The Optimism Challenge

A few weeks ago I found myself in the stressful and emotionally tumultuous trifecta that is school concert preparation, wedding planning, and not seeing enough of my fiance.  It seemed that everything had to be done right now! and if I couldn't get it done then surely entropy would ensue and the world would be over as we know it. Such stress was not uncommon for me, but this time it manifested itself in a single sentence, repeated mantra-like every time I stepped on the train, crossed unnoticed through bustling crowds, or dealt with indifferent and outright rude sales clerks:  I hate New York.

Most of my life has been regularly punctuated by these moments of severe stress nestled uncomfortably between moments of slightly less severe stress.  In fact, I distinctly remember a moment in elementary school (5th grade, to be precise) when I found myself stressed and unable to fall asleep well past midnight, trying to convince my parents that maybe I should call my classroom teacher so she could assuage my fears about whatever homework assignment or project was at hand.

I was a special child.

I was also never good at transitions.  The first year of junior high, freshman year of high school, and freshman year of college all featured extreme emotional instability that made it hard for me to cope with anything life had to offer.  I am forever indebted to the people who were closest to me during those years, and I suspect karma will make me pay for that some day.  Big time.

I always strove for success, though, and my need to be a scholastic perfectionist was only strengthened during my periods of self doubt.  I suppose I figured that if I could do well in school, it would be proof for everyone else that at least some of my stress was valid.  "See?" I could say to my parents, "I worked like crazy to get that A!  And if I hadn't worked that hard I definitely would've gotten an A-."

Like I said: special.

So with this insight into my neurotic need for perfection and my utter inability to manage major changes in my life, it is no surprise that from the moment I moved to New York I have been off-balance, and when I found myself surrounded by every obligation in the world a few weeks ago, I lost it.

And Tomm, the saint who for whatever reason will be publicly promising in less than four weeks to put up with this the rest of his life, finally called me out on it.

In no uncertain terms and with a good dose of tough love, he helped me realize that I needed to find a way to stop this vicious cycle of stress, anxiety, and discontent with everything around me.  I needed to pull it together and change something since New York was not going to change itself for me.  I was hurting - everyone could see it - and it simply wasn't healthy for me.

I thought a lot about what he said, and I instinctively knew he was right.  Just as in every other juncture in my life I had a choice about how to respond to it, and now was the moment of truth: How would I learn to love (or at the very least tolerate) a city I never imagined I'd call "home?"

I was reminded of when I was still in grade school and my mom introduced a new family bonding strategy at dinner.  Every night she would ask us "What is the best thing that happened to you today?"  My younger sister and I, being the sullen teenagers that we were, often rolled our eyes but we always found a response.  Sometimes it was "I did well on a test." Sometimes it was "I came home."  But whether we knew it or not, my mom's trick worked and slowly changed the tone of dinner; we began to look on the bright side a little more often.

The day after my stern talking-to from Tomm, I told him I'd like him to do me a favor.  "Every day, I'd like you to ask me: 'What was the best thing that happened to you in New York today?'  I want to start focusing on the good things about New York, and I need your help."

As the days went by, he was faithful to my request.  Most days my best part of New York was a kind stranger on the train, but even such a minor detail made a big difference in my outlook the moment I focused on it.  Suddenly, I noticed my attitude changing.  Instead of blindly muttering "I hate New York I hate New York I hate New York" in rhythmic unison with the train clattering over the tracks, I heard the toddler singing children's songs with his mom in a seat nearby. I saw the disgruntled teenager hold the door open for the old man.  I became more and more aware of the good people, the kindness that had previously been missing from my sights. 

There are still moments when some New York experience grates on my nerves, but it's a work in progress and that's okay.  In the meantime, I'm changing how I see this city, and it seems to be responding in kind.

Cold, Cold, Go Away

It has been over two weeks since I last wrote, and that's at least a week too long.  I have wanted to, though, numerous times, and I have a slew of barely-begun-but-ready-to-edit blog posts to prove it.  Lots of interesting things have happened, things that I want to discuss and share, but gosh darnit I'm just too tired.

Right after Halloween (specifically, after singing a rousing and vocally challenging Halloween song with six consecutive classes in one day), I began feeling that I was either losing my voice or getting a cold.  It turned out to be a cold. I thought it was on its way out until it came around to throw a few more punches, not unlike the character in a movie who walks away from the fight only to whip around and deck the other guy in a surprise attack.  It hasn't been all bad, though.  There have been a few positive outcomes of this unshakable indisposition:

1. My Contigo travel mug is the new love of my life, and one of very few products I will recommend with the zeal of a street preacher.  Thanks to this, my tea stays warm through a train ride, a walk to school, and about five periods of teaching.  If the tea lasts that long, that is.

