Man . . . this is tough
I’m wrapping up week two of teaching lessons through Flipgrid and man . . . this is tough.
Some things are going well –
The ability for students to listen back to their recordings and self-evaluate is great, and it’s allowing students to develop more as listeners than they might if they just heard feedback from me immediately. I can listen back to recordings a couple times to help prioritize my feedback, and being able to start and stop my own recordings means that I can actually practice some of the licks in my students’ repertoire and provide higher-quality models (i.e. less fracks) than I might normally be able to achieve in lessons.
But some things are not going as planned –
I typically keep written lesson sheets that I can use to take notes for students – I write out what we do in lessons, the practice strategies we implemented, any noteworthy ideas or concepts that seemed to really help, and any doodles I consider helpful and their assignments for the following week. So having to give assignments without the aid of my doodles has actually been a real challenge for me. I also realized how much I rely on seeing my students around the music building to check in. Not being able to see them on a regular basis and gage their physical and emotional well-being is really, really hard, and without the face-to-face contact we typically have in lessons, determining whether their mistakes come from a lack of preparation or because they’re stressed, tired, worried, or otherwise preoccupied becomes infinitesimally more difficult.
I saw a (now deleted) post on twitter recently about the kinds of things students are dealing with while trying to learn remotely and it was a really good reminder of how different my students’ circumstances can be from my own (both now and when I was in school). The tweet thread also said this –
“ if you teach and you are being a hard ass right now because you think your students are being lazy and have a bunch of free time on their hands while at home, you are trash, and no one likes you”
– and that was the part that really hit home. When a student doesn’t complete work as assigned, my first assumption is that they are being lazy – and that is something I really don’t like about myself. It’s probably because in my own time as a student, that usually was the reason that I didn’t get my work done.
I worked while I was in school, but it was because I wanted to and not because I needed to. I had roommates, but they were always musicians and understood the need to practice. When I was home with my family (being lucky enough to have a stable home to go to), I had space of my own and could play my instrument whenever I wanted / needed (parents of tuba players should be on the fast track to sainthood). Essentially, my circumstances were ideal. I had support from my mom and dad, friends, mentors . . . and I never had to be a student during a global pandemic.
I recently finished Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead as part of a learning community on campus. This book was eye-opening for me in many ways – how we deal with shame, confrontation, and feedback, to name a few – but the most impactful concept I drew from my reading was the assumption of positive intent, or believing that people are genuinely trying the best they can. Somehow, this was a novel concept to me. I thought for so long that teaching was about rigor and holding students accountable that for a while I lost sight of the fact that I need to teach students from where they are right now and not where I think they should be. Brené explains it well -
“Assuming positive intent does not mean that we stop helping people set goals or that we stop expecting people to grow and change. It’s a commitment to stop respecting and evaluating people based solely on what we think they should accomplish, and start respecting them for who they are and holding them accountable for what they’re actually doing.”
I still catch myself being frustrated or disappointed with students when they perform below my expectations (for example: today, yesterday, and the day before), but I have gotten significantly better at taking the time to ask students about their day / week / lives / circumstances before deciding how to move forward with feedback. And, almost always, when I take the time to ask, I find that either I wasn’t clear enough with my expectations to begin with, or my students are struggling with something that is genuinely getting in the way of their success. Even though I still struggle with the assumption of positive intent daily, when I do take the time to get to the bottom of a missed assignment or underprepared piece I often feel an immense sense of relief that I don’t need to be disappointed or frustrated. That many negative feelings can really wear a person down, and honestly – I do not need that negativity in my life.
The above quote from Dare to Lead continues below – and it could not be a better time to read this -
“. . . and when we’re overwhelmed and struggling, it also means turning those positive assumptions toward ourselves: I’m doing the very best I can right now.”
Good luck to all of you out there as we navigate this new terrain together -