epic-phany

In one of those chats I have with my students between lessons, or when they are packing/unpacking their cellos, they sometimes volunteer information on what they want to be when they grow up.

(They say "I want to be a vet/pilot/etc when I grow up", equating their adult identity with their occupation)

And I realised that what I am doing now never featured in my childhood ambitions (that ranged from being a police officer to an actor to I can't remember). The prospect of teaching music (i.e. piano) was anathema (at least until I was 16)because my parents seemed to think it was a tasty carrot to wave to make sure I finished my last piano exam. At that time it seemed a lame reason to continue playing the piano, but I did anyway, for unknown reasons.

"So suddenly you started playing the cello and suddenly you ended up teaching cello?" asked an unnamed interviewer in a skeptical voice.

Yes, suddenly, and strangely, it felt like the right thing to do.

Like studying social work. And for the longest of times, I wondered why I was studying it, and now having graduated and being an errant, non-practicing self-labelled black sheep of the social work fold unlike my noble classmates, almost every new person I meet ask "Why did you study that anyway?"

It allows you to see beyond the person, to place the person in context of the environment; the values imbue you with an identity you might not naturally assume, what with the valuing each person, the unconditional acceptance etc. The person-to-person interaction occurs in the context of so many colliding forces, people, and events.

"You surely can teach without having spent four years studying social work?!"

Probably. But teaching Here feels liks so much more than teaching. Students here are almost like clients, they are motivated to varying degrees, have their emotional baggage, their family problems, their gender identity struggles, relationship drama, are rather resistant to change, some have severe learning disabilities, others have been labelled the symptomatic child since forever. And unlike school teachers with the luxury of the distance of a classroom and a syllabus that desperately needs finishing, I get 30 minutes of cello teaching embedded in a web of issues that need to be at least addressed before the student is willing to play anything.

Local students tend to be more able to focus on the task at hand; these expat children are mostly verbose, spilling over with words and emotions that are dying to be expressed. Some of them take it out on their cello. There is this annoying sense of obligation to do something, to connect with, instead of sacking the student that has been dumped by a string of other teachers, and labelled 'worst student ever'.

And suddenly, she started playing, and it was the most amazing feeling ever.