too bad.  Better than the free-roaming warnings that catch you by surprise, anyway.
3. My school. Awwww. Actually, to be fair about 12 of the 58 were from my school.
4. My school’s archrival school. What th–?!  I did tutor a couple of students from there, but I think I would have noticed this pen before now.  At the very least, I would think my school’s pens would be ostracizing it, but noooo, they’re playing nice and being friends.
5. Best Wishes in the year 2003, Enslin & Son, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. My father’s family’s butcher shop.  We last visited there for my grandmother’s funeral.  It was a sad time, but wonderful to see them all, and I loved the tour of the slaughterhouse and my dad’s accompanying anecdotes from the summer he worked there as a teenager.  We also got married in 2003, so I think their best wishes might have helped a little.
6. Mark & Anna’s Wedding: The Highlight of 2009. Most original wedding favor ever, from a very original couple!
7. Sauza Tequila. Once again, what th–?!  We don’t own a bottle, and I’ve never even heard of that brand.  Tequila is not my scene.
8. Microsoft. Steve, this means nothing to us!  We swear!  We don’t know how it got here or where it came from!  We’re burning it right this very instant and burying the ashes in the back yard under the Apple tree!  Isn’t that poetic justice?  Steve?  STEVE!  DON’T YOU WALK AWAY!
9. Kone Elevators & Escalators. Courtesy of my husband, who goes to trade shows and can’t turn down a freebie to save his life.  Really, if he had to choose between certain death and a duffel bag of stuffed animals with building product manufacturers’ logos imprinted on their bums, I might have to raise Maia by myself.
10. My high school alma mater. This isn’t technically a pen, it’s a letter opener — but it counts solely because of the number of times I’ve reached for it intending to pick up a pen.  A clever ruse, but I’m wise to it now.  Away, fiend!  Into the bag with the others!

Okay.  Your turn.  Comment here with a link to your Ten Pens post!  If it doesn’t go viral within a week, I’ll be personally offended.

1. Classroom Management. “Students can’t learn unless the teacher succeeds in capturing their attention and getting them to follow instructions,” says author Elizabeth Green, paraphrasing Doug Lemov, a charter-school principal and one of the main sources for the article. If only saying were doing!  All teachers wish their students would pay better attention.  The good students do; they’re interested in learning.  With the others, you have to convince them that it’s worth their time and effort to invest in what you have to say.

For this, I can recommend no better book than Fred Jones’ Tools for Teaching (as I have before.)  There are some very simple techniques in it, most of which require a teacher who is prepared, calm and focused.  The advice in the Times article is similar: for instance, it advocates giving directions only while standing still and looking at the student(s,) which implies that getting them to pay attention is your highest immediate priority.

2. Fixing Mistakes. “Teaching depends on what other people think, not what you think,” says Deborah Loewenberg Ball, one of the teaching specialists quoted in the article.  In my limited teaching experience, I have noticed that students don’t need any help learning; they do that on their own, inconsistently and inefficiently but in the only way they can.  Your job, as a teacher, is to show them where and how their thinking is flawed, so they can learn more quickly.

For me, this second piece of advice is much more difficult than the first — so much so that I often wonder why I am a teacher at all.  I learn very quickly and easily, and I know what helps me learn; I have to constantly fend off frustration with my students, who lack my natural ability and / or self-awareness.  Working one-on-one, I can be as patient as the day is long, but in a group, when I sense control of the class sliding away from me as one student continues to look lost, it’s tempting to think, “Why can’t you just GET it?!”

So, that’s it.  “Do this and you will be saved.”  The article also discusses methods for training teachers to do these things and retaining the ones who already do them, which is interesting if you’re interested in the politics of education (I am, but am also increasingly disillusioned by it.)  Still, I am sure I will get the book mentioned in the article when it comes out in April, written by Lemov and based on his findings from a five-year study dubbed “Lemov’s Taxonomy.”  I figure it can’t hurt.