2. I am incredibly thankful to my mom's friend who gave me the tea kettle for my wedding shower.  It's easily the single most-used utensil in the kitchen right now.

3. I have been so tired that I've gone to bed at or before 9:00 pm at least four times in the last week, and it's glorious.

4. Thanks to this cold, I have perfected my impression of a 67-year-old man with smoker's lung. It's spot on.  In fact, I think when I'm home for Thanksgiving I should stage a competition with our aging neighbor who thus far has gone unchallenged in the Hocking-Loogies-From-The-Balcony-While-Shirtless event.

It's really the fatigue that gets me, though.  I can live with the phlegm and the sore throat, so long as I have my Contigo to keep me company.  I can live with the sniffling nose and even the occasional mild headache.  But when I have so many things to do, - planning a wedding which is just over a month away, planning a school's winter show which is less than a month away, plus everything else that's part of my daily or weekly routines - feeling unable to do any ounce of work past 6:30 pm doesn't help my stress level.  Thankfully, most of the wedding planning is taken care of at this point.

The other byproduct of this fatigue is not being able to write.  For some reason, I can't sit down and write a creative, coherent, or remotely interesting blog post when I can feel the need for sleep creeping in behind my eyes.  It becomes impossible to concentrate or write freely, even when I have accomplished all my other tasks for the day and have a few hours free.

I hope that when things die down a little and when this cold finally frees me of its burden, I'll be able to write a little more.  Until then, tea and sleep will be my extracurriculars of choice.

The Triangle Place

There's a grocery store three blocks away from our apartment that Tomm and I refer to as "The Triangle Place."  It has a name - something about sanguine trees and a farm - but it sounds silly and doesn't make sense so we call it The Triangle Place.  It is situated on its own tiny, triangular island near a six-way intersection, and its entrance is obscured by the stairs leading to the train platform above.  Its lights are always on, illuminating the produce that lines two sides of the building.  Day and night, heaps of potatoes, mounds of onions, various types of peppers and tomatoes, and numerous other mislabeled vegetables glow in florescent pools of light.  There is fruit, too, usually well-priced if not the most fresh, but certainly a better deal than the next closest grocery store whose produce prices are three times as much.  If I'm going to end up throwing it out anyway, better to throw out the less expensive option.

Inside the isles are cramped, and the old linoleum floor bends unevenly and curls at the edges.  Despite its small size, I often forget where everything is because unlike the large, well-lit grocery stores of the Midwest, this store feels more like the basement office in a house.  You know, the one for which the bright eyed new owners had high hopes and envisioned as the perfect work space, but which instead turned into a storage space for holiday decorations, outgrown clothes, and unappreciated birthday gifts.  Still, the shelves are well-stocked, the products make the best use of the space allotted, and its not uncommon to leave with unexpected goodies instead of the few groceries you went looking for but never found.

The establishment is like the United Nations of grocery stores.  Located on the edge of a Jewish shtetl, it is designed to cater to a Hispanic population, if its tortillas, fajita shells, and the aisle devoted to Goya canned goods are any indication.  Still, nestled between the cans of refried beans and corn, and just below the tortilla wraps, are Jewish foods with Hebrew on the labels, and bottles of Kedem grape juice stand alongside Jarritos.  Meanwhile, behind the counter is usually a young Russian woman in her 20s.  One Friday afternoon when the sun, already hidden behind the apartment buildings, edged toward the horizon, I overheard this cashier wish an undeniably Jewish patron a gut Shabbos.  And tonight, a young Jewish girl payed for her Mexican groceries with a Muslim cashier while Arabic music played from behind the counter.

The Triangle Place is a miniature embodiment of Brooklyn - cramped, dingy, but always available, the things you need usually in stock, and bustling with every nationality represented.  There is nothing glamorous about it, but it has its treasures if you look hard enough.

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.

The psychology of teaching

I just finished my third week of teaching at my after school job and my first day at my day job.  Both are at elementary schools teaching roughly the same age group - Kindergarten through 2nd/3rd grade, ages 5-8.  The differences between the two schools - and their students - are immense.  The after-school position is located in an area with a very high percentage of students living in transitional housing, to give you an idea of the socio-economic condition of these families.  Meanwhile, the elementary school where I teach during the day boasts strong parent involvement in the school.  That's just one primary difference between the two.

Whether it's a result or simply a correlated factor, the students at my day job are markedly more well-behaved than those in the after school program.  Home life, parent involvement, health, neighborhood, school atmosphere, teachers' efficacy, and time of day -- I believe these all play a role in how a student performs in school.  Though it's impossible to pinpoint the causes, as a whole the students whose lives are more challenged are more likely to act out and be disruptive than those who regularly get the attention, support, and love they need and deserve.

