How was I chosen by the universe to be where I am? Why is it ME who gets to work with these amazing children and be with them every day? I was under the impression that I was coming here to teach, yet I’ll be lucky if I teach half as much as I’m learning.
Let me start with my piano students. Every week, we have a group lesson for the advanced piano students. In this group, we learn music theory together, do some listening activities, etc. – I have nine students in this group between 8th grade and 11th grade. When I think of those ages in the USA, I don’t imagine a class where students smile constantly, support eachother, encourage eachother, and dance to my music on their way out of class. With these same students, I have a “major scales challenge” – I’ve made a chart that is hung on the wall with each of the students’ names. For every major scale, they have 9 different metronome marking goals (for speed). For example, if they can play a D Major scale three times in a row with the metronome on at 80, they can put a sticker up on the chart. Again, when I think of this age group in the USA, I don’t think of them getting excited about scales, much less about stickers. And I especially don’t imagine the children being happy for their peers getting stickers before them. But here at Shanti Bhavan, I walk a proud student into the music room to award them a sticker for the chart, and the other piano students smile broadly and say “You’re getting a sticker???” and watch, beaming, as the other student places their sticker on the chart.
In our group lesson this week, I had one of the students – Kumar – perform the piece he had just finished learning, “Barcarolle” by Bernard Shaak (my teacher from childhood). The rest of the class sat on the steps in the assembly hall to listen to Kumar perform. Afterwards, I asked each student to comment on the performance – something positive and something that he could improve on. Each audience member, so articulate as usual, was able to give praise AND constructive criticism. After a round of comments, I turned to Kumar and asked him how he had felt performing. I was worried for a split second that Kumar might be feeling a little fragile, as these students are not accustomed to performing and being critiqued. But Kumar was beaming – as usual – and said “I felt awesome.” One last story – a really funny one - from this week that I will leave you with is a story about the sweet children in 7th grade. This past week I taught 7th grade literature, grammar, and creative writing. Being in the rural setting where we are, talk of animals always comes up somehow. They were mentioning something about a rat being in one of the classrooms, and I got really excited and told them how much I love rats and that I had had two pet rats back at home. They thought that was funny, and we moved on with our lesson. Later that day, after classes had finished, I was back in my room at the volunteer house and I heard little voices yelling my name from outside. I came out of the volunteer house and all of the 7th grade boys were so excited and laughing – they had been out on the field and had caught a baby mouse. They brought it to me in a little sack they had found as a gift.
Thinking about the children of Shanti Bhavan, and my year with them - the one world that truly gives voice to the warmth in my heart is “gratefulness.” I cannot think of a better word.
