Midlife Meditation

It's the time of year when kids start feeling their oats. In the gym where I teach, I use rolling plastic risers called "Flip Forms" to organize classes, dividing children among the four colored risers as they enter the room. This breaks up clumps of friends and creates ready-made teams that can compete with each other for quietest, most confident singing, best listening, etc. And yes, I know "winning" a competition like this is extrinsic motivation, but at this point in the year, I will pragmatically do whatever it takes to hold their attention long enough to teach a concept. It works up to a point--that point being when the active boys (somehow, it's never girls) start jumping off the top riser, having their own competition to see who can break an ankle first. I move the children to another part of the gym for the next activity, and now the really active boys are wandering over to the risers whenever I'm not looking to continue jumping off of ...

The good news? I get to be in just one school next year, instead of splitting the year between two. The bad news? I'll most likely still be teaching in a gym--if I'm lucky. Since I'll be at that school all year, there will be at least one semester of overlap with a PE teacher, who will have a better claim on that space than I do. The sad news? On June 11, I will say goodbye to all the students at Hartley School, and probably not see them again. This is a sad reality of being a music specialist in an economy that does not support arts education. When core curricular concerns take all the top priority spots in a budget, music quickly takes on a vagabond status: we'll find work for you if we can; if not, we can always use good subs. And when we do find work for you, be happy to have a job. Keeping you in one building long enough to form relationships, giving you an adequate work space, providing you with all the materials you need to do your work, giving you a daily sc...

We've established by now that I teach in a gym. I've written a lot about the challenges of teaching music in this space: the horrible acoustics, the psychological urge so many children (especially the small ones) feel in that space to run and slide across the floor, the logistical difficulty of removing anything of value from the room every day at the end of school so that after-school and evening programs don't destroy expensive instruments. I've become inured to most of these problems, so much so that, should I ever find myself back in a normal classroom, a small room dedicated to music with drier acoustics and space for all my equipment, it won't feel like things have been put back to normal; no, much more than that, it'll be like stepping into paradise. I'll be wandering around in a daze for weeks, pinching myself at all the luxuries of teaching in a room like most of my colleagues take for granted. Apart from all that, I was reminded this week ...

I have always been itinerant. I moved for the first time when I was five weeks old. My father's career as a minister, first in the American Baptist Church, then the United Methodist Church, meant we moved on average every three years. Once I finished my schooling at the age of 30, I kept moving. The longest I've had a single address was the four years I lived in Philomath--my high school years. It appears the moving has, finally, slowed down: our plan is to remain in this house another four and a half years, then move to somewhere in inner Portland, where we may expect to spend the rest of our independent adult lives. That was my parents' story, too: my father's longest appointment was his last, and since retiring in 1990, he and my mother have lived continuously in the house they inherited from my grandmother. I've changed jobs a lot, too, and not just in my ministry years. I was technically in the Banks district for six years, but the middle two were on layo...