This weekend I taught my first performance classes of the school year. My students love performance classes. I hate teaching performance classes. Every time I teach a group lesson, I am reminded why I teach individuals: no behavior problems and all the activities can be custom designed to fit the needs of the student in front of me. Group lessons require more of me: I have to plan them carefully, making sure the activities will work for every kid in the group, working through the transitions from one activity to another for the most seamless class, preparing worksheets and listening lists, making copies, readying paper and pencils, recordings and books. On top of all the extra preparation, group classes fill up five hours of my weekend: one on Friday afternoons, three consecutive classes on Saturday mornings. This is after a normal, full week of teaching. No wonder I dislike performance classes.

But. Yesterday reminded me why it is I subject myself to this extra work and effort. The kids came bounding in all morning–thrilled and excited to be there, eager to see their friends after the summer, ready to play their first performance pieces of the semester. In the first group, (K-3rd graders), I heard about how five of them had played soccer together in the park the night before. We began with drawing pictures to illustrate various different recordings I played for them. "Amy, I am not done with my pictures," Josh kept saying to me as I tried to hurry them along. "I need more time." We did several Dalcroze-inspired activities with clapping and passing of balls, accompanied by much giggles and squealing. The students each played a prepared piece; we discussed performance etiquette for the 500th time. I read them a charming children's book by Daniel McPhail called Mole Music. This is the gentle story of a mole whose life is changed by learning to play the violin and how his music in turn changes the world around him, making it a kinder, more peaceful place. "My dad always smiles when I play the piano," Claire volunteers, "and my neighbors like it too." Other kids nod in agreement, convinced that they too could stop wars with their piano practicing. I ended the group by opening up the piano lid and allowing the students to gather around, crawl under the piano, examine the humidifier controls, and pluck the strings–all things I usually discourage during my more focused private lessons. "Do I have to go?" one boy asked his mom as she tried to drag him out the door.

My next group was my 4th-6th graders, a more subdued and experienced bunch. They, too, started with drawing pictures to recordings– I feel strongly about taking the time in these groups to allow some free creative, colorful thinking and listening. These kids know each other well and chatted and commented about their drawings and the music as they worked. "I am going to play the trumpet in band this year," Tom announced when I put on a Louis Armstrong recording. This led to a long, heated discussion about band instruments and the pros and cons of each choice. Among this group of students, I now have three trumpet players, which may lead to a brass demonstration in some group class later in the year. After the recordings were turned off, this group did theory worksheets, working through key signatures and spelling chords. We did Dalcroze and rhythm exercises, putting beats in our feet, passing balls first to the right hand rhythm of the music I was playing and then the left hand rhythm. The students performed for one another–grading each other on a scale of one to ten about how well they maintained posture and hand position during their performances. Finally, we reviewed composers we studied last year, reminding each other that Mozart wrote forty-one symphonies, not nine (that was Beethoven, who also wrote Für Elise, and was deaf). Scott Joplin originated ragtime and was from Missouri -- my home state, I always tell them. Siblings from the earlier class wandered in during the final minutes, there to pick up younger brothers and sisters. They, too, offered their information about composers, suggesting that maybe Stravinsky was also an American composer. We have never studied Stravinsky, nor to my knowledge have I ever mentioned him, but I will entertain conversations about him if it comes up. As the students left, I overheard talk of swimming and play dates, parents greeting each other warmly and catching up on vacations and summer adventures.

My high school group is truly a performance class. They do theory worksheets, listening activities and Dalcroze activities as well, but then we move seriously to performances. This weekend there was only two, others still in the learning process with their pieces. Our focus, after the initial playing, was to look at breath and how performance anxiety and breath are linked. We asked the performers to play certain sections, and observe how they were breathing. We tried different approaches–holding our breaths, counting inhalations, counting exhalations, doing nothing but observing and noting the effect on their performances. It was established that performance nerves affect breath, which then affect performances, and that by breaking down those parts of the equation we might find ways to perform more comfortably. My high schoolers are a great group–ready to try anything, quick to point out inconsistencies with the performances or my teaching, candid and supportive of one another. I will lose one of these kids at the end of the year–Susan is a senior this fall. Several others are marginal in commitment. I like them, they are good kids, but tennis and other activities are beginning to take a bigger place in their time. I wonder how long I'll have them. Watching them tease and banter with one another, I thought, "But they are here today, and that's something."

I was reminded that in spite of all the grumbling about how busy we all are, that performance classes are worth it. I remembered a conversation I had with a precocious first grader last winter. He asked one week in his lesson if this was the weekend for group classes. I responded that there were no group lessons in December; everyone was too busy. "Amy, I don't think that is a good idea," he told me firmly. "You know we do important things there."

I know why I teach performance classes, and why I subject myself to the effort required to do it well. Yes, it is partly about the creativity, the listening, the Dalcroze activities, the music theory and history, and the performances. But mostly it is about the sense of camaraderie the groups foster–from the little ones and their stories about their soccer games, to the older ones talking about the high school dance on Friday night, to the parents who form their own community through their encounters in my sunroom dropping off and picking up kids. It takes a village, I will remind parents in my opening remarks at the fall recital in a couple of months. It takes performance classes and the community formed in those groups. It takes kind, interested parents who compliment not just their own child after a good recital, but who take time to notice that little Camille is playing so much better than last year. It takes students who become fascinated by each other's performance pieces and beg me (beg me!) to let them play one of the 12 American Preludes by Ginestera or the Chopsticks Variations by Robert Vandall. In this day and age, with so many competing forces against the time and work required to be a pianist, it takes everything we've got to keep kids engaged in music lessons.

It takes at least a village, and often much more.