Piano: What I'm Afraid Of

I've begun to learn something new. Kendra is teaching me piano. Slowly, slowly, I crawl through octaves. I measure my footsteps in fours. Piano is counting. I like counting, when it's fast. But this... I remind myself, it's okay if it doesn't come as quickly as counting.

Most cords are still acquaintances from other countries, with strange customs, who I am afraid to offend.

Then there's the problem of fear in other regards. What if the neighbors hear me playing the same song two dozen times, and wish that they could quickly end their lives?

What if my roommates hear the same song, played wrong in the same places, two dozen times, and in a moment, realize that my intellect is questionable, after all?

I tell you, it's okay. Because Kendra is teaching me piano.

It is easy to laugh together as I play wrong notes, and try and try. Then, I watch in awe as she brings order to the unwieldy thing I've been practicing for a week. Try again. Piano is laughing.

Right hand
left hand
now together.

The best lesson we've had yet didn't involve the piano at all. We were talking about rhythm and jazz. The best thing about rhythm is you can create it out of nothing, anywhere. We grabbed play-doh cans, and pens and a plastic bottle, and made music!

A Post About Pot

In the last month, I have given the "don't-do-drugs" talk to precisely three young men. I would have stopped at one if not for a brief conversation I was privy to over the holidays between two people I love very much. It went like this:

Person A: You know, I was talking with my buddy just this week, and we were saying, pot isn't dangerous right away. It's insidious. I look back on my life so far, and I've missed whole years because of pot.

Person B (a generation older) : I've missed decades.

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I know a lot of people use pot responsibly, despite obtaining it illegally. But I will keep giving the "don't-do-drugs" talk even after pot is legalized. I have trouble teaching the glazed, red eyes in class, sedated, for the moment, occasionally asking questions that I've already answered, writing papers that they think are brilliant, but are nonsense.

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Of course all the states will legalize pot, eventually. If we accept alcohol, which is insidious, indeed, then we are sure to accept pot, too. And neither marijuana nor alcohol are to blame if people become dependent upon them. But let's not. Let's not even break the law to get pot, because it doesn't control us. And while we're at it, let's not allow a host of slowly detrimental behaviors to control us, especially not short-lived pleasure.

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The three guys I talked to, by the way, all share commonalities: they feel incredible pressure to become something important. They are representing their families in the U.S.; they have this one chance to make good, and they are so afraid of failing.

Self Revelation

People are afraid of me, overwhelmed by me, for the same reason that they like me, and for the same reason that I can hold the attention of a class: I'm kind of intense. The word came to me a few months ago, as I was thinking about why I feel things so deeply. We use "intense" as a near-insult, or at least I do. So when I found that it applies to me in no uncertain terms, I felt a little down. (Look at that! Not MAJORLY DOWN, but a little down.)

I don't feel that I live in a black and white world, where no shades exist. I'm not either high or low. Sometimes I'm just alright, hanging out. I promise, I know how to just hang out. And little by little, I've learned how to let silence and peace settle around me and in me. But I feel things deeply all the time.

If hanging out with me has to be intense, I hope it's like getting mauled by a Panda Bear: more notable than painful.

Conversations

I've just had a second conversation in two days with two different students about their feelings of abandonment from parents. I suppose in a high school boarding program, this is to be expected. But my heart is stirred by conversations like these. What do I have to tell them? I remember having feelings similar to these. The world is not so big, after all.

We often have questions as dorm advisers. We wonder what to do: should we allow Momo to go to New York to visit her friend, even though her mother didn't list her friend in her additional contacts, and her friend only turned 18 (literally) yesterday? No, of course. But her sister is listed as an additional contact, and it's so very important that she visit her friend! And her sister will take care that should anything happen... Should anything happen. Should anything happen--! We live in fear of anything happening. We must answer for all of it. Honestly, I feel like an unqualified babysitter much of the time (where is Stephen's manual for Babysitting Teenagers from China, Korea, and Ethiopia?).

But beautiful gifts are all mixed in with the mundane decisions. Yesterday, I was in the office during the morning. Dahin came in and we chatted about life and morals and Christ. She asked so many good questions: how are the Jews different from Christians? Why did Hitler single them out? Why does the U.S. support Israel now? I appreciated her poignant questions. My heart filled up, and I'm afraid I got long-winded.

I must not have driven her away forever, for today she came back; severely bored, she said. We talked about more of life and boys and relationships. And suddenly I did not appreciate her poignant questions as much. Later, Rika came in for grammar help on an essay. Her essay was on her "spiritual pilgrimage." She wasn't very interested in my commenting on her grammar, though. She preferred to converse about the meaning of the essay as a whole. She needed to discuss her spiritual pilgrimage, for she is in the midst of many new outlooks, filled with choices and confusion.

How do I wrap this up? That's not the end of all I have to say about my life right now. If it were the end, I hope I'd be doing something cooler than blogging.

Student Teaching, Week Seven

When I look back over the week, I don't see any increase in my responsibilities. I taught less, planned less, did less in the classroom, actually. But why am I feeling so tired right now?

Next week, I'll be teaching Huckleberry Finn in the two college prep classes, and also implementing my own unit plan for nonfiction in my tech prep class.

Some things that I find intimidating about this:

• My computer isn't adapting well to the smartboard. (But we have a smartboard! So awesome.)
• I haven't yet finished lesson plans for the first two days of the nonfiction unit
• I constantly feel as though I am gypping the students out of what's best for them when I'm teaching.
• I wonder how they will react to my personal ideas
• I wonder how my cooperating teacher will react to my personal ideas
• Do I have enough of my own ideas in the unit?
• I wonder if I will be able to forgive myself for all the mistakes I make during the day when I get into the car and drive away
• What if we have extra time in class?
• What if I miss important information for their lives? (Or worse, the PSSA test...hah.)
• Staying organized enough to pull off a couple weeks teaching a full load
• Job applications--yeah, 'bout those.

There we have it folks, the things that go through my mind before I sleep, as I'm driving, while I'm planning, while I'm not planning, while I walk to work, while I get another round for table 55, while I clean out the pickle fridge... And this is the abridged list, I'm afraid.

But the good news is (there should be one line of good news, at least), this afternoon, when I came home, flowers were on our porch. They were for someone else, but we got to keep them, since they had the wrong address!

The actual bad news is that this is the week that Japan was all but destroyed by a tsunami. God, forgive my skewed perspective. Today, I feel for my brothers and sisters in Japan.