Jacob Keith

2009 Bloomingdale High School

I remember how he brought his bow to the string the first time with an expression of anguish. His shoulder was tense, and his whole right arm was wound as tightly as a lobster's claw.  He stuttered through the first and only note of the whole hour-an open string.  His bow shook, his face paled, and he broke out in a cold sweat.  Sean's knees buckled, and he hit the ground.  My first violin student had just fainted.  I was shocked.  Only at that moment did I begin to suspect that simply communicating with Sean was going to be a hurdle, and even taking what I would previously have considered a mild, tactful approach to teaching might not be enough.

It should not have surprised me.  Even in elementary school, I struggled to relate to classmates who were a bit odd.  I remember sitting next to aptly named Vomiting Kid, Shin-Kicking Kid, and Leaky-Ear Kid.  My teachers must have discovered that I would sit quietly next to the smell of a revisited lunch, the pain of the repetitive kick, and the large puddles of earwax which grew under Carrey's tilted head.  I served as the classroom buffer, unwilling to acknowledge the distractions.  Those other kids were just too different from my elementary- school self; I chose to ignore them rather than talk with them. 

Fifty minutes remained in Sean's lesson before his mother would come to pick him up, so we packed up our violins and sat down at the table to wait.  His normally pale face was a deep burgundy, and the hair on his arms stood straight out.  His fingernails dug so deeply into his palms I feared he might actually start to bleed.  The anger visibly boiled inside of him and the embarrassment of losing control was etched in his furrowed brow.  Watching him punish himself was useless, so I offered him a glass of water and we began to talk.  None of it was about anything, really, but Sean began to calm down. By the time his mother arrived, Sean was content, and he left having played only one note.

The biggest surprise came the next week, when he returned.  With each lesson, Sean became more and more at ease, but it was not clear to me who was learning the most.  Was Sean learning how to play the violin, or was I learning how to teach?  Sean's first lesson started with a conversation at my family dinner table, not with a scale or some test on the violin.  Before he could learn, I had to learn how to connect with him, even though we were two very different people.  I could not just ask Sean to be the one who moved; I could not just be a buffer.  I had to search for that chord of commonality.

Sean needed motivation to help me find him.   Sometimes it was through the promise of a cold Coke, and sometimes it was through a post-lesson challenge to Halo3.  With each celebration of every baby step of progress I watched as the fear-riddle Sean slowly became stronger.  His expression of accomplishment while playing all the way through "Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" by memory was humbling.  He had come so far since that first note.

One might still ask why bother teaching Sean at all.  He will never become a musician.  He probably will not even continue playing the violin after I move away.  Honestly, I never understood why Sean was willing to come back at all, until I realized that for him, violin lessons were not actually about learning the mechanics of the violin anymore.  Sean understood, if not consciously then subconsciously, that there were deeper fundamental lessons he could learn through music.  Things like how to control his emotions, how to pursue a goal, and how to relate with other people.  Yet the teaching involved on my part was even more basic than that.  It was about that feeling, at the end of a lesson when Sean zipped up his violin case and simply smiled.  Within that small, subtle smile I was given the rare opportunity to witness my impact as a teacher.  That I had a part in helping Sean discover a little bit of happiness makes teaching more than just instruction, but a meaningful outreach.