Show Me!

School is out! But in my new role as part-time teacher/ mentor at a school to two music teachers, the exclamation point doesn’t quite ring true. As a kid, it definitely merited 4 or 5 (School is out!!!!!) and as a full-time teacher at least 2 or 3 (School is out!!), but now it’s a little bit more like “School is out.”

 

Nevertheless, I vicariously shared one of my mentee’s pleasure in her wonderful final concert and that sense of catharsis and release. Before summer swept her away, I asked her to reflect on the experience of the mentorship and what it meant to her, to the kids, to the program. She wrote a beautiful, sincere and articulate piece and the sentence that really jumped out for me was this:

 

The kids just needed to hear "I heard you are amazing. Show me." 

 

That’s what I said to them when I first met them and I loved that it made a difference. 

 

Seven words. Two short sentences. That’s all it takes sometimes to change a life.

And each sentence is necessary to the other.

 

Sometimes adults/ teachers might say, “You’re amazing!” And nothing else. What’s a kid to do with that? A 2-second dopamine rush of self-esteem, but leaving the kid wondering, “Really? You think I’m amazing? Why? What precisely is so amazing about me?” Nothing of much use beyond that little puff of inflation. So it needs the second sentence: “If it’s true that you’re amazing, I can’t just rely on what others say. You have to show me!”

 

Sometimes a teacher might say, “Show me what you can do” with a look on the face that might suggest “I’m going to bring you down a few pegs as I criticize all the things you didn’t do as well as you should.” For the old kind of student, determined to keep practicing after the drummer throws his cymbal at the young sax player at the jam session and everyone laughs, that could be useful to fuel his determination to practice harder. But today’s students don’t seem to have that kind of resilience and fortitude and grit. 

 

But if you put those two sentences together, the young student might first think, “Wow. I didn’t realize others knew how amazing I am or could be. So I guess this is a good time to show them!”

 

And even if the group then launched into their piece and it was less than 100% wonderful, I would still answer; “Wow! That is pretty amazing! But if you want to be really amazing, let’s work on playing with the mallets closer to the bars and softer so we can hear your singing voice.”

 

Kids—and all of us— need that balance between affirmation and critique. When the latter is given on the soft cushion of loving affirmation and sincere belief in their ability to rise higher in their accomplishment than they thought they could, that’s when things get moving.

 

In a similar vein, next time I teach a new group of kids and I see some dubious or even outrageous behavior from a kid, here’s what I’d like to say to them.

 

“ My job as a teacher is to give you the tools and understanding to do better in this subject than even you thought you could do. But to do that, I have to learn to love you. And I can’t learn to love you if I don’t know you. So here’s my question for you:

 

“What would I love about you if I got to know you?”

 

I’m looking forward to the first time I get to ask this. Stay tuned.