Comings and goings

There have been a lot of comings and goings in my life, home and studio this year. Son #1 moved home a year ago after having lived on his own for three years; he finished his last semester and graduated from college, got a job, and is now saving for a car and apartment while paying off school loans. Daughter #1 graduated from college two weeks ago (Daughter #2's account of that event is here), has a summer job in Marquette, Michigan and is apartment hunting in Milwaukee, where she'll be in grad school in the fall. Daughter #2 was home for three weeks following her first year of college, and last Monday we delivered her to Camp Onomia for a summer working as a camp counselor. Son #2 is the constant here at home, at least for the next three years.

In my studio, I've enjoyed an 'aging' of my students over the past couple years. More kids persevered through their middle school slump and went on to continue their music through high school. It's a hard age -- greater demands on their time from all sides -- homework, sports, activities, a first job. It's amazing that any of them continue their music study through the middle school minefield. The fun part for me as a teacher of middle and high school students is that I get to reap the benefits of all the investment of their early years. At this point, they know how to practice, they understand the cause and effect of time put in and beautiful music emerging. We're working on beautiful masterworks together. It's all good.

But it's hard to say goodbye when the seniors graduate. I had two seniors this year. One had studied with me since she was eight, the other just for the past three years. I loved working with them both, being able to transition from the role of teacher, guiding their every step and selecting every piece of repertoire, to that of coach and mentor, giving them independence, selecting repertoire together, guiding them to personal interpretations of the music based on their own depth of knowledge and musical experience.

I also said goodbye to a couple middle school students who sat with their parents, took an honest look at their commitments and dreams, and decided that their high school years would be focused on some dreams other than piano. As hard as it is to say goodbye to students who've been with me six years or more, I always respect and appreciate the intentionality of their decisions. Much better to go out on a high note, having put their best efforts into their final performances, than to slink out the back door feeling like they'd hung on six months too long.

So there's some room in the studio for a few new students this summer or fall. Or, perhaps there's room to downsize a little. Something to think about as I'm moving my own kids in and out.

Interfaith Leadership Institute: Day 1

I know it's midnight,and I'm tired, and it's been a day of information overload, but I'm going to try and make this blog post make sense. Please bear with me.
~
Our group of 4 students and 1 professor arrived safely in Atlanta yesterday afternoon. The conference started off this afternoon at Emory University's conference center, with an overview of what Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) is all about, then afterwards we had our first break-out session. This meant out of us 150-some people, we broke into groups made up of 5 or six college delegations. Since it's the first day, we all got up and introduced ourselves, and intentionally talked about the differences of our faith. Some of us were Christian, some were Muslim, some were Hindu, some didn't identify with a religion or believe in a higher power at all. And that's what's so great. What I love about IFYC is that it's not an organization that wants to dumb things down, ignore our differences and sing Kumbayaa together. It wants people to know that we are different, and that we can learn from our differences. I myself strongly believe that learning from these different faith traditions helps me reassess what I really believe, and therefore strengthens my own faith. What's also very cool about this Leadership Institute that they put on is that everybody who's here actually wants to be here. Everybody's eager to know how they can build bridges through interfaith dialogue and service instead of maintaining walls.
We talked about how our college communities have responded to our interfaith-ing, both positively and negatively. For our group from Concordia College, while we love the positive response we're getting from students and faculty, we're also glad that we have encountered opposition from others--that means that our mission and message is being heard, and that the dialogue has been sparked, and the diversity of our community is being reflected.


I want to summarize a few of the things I've picked up here from various speakers. As members of an interfaith movement, IFYC believes that we should

~Voice our values. This means not being shy about our diversity.

~Engage with others! I shouldn't have to explain why: nothing gets done, no understanding is made, if we do not communicate with and learn from one another.

~Take action. So, with the knowledge and understanding that we now possess, we then should go out in the world and start making some positive changes.

And just like that, you change the world :)

~~~

These break-out sessions with other colleges that I talked about: each of them are named after an interfaith activist from throughout history, such as the Ghandi Group, The MLK Group, the Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Group. Us? We're in the Dorothy Day group, which made me a bit too excited. I did a pretty emphatic arm-pumping motion,a la Napolean Dynamite.

Then of course, the highlight of the day was hearing IFYC founder Eboo Patel speak at dinner. He knew that in a way he was preaching to the choir by talking about how important interfaith dialogue and service is. I wish I could tell you more about the content of the speech, but I was so enamored that I didn't really take notes at all. And geez, I always take notes. And there was an overarching music metaphor, which was awesome! So, I'm hoping someone recorded it, 'cause I'd love for y'all to be able to Google or Youtube it. He did say that our job is not to ask, "Eboo, what are you going to do about this? When are you going to get something started in my community?" It's our job. We start it. We should mobilize ourselves and other people, we should be teaching people, and serving together.
Our delegation got to meet Eboo Patel and talk with him--we're really excited, because he'll be speaking at our school next year! "I'm not coming in the winter, though," he said, right up front. He doesn't know what he's missing. So, we got our picture with him, I got my copy of his book "Acts of Faith" signed, and it was very cool. All I can say is that he's the real deal.
Later in the evening we did more mingling activities, and I started hanging out with a few new people, and hey, there's a piano in the lobby, we said, so we started playing it. Me and someone else were just improvising tunes for a good 45 minutes. It's amazing how that always seems to happen to me. Music follows me everywhere; I can't seem to shake it. It brings me together with people that I never thought I'd encounter, ever. I feel so blessed by this.

Ok, that's all I can manage tonight. Stay tuned for more tomorrow!

Arpeggios

My piano students are working on arpeggios this month. I've shown this video clip about 36 times this week. I'm surprised at how many of the 12 and under crowd have never seen The Aristocats! Enjoy.

Guilty

I am feeling a lot of Mom Guilt this week.

Emily is gone for the week, and I'm so happy to have the piano all to myself. [guilt, guilt.]

I don't have to have an early morning consultation each day about who gets to practice when.

I just get to practice whenever I want. Whenever I don't have a student. Whenever I feeeeeeel like playing.

[guilt, guilt.]

A good mom would be happy to share her piano.

A good mom would take delight in her child's passion, discipline and drive toward success.

[guilt, guilt.]

I really do take delight in all those things. And, I wish I could have my piano all to myself, at my beck and call, and not have to share.

[guilt, guilt]

Em's got access to a piano where she is.

[happy, happy.]

Playing on the floor

It's the last week of our regular school year piano lessons. For something a little fun, I brought out my new toy - er, teaching tool. A giant floor piano.

My students and I are not quite as adept as these players, but we're having fun.