If you or someone you love might be interested in learning to read music, ever, there is no better place to start than with Music Mind Games.  They’re a series of interactive, cooperative teaching tools that enables anyone to teach or learn the basics of music theory in a completely painless and fun way.

I’m currently writing a series of posts at the Music Mind Games website about how to use the materials in the Puppy Packet, which I require that all of my students purchase as part of the program.  The materials are versatile, well-designed and gorgeous, but there are so many that it can be overwhelming trying to figure out where to begin.  I haven’t been cross-publishing each entry here because they are awfully specialized, but if you know any musicians or music teachers, feel free to pass it on!  And, of course, there are little glimpses into my teaching philosophy along the way:

Yesterday I told one of my students, “You’re a much better reader than I was at your age.”  It was the understatement of the year: at his age, I was hiding my books and wailing about how much I hated reading music.  He’d just played a round of Slap the C’s, D’s and B’s (yes, simultaneously!) and gotten 17 out of 18 right, all the while cracking jokes and carrying on a conversation with his father.

Every teacher should have the gift of a student who reaches higher than she ever could.  It gives you the feeling that somehow, the world really is getting to be a better place.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have.

Friends have bound me to earth, enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.

Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world. Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.

This afternoon I learned of the death of one of my former professors, Raimund Abraham.  He was an architect from Austria who taught at Cooper Union, where I spent the first two years of college.  In studio and critique, he loved to digress into diatribe about the violence of tectonics, the dialectics of form, and his cats.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world.

They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself.

They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments.

They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself.

They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance.

Abraham (as we knew him) was both immensely talented and immensely troubled.  He ran his studio with a gleeful sadism, promising us we wouldn’t sleep for days and lambasting us with choice expletives when we got too relaxed and seemed to be enjoying ourselves.  He frequently told us we were stupid, foolish, and would never succeed in architecture, and he failed or forced withdrawal on many to prove himself right.  In his furor, he ripped drawings off the wall and snapped carefully-assembled models into pieces to “fix” them.  He gave tacit approval to ideas and then turned on a dime to skewer them later.  He never gave specific assignments, but he expected us to work until we passed out or injured ourselves using box cutters and power tools in a sleep-deprived state.  He took evident pleasure in belittling and slandering others, both behind their backs and to their faces.  He could sense fear better than a wild dog, and if it was present he would capitalize on it, refusing to give his approval even when we bent over backwards to win it.

He made us cry, and not just the women.  His abuse made my father say, “I can’t remember the last time I just wanted to deck someone,” and a pious, devout friend called him “the reason they invented” a certain seven-letter word.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish.

Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a dwarf.

Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.

Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand.

Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep.

Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.

Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of your garment.

This man almost singlehandedly drove me away from architecture.  Worse, he made me question my faith in God, the faith that had sustained me through a childhood I now realize was wonderfully uneventful.  Where was God when Raimund Abraham, who didn’t seem to like anybody, decided to teach a class full of young, idealistic teenagers who wanted to change the world — and instead turned to cigarettes and shrinks to cope with their feelings of worthlessness and despair?  Where was God when we failed crit after crit, unable to produce something he would like and frightened for our academic future with expulsion forever on the table?  When we got sick and depressed, flung ourselves into loveless relationships and rejected the advances of friends and family members who worried about us?  When I had the darkest thoughts of my life (and even wished for the courage to end it), desperate to prove to someone, anyone, that I was the smart, funny, creative person I knew myself to be?

At one time I would have said quite freely that Abraham ruined my life.  He certainly brought my dream of living and working in New York to an abrupt close; when I took a leave of absence from Cooper Union, from which I never returned, I couldn’t afford to stay in the city, and by then it held so many painful memories that I was happy to leave.  Years of antidepressants and therapy helped, and I can honestly say I’ve forgiven him, but the pain is still there, the insults and taunts embedded deeply in my memory.  That time is a part of me now, a part that will never go away, like the dot of rapidograph ink  just below the skin on the palm of my right hand, another wound born of late-night drawings and despair.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:

so that my fleeing to You may have no return;

so that all hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs;

so that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul;

so that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins, arrogance and anger;

so that I might amass all my treasure in heaven;

ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.

Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows, that a person has no enemies in the world except himself.

“The world is your enemy,” Abraham once told me during a critique.  It seemed to imply, within the context of the entire tirade, that this is why he was so hard on us: he wanted the weak to crumble away and the strong to conquer all.  And he succeeded.  I never had the heart to return to architecture school, partly for fear that my awful experience might repeat itself at a different institution.  This failure remains one of the biggest embarrassments of my life.  I will forever have to explain to people that I started architecture school, but didn’t finish it; that I received C’s and D’s and F’s when I had put forth my best effort, all that I had.  That I couldn’t succeed, no matter what I did; no matter how much I prayed and wheedled and fumed and sobbed, my best wasn’t enough.

I thank God for that experience.  I thank God for teaching me, through Raimund Abraham, that the world is a fallen place; that we should never be too comfortable here, too used to getting what we want and think we deserve.  I thank God every time my husband teases me about dropping out of architecture school, or my students ask why I changed majors halfway through college, or a friend remarks on the photographs of the East Village that grace my kitchen, the only visible reminders of that wretched time.  It was a time when I had nothing and no one to turn to, when I was friendless and alone in a city that was happy to continue on without me, and it was a time when I realized that suffering is a blessing — that it is only through doubt that we learn to have faith, only in torment that we learn to have peace.

One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.

It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies.

Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and enemies.

A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands.

For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life.

Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon the soul of your servant Raimund Abraham, a sinner.  And as the first among sinners, I beg you to have mercy on me.

Prayer by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich. Originally published in Prayers by the Lake, Serbian Orthodox Metropolitanate of New Gracanica, 1999.

Down: Discovering that only half the school got the latest edition of the paper.  Somehow, I forgot to remind all the students about their assignments.  You know, the assignments that have been on the board since we made up the schedule LAST SEPTEMBER.  Additionally, we’d run out of 11 x 17 paper and no one had ordered more.

Up: Discovering that there was in fact a whole case of 11 x 17 paper, hidden at the bottom of the stack of boxes in the basement office behind the forklift and among six prepositional phrases.  Glad I didn’t wear heels that day.

Further Up: Getting excited about the upcoming field trip to the Washington Journalism Center, which I’ve been planning since January.

Down: Getting two parent phone calls several minutes apart in which mothers told me their daughters couldn’t attend for various annoyingly understandable reasons.

Up: This means the entire class can now fit into my car, so I don’t have to drive the school van.

Down: The dearth of submissions for the literary magazine, even with the incentive of a contest with cash prizes.

Up: The cheerful willingness of the staff, all volunteers, to make announcements, place flyers and talk about layout design, even if it’s all in vain.

Further Up: Most of the computers in the lab finally got layout software installed on them.

Down: I’ve been requesting this, also, since September.

Further Down: An anonymous negative comment scrawled in blue highlighter over a copy of the newspaper and placed in my mailbox.  Our latest issue, centered around food, was conceived, written and designed by students; it included an article that interviewed the school’s physician about eating correctly before sports events, an tour of the Asian market with a Filipino student, polls about favorite Food Network stars and local eateries, and an article about the Culinary Club’s philosophy of home cooking.  The comment said, “Whatever happened to writing about the students?”

Up: The support of the vice-principal when I showed her the comment.  “It’s not like you would tell them how to design their class,” she said.  “They shouldn’t tell you how to run yours, and I sure don’t see anyone stepping up to take over.”

Further Up: Rob suggested I post copies of the anonymous note in the faculty room with the caption, “Whatever happened to writing in ink and signing your name?”

Halfway through the summer I had lunch with a high-school friend and his mother who were in town.  Carole was unlike any other friend’s mother I’d ever met: “young at heart” sounds cliche, but she really was dreamy in the way of an adolescent girl, constantly perched on the edge of some alternate reality.

