I’ve just polished off the report card comments for another quarter of the school year (a process I usually dread, especially as a teacher of several hundred students) and I’m actually pleased as a step back from them. I am tired; one can only say “Johnny does great in music and is learning a lot” so many ways. But I am glad to look back at progress.
My co-teacher and I remarked last year that it was the first year that all of the work we’d done to teach students music theory and music reading skills was really showing its payoff (after seven years of being a school!). And this year, it didn’t strike me as a surprise – I had already taken it for granted! But as I look at the new students at the school and I reflect on the quality of the work they’re doing, I’m amazed. When I look at the fact that only a handful of our 500 students take music lessons outside of school, it’s astonishing that so many of them can read music at all! And it shouldn’t astonish me – that’s why we’re here!
Reflecting on a Beethoven sonata, a Verdi opera, or a Bach cantata is beauty to be admired in a moment. But the real goal is creating musicians who will enjoy music throughout their life. Just like every other subject, the beauty of music is not in what one learns on any given day, but in what is instilled over the course of eight or nine or ten weeks. Or perhaps 13 years.
I’m excited to be graduating students who are very capable musicians, earning scholarships for their musical capabilities. But I might be even more excited for the first grader who can finally clap their hands to a beat, because of what they will be in another decade. We just have to keep the steady beat until then.
The Classical Classroom 