In the last two days, I have been given two of the most touching compliments I have ever received – and I think part of what made them so touching was that they were both completely unexpected.
The first came yesterday as I finished up a voice lesson with one of my guys who was finishing up his prep for his jury. As we stood in the hall, I told him how happy I was with the immense amount of progress he had made since the last time I heard him; it was clear he had put in a ton of time and effort to bring his pieces up to the level they should be. He thanked me- and then he looked me right in the eye and said – with the slightest catch in his voice – “I hope you know that you are the last person around here that we ever want to disappoint.” I did not expect to hear that from him, and gave him a quizzical look as if to say “what?” And he said, “because you’re just so kind to us.”
That was so nice to hear …. because if there is one thing I beat myself up about around here, it’s that I am not tough enough with my students. It’s the hardest thing in the world for me to lower the boom on a student who is screwing up- or just being lazy. There are so many times that I lament the fact that I’m not one tenth as tough as Dr. Sjoerdsma was. He taught Kathy voice lessons when she was a student here, and she still remembers the first time she came to a voice lesson unprepared – and she sent her away, unwilling to have his time wasted. And you had better believe that from that moment on, she never even thought about waltzing into a lesson without being as ready as she could possibly be. Me? I have never done that in the 25 years that I have taught here. Truthfully, I should have – and more than once. But to be perfectly honest, I’ve never even really seriously considered it. And over all these years, I have built up a mounting sense of regret about that- and a sense that I have been letting my students down by being a little too loving and not enough “tough loving.” And by the way, I think that’s absolutely true. I would be a better voice teacher if I were able to speak the uncomfortable truths that sometimes need to be spoken.
What was so nice about what this student told me in the hallway yesterday is that it raised the possibility that maybe my approach isn’t as ill-founded as I feared …. that there are at least some students who take my kindness, my patience, my affection – and respond as this student does, with a fervent desire not to let me down. By no means does it work that way across the board; I know for a fact that for a number of my students, when push comes to shove and they have to make a choice about whether to practice for their voice lesson or do work for one of their classroom courses…. will always opt to skip practice because they know I won’t yell at them. The soft, gentle approach engenders sloppiness and laziness in more than a few students- maybe for most of them. But for this particular student, my approach works- and moreover, he said “we” don’t want to disappoint you, so apparently he’s not alone. Which is not to say that I shouldn’t be tougher- particularly with those students who need me to be tougher with them. As their teacher, I owe it to them to do whatever I can to help them not only to reach their potential- but also to gain self-sufficiency as musicians and human beings. And towards that end, I hope I’m getting a little better at stepping outside of my own conflict-averse comfort zone and saying the tough stuff when it needs to be said. Anyway, the compliment came at a time when I needed to hear it- and it meant the world to me.
The other compliment wasn’t spoken to me but rather came in the middle of a written essay from a music major who actually isn’t one of my voice students, but still someone I know and with whom I’ve worked. This student was talking in this essay about some of the struggles they have had – and at one point they made specific mention of comments that I wrote to them for a past jury – comments that actually moved them to tears …. not because they were negative comments but rather because they were so encouraging. After so many years of writing critique after critique, you start to doubt whether anyone reads them at all or if they have much impact. And then you read something like this student wrote- in which my comments were actually quoted verbatim- and you realize that there are those instances when what we say makes an enormous difference. It made me feel so good to know that something I wrote had such powerful effect on a student I cared about, and it makes me hope that I will always take this particular responsibility as seriously as I possibly can and give it the best I have to give.