We all sipped our juices. (Well, I barely touched mine; I’d watched the barista make it, with three apples and a huge hunk of fresh ginger, and it made my head want to explode.)  She asked me how work was going, and I told her truthfully that I didn’t like the job.

“Humanity is so strange,” she mused. “People come in . . . waves.”

I thought this was probably over my head, philosophically speaking, so I didn’t think much about it until my next shift.  Then I started to notice how right she was.  There were long, nearly unbearable periods of boredom, pacing the marble floors and obsessively spacing hangers and tucking in tags.  And suddenly, my hands were so full I wasn’t even sure I was getting credit for every sale; I didn’t have time to walk each client to the register, as I had to be in the dressing rooms assisting the next one.  This happened even at the oddest times: not just during the lunch rush, or on weekends, but smack in the middle of a weekday morning, when the crowd consisted of separate parties of one and two each.

I’m no sociologist, but you must have had the experience of getting in a short line only to see six people behind you a moment later (or, more unhappily, to be one of the six who simultaneously decide to bring their shopping to a close.)  I suppose, at heart, we are more group-oriented than we realize.

For a teacher, the Sheep Effect can be frustrating.  The first year I taught Creative Writing, the class was capped at 12 with a waiting list.  The second year, it reached 12, but several students dropped it in the first week; I finished the year with 8.  The third year, four signed up, and one dropped it halfway through.  This year, no one signed up at all.

If anything, I promoted the class more eagerly as I saw the numbers start to dwindle, but my efforts seemed to have an adverse effect.  My greatest fear happened this year: there was no class at all, no pool from which to choose work for the school’s literary magazine.  I’m running it as an after-school club instead, and given the overextended schedules of our students, you can guess how successful that’s been.

But the students’ course selection forms are due this week, and suddenly the wave is cresting again: half a dozen have dropped by to ask me excitedly about the course, and as many teachers have remarked that they’ve been signing off left and right (it’s an honors course, so requires the consent of their current English teacher.)  I can only hypothesize that since so few have taken it in recent years, the aura of mysterious enticement is back up.  Perhaps it will break in a year or two, and we’ll be right back where we started.

Why do people work this way?  Jack Handey was right.  Mankind is a mystery.

Three cheers for local news!

Today, one more day of trying to teach while ensnared in a web of red tape, I’m thinking specifically about two kinds of people:

1. The kind who thinks the rules don’t apply. You can give them the Suzuki Speech before beginning lessons, but they still don’t understand that they need to be involved.  You can tell them tuition is due at the beginning of the month, but they won’t bring it until you remind them, sometimes multiple times.  You can even make them sign a contract, but they may or may not abide by it, depending on the weather.  Their lives are just SO complicated and SO busy; you couldn’t possibly understand what they are going through, but at least try to understand it’s much more important than anything you care about.

2. The kind who takes a mile. Growing up, my mother had the same job I do now, so I learned early the value of a professional relationship.  It drove us crazy the way her students would tromp through the kitchen exclaiming, “Wow!  That smells GOOD!” or “What are you reading?”  We felt invaded, even when the people were our friends — imagine your friends following you to the office and trying to make small talk while you work.  Eventually, she trained them to come in through the front door, and I’ve done the same with my students.

Except then we had this little storm, and shoveling four feet of heavy, wet snow is exhausting; it was all we could do to clear a path from the street to the front and back doors.  I (generously, I thought) offered to let my students use the back door that week.

Now the snow is melting and the walkway is clear, but they have still been coming in and out through the back door.  I feel awkward refusing, especially when they look at me with Bambi eyes and say, “It’s soooo cold, can we go out through the back?”  So I say of course, and they walk through the kitchen commenting on dinner / dishes / decor.  It throws me into the most grumpy mood imaginable.  Is it a big deal?  Of course not.  (And at least it’s reasonably clean.)  But I hate feeling like a sucker when I was just trying to be nice.

