Sally the Singing Guitar

It’s been a while since I last wrote, which is perhaps to be expected in the first weeks of a new work schedule.  Additionally, the community orchestra I’m performing with had its opening concert of the season on Sunday.  It was the first concert I performed as a member of a symphony orchestra since I was in college.  It’s been three years.  I know that probably doesn’t seem like much to most people, but after having performed with string orchestras regularly since I was 10, a three-year hiatus is notable.  It feels nice to be back on the stage playing that particular flavor of music – the kind that only 60 string players, a full wind section, and percussion can pull off simultaneously.

Meanwhile, I spend my days pushing my music cart around three floors of an elementary school with my guitar on my back.  Sixteen classrooms – in and out, in and out, setting up, tearing down, every 50 minutes.  Initially I was put off by the thought of not having my own room.  The classrooms in this school are great, but there's not nearly enough room in which to dance, move, explore, get into groups, play instruments, and do all the things I intended to do with my perfectly planned, immaculately designed lesson plans. You know, in that dream world of mine. Still, despite my discontentment at not having a space to call my own I’m discovering there are a number of benefits to using the students’ own classrooms for music.  First of all, they know the room.  With knowing the room comes knowing the room's rules, which makes my job easier.  Then there's the fact that their teacher is still in the room.  Her presence alone is helpful, but it's especially beneficial if there is a student who needs just a little more one-on-one help with paying attention, in which case the teacher or her aid can step in without me having to turn my attention away from the class.  So even though pushing a cart around isn't remotely ideal, it's not quite as bad as I had imagined.

The students know me best by the guitar, whom I have affectionately named “Sally” for the sake of the kids.  Their reactions upon seeing me in the hallway are adorable, as expected.  “Hi Sally!”  “It’s Sally!”  “Saaaaallllyyyy!!!!”  and the occasional “It’s the music teacher!”  Many do remember my name, but I’m apparently not nearly as cool as my guitar.  Either that, or they think my name is Sally, which is fine so long as they’re saying it with such excitement. 

I feel like I’ve stumbled upon a nugget of teaching wisdom in personifying my guitar.  Last year I made the rookie mistake of assuming that the students would have some sort of innate, evolutionary predisposition to respecting instruments and personal property.  Oh, how wrong I was!  The youngest students were always reaching out to touch the shiny, blond wood, or brush their fingers over the strings like they saw me do every day in class.  It was especially tempting for them when they lined up and there stood the guitar in its stand by the wall, so close!  All it took was a single finger, a quick flick of the wrist, and out came the ringing tones that didn’t quite make a diatonic chord but sounded like music nonetheless.  At least, that’s what I figure it sounded like to them.  The same sound, to me, had quite the opposite effect.  My head whipped around, eyes searching wildly for the child attached to the fingers which had so brazenly touched my guitar.  My guitar!  Really, I guess I wasn’t so different from the children.  I just didn’t want to share.

What I had failed to do was introduce them to the guitar as a thing to be respected.  Yes, it is mine.  Yes, it is [relatively] fragile.  No, students shouldn’t get to play it whenever they please because, well, chaos.  But I never explained that to them or helped them understand the difference between mine and yours, about asking permission, about respecting instruments just like we respect people.  I forgot that children will be children, and it is my job as an educator to help them grow up, little by little, into the kinds of human beings we need in the world.

So this year I changed things up a bit.  It wasn’t a well-planned conscious decision; like many things that happen in the classroom, it just kind of happened.  “This is my guitar, and her name is Sally.”  Sally?  Don’t know where the name came from, but it seemed appropriate for my small, well-loved guitar.  “Sally loves to play music, and she loves singing with friends, but she’s very shy.  She doesn’t like when people she doesn’t know try to touch her or play her, and if she gets scared she might go back home (to her case, of course).  So let’s promise to respect Sally so she stays with us to make music!”

Wow.  Why didn’t I think of this before?

The immediate response among the children was powerful.  By giving the guitar a name she transformed from an inanimate thing into a someone, and someones can be spoken to, cared for, and respected.  Sure, sometimes a student’s curiosity still gets the best of them, but even then my response is measurably improved because the lesson I teach in reprimanding them is far more powerful than “It’s mine, don’t touch it!”  I can speak to the child and say “Oh no! Did you touch Sally?  Remember, Sally doesn’t like being touched by new people.  What should we say to her?”  Respect, apologies, and just a dash of guilt, all thrown into one!

Little by little, I think I’m figuring out how to be a good teacher.  Between the ideas that pop into my head without a moment’s notice and those that I steal shamelessly from other teachers, I’m slowly collecting the tricks for that bag my music ed professors always talked about. 

Great, one more thing to carry around!  Maybe I should name it, too.