Underappreciated Music Teachers of the World, thank you

Supporting a child through the early stages of learning an instrument ain't fun. Even at the intermediate stages. There's chasing them to practice. Sitting impassive through painful renditions. Hovering strategically, reminding them to practice the tricky bits not just the easy bits. Ferrying to and fro. Sitting in dark carparks waiting for them to finish the lesson or the ensemble or the orchestra. Forking out for the lessons. Sitting through long, long teatime concerts of them and their peers at a still fairly basic level.  And then, one day, sunshine breaks through!

With Firstborn there were special moments of helping her with viola practice, playing in harmony together in the early morning. Special moments, it became clear, which only I appreciated. As we were moving to Kenya the viola mysteriously appeared on the pile to be listed and sold on ebay.
'Pleeeeeease can't I give it up and just do the flute.'
Downcast mother. Oh well then.

But as she's moved up the school, the music concerts given by her year have become more pleasurable. Even far more pleasurable. And last night's one, given by their prep school and the successor high school, was truly enjoyable. An ethereal Kenyan boy soprano, solidly robust in statute, angelic voice. Watching sixteen and seventeen year individual singers, who have found the right song for them, who are so supremely themselves as they perform, who have found a platform to be themselves at their peak, to engage the audience in their interpretation.  Immensely moving.  As different in nature as slogging away at scales 'to pass grade two' as it can be.

These school concerts feel a little like time-series nature photography.  I remember these stars from last year. Engaging, confident, competent, but a tad more diffident then.  And now, wow, what a difference a year makes. What a difference these young people will make, whether as singers or elsewhere in the world.  I'll remember them. I relish being there to take pride in their success.

'Voice' is one of the big topics in NaNoWriMo, - National Novel Writing Month. Keeping on writing at that draft novel to find your voice, that tone and insight which is profoundly you.  It's also at the heart of career guidance for me. What the practitioner catches from the client's words, and reflects back to them, so the client hears it maybe for the first time at a deeper level and gains a deeper insight on themselves and their uniqueness.  And, I hadn't realised it till yesterday, at its best, its profoundly at the heart of music teaching too.  Helping a pupil find the right piece, the right song, the right technique which catches, embodies, magnifies where they are at. Conveys it to others. Creative, will of the wisp work.  Beautiful. Potentially life changing.
Thank you music teachers of the world. I'd guess many are caught in a cage of half hour lessons and grade one scales: 'Don't forget the F sharp', - as many of we careers advisors are caught in servitude of CV checks and duty appointments.  But sometimes the sun shines through.

'To listen another's soul to the condition of disclosure & discovery may be almost the greatest service a person can perform for another.'
Douglas Steer



  

Starring Centre Stage

Applicants to American colleges persevere through a laborious application process. First come the SAT 1 tests, centrally marked multiple choice assessments of critical reading, maths and writing skills. Then SAT 2, subject specific tests. Then the forms, lists of courses taken in termly breakdown, extra curricular activities & levels achieved, athletic prowess and coaches' attestations, that Little Catrin can indeed run a 3 minute mile.  But central to it all are several essays on topics of your choice.  They are, the guidance says, seeking to 'personalise the form, to offer a window on who you are'.  500 word autobiographical vignettes on you at your best.

At first reading the prompt questions look anodyne enough. 'Write describing a person who had influenced you, and describing the influence they have had.'  'Write describing a life changing experience or an ethical dilemma you have faced.'  But this is a tricky act to pull off.  Typically, I'm told, these essays aren't the product of a sole author. An American friend who studied at Harvard and went to an elite high school, noted that she had six adults, two of them Harvard graduates, critiquing her college application essays. 

I always advise clients to imagine the competition. So in this case, imagine WellGroomedHighFlyer, daughter of two Ivy League grads, now lawyers both, from suburban town USA.  What will she be writing on, - on the life changing time with her exchange family in Mexico?  Her prowess and experiences in the first violins of elite national youth orchestra?  Which are the welltrodden topics the assessors will be blenching at reading yet again?  Now think what you would be contributing in different experience on a US campus. Which experiences express the heart of it for you?

And face to face, one to one, the Kenyan students seem to get it.  I've had such moving conversations these last few days, as students sift through their lives, and identify who they are and what has made a difference for them.  The student from Dandora, where the community lives on Nairobi's rubbish and toxic waste dump, who only got to high school thanks to a chance Irish sponsor. She spoke of the experience of growing up in a slum. Of sewage running down the streets, which, when it rains, reaches your home.  Of 15 families sharing their toilet. Of her peers with little to live for, now enmeshed in drugs, but how they turn ashamed from her, when they are on a high, wishing they too could have a sense of a future.

Another girl, an elected peer mentor at high school.  The government introduced guidance and mentoring initiatives a few years ago after riots in high schools.  She spoke of the stresses her peers brought to her, - money problems, homesickness, worry about siblings left in unstable situations at home, talk of suicide.  'Suicide, really, how often was that mentionned though?'  In her two years as a peer mentor there had been several suicide atttempts by girls in her year, and over ten students had discussed feelings of this magnitude with her.

The pressures of poverty run through almost every story.  Around a third of the students have described domestic violence and alcoholism. I'd say over half have lost a parent.  One lad describes losing both parents by the time he was eleven, and how he and his younger siblings set up house alone, until a member of his church came to bring them into his home at the height of the post-election violence. Living on a knife edge.  One lad's story hinges around his father breaking his leg.

'I didn't really understand why this was so important?'
'Because he was the breadwinnner. With a broken leg he can't earn. So we couldn't buy food, and we had to leave school.' 
Another girl speaks of how she, brought up by her single mum, has learnt to juggle the family finances.  From age 8, she, and her younger brother, would take Thursdays off school each week. They would go to the weekly market, where they would hawk paper bags to the shoppers.
'You split up to maximise sales. But it means you are more likely to be harrassed by the shoppers who will think we are streetchildren.' 
Again, I'm counselling against stories at full strength. This isn't Oprah.  We're not going for the Pity Card. You are highly qualified applicants who are applying as equals. Identify the heart of your story and focus on that.  But nonetheless.

But many others seem to lack confidence in the weight of their own experience. Have maybe never basked in the reflecting glow of a parent's eyes. Lack insight into how different things are elsewhere, and how laudable their survival, and survival with spirit and honour truly is.  Reading one lad's first draft of his experiences at athletics training camp, I plough through to page three, when he mentions that this was a pre-Olympic training camp.

'Really? Are you THAT good?' 

'Well no, no, its not true. I just thought it was more interesting like this.' 

Another writes of being presented with a (fictional) honour by the elders of her tribe, when authentic articulation of the person she is, is what is called for.  I really see its difficult for any teenager.  It's harder still between cultures. But in guidance theory, this is the fantasy stage, before a grounded sense of individual identity has been won through trial and feedback. 

British Quakers pose Advices and Queries which are read out loud in Meeting for Worship each week, for each worshipper to reflect on, privately, in their own lives.  

'Seek to know one another in the things which are eternal. [..] Remember that each one of us is unique, precious, a child of God.'

Yes, where we can, it would be good to support successful college applications, and this is the key, lifechanging objective for our students.  But more important for me, I'm coming to see, is this insight at the heart of the US applications process, that each individual is unique and precious, that each has a valued story to tell which deserves a hearing.  It's a privilege to be present, as some realise what their story, or what today's story, is, and the great deal they have to be proud of.