Now, I’m willing to bet that I’ve played both parts on occasion.  So I’m actually, in a sick sort of way, grateful to the people who have inspired this rant post.  Because of them, I am more than careful to honor my commitments and respect the boundaries others set.  Here’s hoping that’s contagious.

I was reminded of poor Gretel yesterday through a series of events.  My personal goal this Lent is to keep my house reasonably in order, such that I would not be embarrassed if someone stopped by unexpectedly. The thing is, cleaning is humbling — maybe the most humbling job there is.  As a liberated citizen of the twenty-first century, it’s hard for me to accept that my husband is the main breadwinner, that he works hard to support us, and that my most natural and  grateful response should be to work just as hard at my jobs: teaching, writing, and keeping our home so that it’s a peaceful and lovely place to live.

The goal is to tidy one room per day, and yesterday I surveyed the kitchen.  It wasn’t too bad: a few dishes to wash, recycling and compost to be taken outside, some old food to throw away.  And the floor.

Several years ago I put my foot down, literally and metaphorically, and decried the use of white sheet vinyl in kitchens.  There is just no way to keep it clean, I explained.  Rob kindly relented and we stuck down vinyl tiles over it, in a much more forgiving pattern of mottled “stone.”  Now almost nothing shows up, and the temptation is to pretend it’s as clean as it looks.  But if you’re wearing socks and they’re dirty at the end of the day, or if sandals and you feel crunching underfoot, you know the truth.

Out came the broom.  Sweep and sweep and sweep.  A nice, satisfying pile of dust and dirt.  Lunch was almost ready; the sweet potatoes were starting to squeal in the oven.  I decided to get a head start on breakfast by soaking my Irish oatmeal.  Quickly, open the freezer, grab the can by the top and –

If you haven’t done this, been deceived by a cute canister with an ill-fitting lid, then you really have no idea of the quality of steel-cut oats when dropped on a clean vinyl tile floor in 2-cup portions.  They’re a little like tiny ball bearings, making a most pleasing bouncy sound as they fall, roll and scatter to all corners of your previously-clean kitchen.  I actually laughed.  Then I thought, “Well, at least the floor is clean.  I learned a lesson here!”  The broom, again: sweep and sweep and sweep.  A nice, neat pile of oats.  But as I turned to drop them back into the can, I looked more closely.  There was some dirt — well, to be honest, quite a bit of dirt — in the pan with them.  I actually thought of rinsing them, but decided that was too much even for a cheapskate.  Into the garbage.

Now I reopened the freezer door to survey the damage: a rolling landscape of mounded oats all over the bottom shelf of the freezer, nearly burying the door of the closed refrigerator.  I touched the mountain — just touched it — and a cascade of oats rained down onto the floor again, tappity-tappity-tap.  After a few more similar showers, I gave up trying to keep the floor clean and scooped them out of the freezer, putting handfuls back into the can and consigning the extras to the floor.  In the end I needed to use a sponge, in the process wiping up several spills I hadn’t noticed previously.  How do things get this dirty?

Finally, I opened the fridge, and a line of oats neatly hidden in the folds of the rubber seal tumbled into the egg tray, the shelves and the crisper drawers.  (Yes, they somehow made it into the drawers.)  Again, out came the sponge, and again, I was most displeased to find that the refrigerator was not nearly as clean as I’d imagined.  Ugh.

I crunched over to the oven and turned off the potatoes.  One more time with the broom, this time all over the floor — those oats were awfully determined to get away.  Sweep and sweep and sweep.  Again, a pile of oats and dirt; I gave up wondering where it had come from and was just grateful it was going into the trash now.

Lunch was wonderful, maybe all the more so for the wait until the oats (now transferred to a Ziploc bag) were safely back in the freezer.  And an hour later, in walked my students, tracking mud and dirt in a trail from the door to the piano bench and back again.  I swept (and swept and swept) it up.  A thankless, never-ending task if ever there were one.  A task to keep you humble.