As a teacher, one of the biggest threats to our students' learning is often their own behavior.  The term "Classroom Management" is thrown about regularly among teachers from before they even get their licenses.  I remember being a student in college and regarding classroom management as my greatest weakness (even though I hadn't even had a chance to try it yet).  I was terrified that no matter how good I might be at teaching a child how to play an instrument or sing a tune, I would fail miserably the moment the class acted up.  I may have even had nightmares about hiding in a corner while my students took complete control of my room and broke every rule I had ever imposed or implied, like a mutinous ship about to throw its captain overboard.  I might still have those nightmares.

I've not been teaching long, and though I've learned a great deal I still have a lot to learn about managing behavior in my classroom, as evidenced by my classes this week.  Oh boy.  Students were talkative and it seemed impossible to get their attention for more than a minute at a time.  They were reluctant to participate and when they got excited, they couldn't control it.  Some students in each class would start crying and throwing hissy fits if they weren't called on to propose an idea and get a turn.  When I would finally get the class focused and attentive, two students would start acting up and the whole class was distracted yet again.

At the beginning of my final class today, I quietly approached one boy who has had some trouble in class the last few weeks.  I encouraged him to have a "good day," to try really hard to have the best music class he could.  I smiled, and we pinky-swore that he would do better.  Five minutes in and he was disruptive.  Now, this kid knows when he's doing something wrong, but fixing it seems to be very challenging.  Typically, one of my ways of pointing out behavior that needs to be fixed is to move away from the circle: if a student is acting inappropriately (talking, ignoring directions, acting out, being non-participatory in a purposefully defiant way), I motion for them to scootch out of the circle, and once they show me they're ready to return I invite them back in.  It works for some, not so much for others.  Well, for this student, it did not work.  He ended up sitting out the entire class period.  By the end of the day, he was so distraught that he wasn't allowed to participate (ignoring much of what he would have to do to make that happen), that he was bawling.  "Let him bawl," I thought.  "Maybe this will deter him from behaving similarly next time."

As the class was leaving, the teacher whose room I use approached me.  She's not much older than me, but she has a Masters degree in Special Education so I definitely appreciate any advice she can offer.  "Have you tried rewards with him instead of punishment?  The kid obviously doesn't respond well to punishment, so maybe try giving him something special to do instead, or offer him a prize for good behavior."  Bribes.  Bribes always work.

It made me think about my approach to behavior management.  Yes, I realized, she was right.  Not just this boy, but many students respond best to getting opportunities instead of having them taken away.  At the end of that lesson, I built a drum circle by inviting a couple students at a time - those who showed they were prepared to join us - instead of starting with everyone and moving out the ones who didn't do well.  In the end, every student in the circle was doing what they were supposed to do.

Then tonight I read something interesting.  A friend on Facebook shared an article from Business Insider entitled "8 Mistakes Our Brains Make Every Day and How to Prevent Them." The third mistake discusses "sunk cost," whose origins are described by psychologist Daniel Kahneman:

Organisms that placed more urgency on avoiding threats than they did on maximizing opportunities were more likely to pass on their genes. So, over time, the prospect of losses has become a more powerful motivator on your behavior than the promise of gains.

The article briefly describes how people "emphasize loss over gain."  Now, I am certainly no psychologist and having not done any additional research on sunk cost, I can't be sure I'm understanding this accurately.  But in considering my teaching, the idea that losses are a "powerful motivator" struck me.  If my experiences today alone are any indication, then while loss is indeed focused on, it doesn't actually motivate young students to avoid it.  It seems that many of these students can't get past what they are losing, but the threat does not encourage them to do better.

In fact, I don't know that that threat works on me, either.  I remember a professor in college who told me that if I couldn't master the performance of a particular piece of solo repertoire, then perhaps I should consider another profession entirely.  It didn't make me work harder on the piece, but it did leave me crying in the cello locker room (which was, thankfully, immediately across the hall from my professor's studio).

But maybe that's precisely what this concept is all about.  It's not that we are encouraged to do better by avoiding negativity, but that we dwell on negativity in such a way that it impedes our ability to seek positive experiences. Is this what my students are doing, dwelling on negativity?  And does that mean that the punishment I'm offering is actually much more severe than I previously thought?

I need to find a way to correct the wrong behaviors.  I do believe that children need to learn how to behave even when they're not getting any discernible prize for doing so.  But by the same token, if students cannot fix their behavior after being punished then perhaps I need to change the process entirely and avoid the negative behavior in the first place.

Maybe, to borrow from Mr. Kahneman, I need to avoid the threats in order for my students to maximize their opportunities.