This year, like most years, I have a long-standing student graduating from high school and will be off to college in the fall. She's been with me since she was eight. Ten years now and it will be sad to say "Goodbye".
Teaching young children can be challenging, however she was a breeze compared to some. For example, seven year old Gavin has been with me for about two months. He's a nice boy but just can't seem to stay focused. He will stop in the middle of playing something to ask me a question. As I'm trying to answer his question he starts fussing with the strings on his guitar. This goes on for most of the lesson.
Working with kids like Gavin takes a lot of patience and I'm finding that as I get older my supply of patience is rapidly dwindling. His mother sits in the room with us and she gets totally frustrated. I think the only thing that saved his bacon a couple of times is Mom didn't want witnesses (me) to be able to testify in court. I'm sure most parents of young boys can relate. You would think that he had been mainlining straight caffeine just prior to the lessons.
What I find interesting is that she says that he's never like this at home. It's only at guitar lessons that he behaves like this. That's contrary to my experience. If a kid behaves like this with me they usually behave like this at home or school too. Why save it just for me?
At this weeks customary lesson I noticed something else. Most kids with attention issues will start talking about unrelated things. In the middle of an exercise they'll talk about a TV show. They'll stop playing a song to tell me about their dog, etc. But Gavin was only talking about music or the guitar. Many of his "questions" were observations that began with the phrase, "Did you know....?"
I started to get an inkling of what was going on. As we wandered into the lesson his mother started getting frustrated again and was fidgeting some. I gently waved her off and went with the flow. It occurred to me that I had been so busy teaching Gavin that I wasn't letting him learn. I was so busy teaching him that I wasn't letting him share his discoveries with me.
He was noticing how the guitar functions. He was comparing notes from one song to another. He was getting excited about details that most students, at all ages, seldom noticed and didn't care about. And I suddenly had my "Helen Keller" moment when I understood. I could see what was happening.
Music and the guitar are like a great big playground in his mind. Full of wonder and surprise and absolute joy. No matter what he's doing there are several other things to do. Gavin can not only think about it on an elementary level, but in the abstract as well. So rather than wait for me to guide him through it, he just takes off on a journey of unexpected delights. My job now is to give him just enough discipline to make order out of chaos without sucking the fun out of it. To enhance not limit the experience. Oh....and to keep his mother from wringing his neck.
I don't know where all of this will lead. I'm hoping I'm good enough to deserve this student. I'm anxious to teach him all I can for the next several years. But I'm also excited to see what he can teach me.