Year 13: Week 11 - Time

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.

- The Doctor

One of the most important teaching tools that teachers have is time.

Education in America is very much about time. Students have schedules that they follow throughout the day. There is a priority on these schedules, sometimes even over student learning. There are benefits to this when you think about how we help students learn to organize their lives, but there are drawbacks. Life isn't always about being "on time," I've experienced some of the best moments in my life have been when I've forgotten about time and prioritized being in the moment.

As a music teacher, I'm very aware that music "decorates" time. Work in music class, like the music itself, can make time feel like it's passing slower, or faster. It's always interesting to me when I start wrapping up music class, and students are surprised at how fast the class seems to go by.

Teachers are very much managers, and trying to help students understand when they need to change tasks before they become unproductive or spend longer on a task is tricky. I do want students to learn how to press "pause" on their work. However, I love it so much when students are deep in their work and don't want to stop. Sometimes I stop an activity too early or too late, and some moments, I stop it at precisely the right time. There is some science in this, but it's more art than anything else.

One of the aspects of time in education is how learning evolves over a couple of days or a week. For example, I started a song with my 5th graders last week, and it didn't go well. I was almost at the point of dropping that song from my curriculum. However, I was wisely advised not to make any decisions that day.

For most of last week, I was out with the flu, and while my students did some work on this song with the substitute, I wasn't expecting much growth. It was just a lesson or two. However, what I heard from my students was a huge improvement. While I credit the substitute teachers and the students for doing some good work while I was gone, this was a good reminder that sometimes students need time.

The process of musical learning, like other learning, has to occur over time. If you spend five hours on one day learning a song, you will sound less good than if you spread those five hours over a week. Stepping away from a piece and letting your brain process the music is essential to learning music. It's one of those seemingly magical things that's easy to forget.

The other piece of this is just trusting the students and the process. One reason I kind of freaked out last year is that this program that I'm preparing my students for is the Winter program that we haven't put on since 2019. I'm more nervous than I'm allowing myself to feel about preparing myself and my students for this performance. I've done a lot to set my students up for success. We are starting the music earlier than I have in years past. I'm keeping the arrangements simpler and prioritizing finding fun and joy in the process. Yeah, we'll be fine, but it feels like a lot.

I need to trust my students that they can do this. I need to trust myself that I know what's best, and I need to trust in the process, and most of all, I need to trust in time.

I can pass the time by worrying about the time I don't have, or I can find peace in the time that I do and the choices I make with the time that I do have.

I'll work on getting the latter.

It might take some time.