Holy Boredom

"Miss Amy!" Ella squealed as she bounded into the studio this week. "Do you know why I love love LOVE the piano?"

"Tell me."     

"Because you can work really hard on a song and get really frustrated. You can get mad and say to yourself, 'You are eight years old. You are in the third grade. This is an easy song. You should be able to play it.'”          

I looked at her, puzzled. Clearly, she has won a victory of some sort, but I’ve heard variations on this speech enough times before to suspect that this recitation was no self-directed pep talk of encouragement and enthusiasm.         

“And then,” Ella continued, her face glowing with excitement, “you practice and practice and practice and then suddenly you can play it!!!! That's why I love love LOVE the piano." 

Teaching requires not a single magical theory, but about twenty-five strategies of negotiation and compromise that change every hour. Unlike the average classroom of 30 students, where a teacher’s best hope is to aim for the middle and pray for the edges, I have the luxury shooting for the center of each individual student’s potential. The problem is that the target keeps moving. 

In the mornings, lingering on the couch with a cup of coffee, I read books on cognitive and motivational theories, thinking about my afternoons reconciling the person with the principles, trying to find the way inside the learning processes for each student. It sounds simple enough, but so often the research, blissfully removed from the reality of the classroom or the piano studio, ignores the human faces behind the statistics. My teaching life isn’t about samples and target populations, control groups or dependent variables. My world is made up of the Annies and Andrews, the Lucies and Nicoles and Ellas who walk through my door every day. Putting abstract theories into tangible practice is another game altogether.          

In the world of private music education, the classroom—the primary learning environment—isn’t the lesson, as one might suppose. Rather, it is during the practice sessions at home where so much of the learning takes place, the place where students must take concepts and techniques, notes and phrases and turn them into music. That this growth happens outside the presence of the teacher is only part of the challenge because it means that as teachers we aim for a target outside of view. To complicate matters further, every student, of course, interacts with practicing differently. They have their own targets as it turns out, which may or may not be the same as ours. In their minds, they are each their own version of: You are eight years old. You are in the third grade. This is an easy song. You should be able to play it. (So, then, why can’t you?) Sometimes it's not my expectations that are the problem. It's theirs.

To make matters worse, I am too often crippled with my own myopic tunnel vision. I only see this kid and that one, this problem to fix and that concept to introduce. Hurrying students along effectively from one thing to the next, we get a respectable amount of work done in every lesson, but I sometimes wonder how much I'm missing by taking the most direct route from one thing to the next. We accomplish a lot, my students and I, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that, except that lately I am less content with simply checking off tasks, racing ungrounded through the windstorm of our productivity. I know my habit of working quickly doesn't allow for a lot of breathing room and, as a result, we are lacking more than just the gift of occasional silence. Plowing through my days, distracted by the answers I think I already know, I rarely stop long enough to listen to anything or anyone. I spend too much teaching time lecturing and forget the etymology of the word "educate:" to draw out. I am far too comfortable saying to my students, here, let me show you, instead of allowing them to find their own answers or to develop their own curiosities.

The reason is that taking this kind of time and holding this kind of creative and exploratory space for students is very often boring. There, I said it.

It has taken me a long time to understand that it just might be my job as the teacher to embrace a bit of holy and sacred boredom in the piano lesson. If I am to accept the idea that the piano lesson should reflect the deep practicing and attentive work students are to do at home, it means that they must practice this work and attention in the lesson in my presence. This means that I might have to quietly watch a student painstakingly practice the notes and rhythm of a gnarly passage: once, twice, three times. I might have to witness a student repeating the E-flat harmonic minor scale until the uncomfortable and unnatural fingering in the left hand begins to make sense. I might have to direct practice steps and then wait patiently while a student works through each one if I have any hope of them doing such careful practice at home. And let’s face it: sometimes this is boring. Especially after about five hours of lessons.

I have come to believe that this is OK. That this willingness to simply be present and attentive while a student practices is exactly my job. Sure, I can always simultaneously work at my own skills of paying attention and concentration and stillness, but it’s also fair to just say out loud: Sometimes this is boring. And it is a sacred and holy job to do. Both things are true.

I suspect this is why we teachers are so bad about interrupting. We don’t mean to be rude; we are simply bored and impatient and trying to entertain ourselves with our own wisdom. In yoga classes, I have often observed that no matter how good the teacher, the work on the second side of any pose is always abbreviated. Quite simply: the teacher gets bored and is ready to move on, forgetting that the students need to practice balancing both sides of poses equally, and will need the teacher to hold the space and time for this practice. In every possible way, it is human nature: we cheat the second side.  

I am thinking about this a lot these days as we are drowning in levels of busyness that not just match, but often surpass, our lives pre-pandemic. It seems that collectively we are so relieved to be able to do things again—indeed anything—that our normal sense of restraint and understanding of the limits of time have left us completely. In the studio, I am so happy to be teaching again in a mostly normal and familiar way—unmasked, generally, with little-to-no nod to social distancing—that it is easy to fall into the trap of wanting to do everything. Because now we can! Woo-hoo!

I catch myself at least 25 times a day rushing, talking too fast, interrupting too often. Do less, but work deeper is something I should tattoo on the back of my hands (if I were the tattooing type) because it simply doesn’t come naturally to me. Working faster is more entertaining, staves off the boredom of asking for the 11th time in an hour: “OK, so could you do it again, and try…” Although I am endlessly fascinated by process, I am only human too, and sometimes impatient with the 11th attempt, even if the student is fully engaged. But so much of teaching well is honoring its repetitive nature. Yes, every kid is different and that is interesting for sure, but every kid still needs to learn scale fingering and key signatures and to sit up straight and keep their heel on the floor when they pedal. They have to fill in their practice charts and eat their vegetables and brush their teeth and tie their shoes. And every one of them needs me to remind them of these things. Over and over and over again. I feel like a nag machine sometimes.

I hate to admit this, but often it’s hard to be enthusiastic at 8pm on a Thursday night while teaching my 33rd lesson of the week when a bright and eager student responds to one of my brilliant practice ideas with “Could I try that right now?” What I should say is: Absolutely. What I am often thinking is: You’re killing me, kid. Can’t you just try it later at home?

But then I remember: I believe in practice. And heaven knows, we all need practice around here. I believe that Ella can practice and practice and practice and then suddenly play it. And even when I am my most tired and cranky and bored and impatient I know this:

This is why I too love, love LOVE the piano.