The Teaching Life: Classical or Improv? (Part III)

(Part II)

But what happens when I re-frame my teaching in terms of improv?

My goal as a teacher has never been “classical,” not for my classroom atmosphere, not for my students, and certainly not for me, as a teacher! I’m not after duplication, precision for the sake of precision, or doing what everyone else has done a hundred times before.

My favorite moments of teaching involve collaboration and synergy, give-and-take, throwing out questions and being surprised by students' responses. I expect that not only my students' minds will be expanded in each class each day, but that my mind will, too. After a good classroom discussion, I’m still thinking about what various students said days and weeks later, kinda like getting a catchy tune stuck in my head.

A teacher I knew many years ago quit after three years of teaching junior high because he didn’t want to teach The Outsiders over and over again, year after year. It struck me that he and I were working from totally different paradigms. I love teaching the same book “year after year” because each year, the students are different! I’ve taught Fahrenheit 451 fifteen times, and each year I read a brand new copy along with the class. I have all new students, so I anticipate -- and have! -- a fresh experience with them.

Improv, it turns out, is a fabulous metaphor for how I love teaching.

Listen to "Blues" and notice how the sax, trumpet, piano, bass, and drum all take turns with the lead. I might start class with a bit of lecture, just as this piece starts with trumpet. But then I throw out a question, and the discussion goes back and forth, louder then softer, changing voices, combining ideas, trying out new ones, coming back around.

When not leading, each instrument plays support, or “comps.” I have to ask myself: How well do I comp at school when it’s not my turn to lead? Do I show up to support the PE teachers, the coaches, and our students during Football Weekend, or do I hide at home, thankful it’s “not my weekend”? (The honest answer is not flattering.)

When the quartet stops for a few bars, they are especially intentional about starting back up again. Each player watches the other, counts carefully, and even nods or calls out to make sure they all start back up again on the right note at the right time. The Monday after Christmas break, how intentional am I about making sure my students and I “pick right up where we left off"? (I don't think, "Okay, turn to page. 273" cuts it!)

But it’s the way of handling “errors” that draws me post powerfully to improv as a metaphor for teaching. When there’s dissonance, when things don’t go quite as expected, when a new idea flops, or when I misread a situation, none of these errors is deemed a failure.

In the paradigm of improv, errors are considered "competent mistakes."

And there is a world of difference (at least for me!) between being a failure and being a maker of competent mistakes.

When I re-frame last year in terms of improv, it changes everything. Because I was doing so many new things, I made many errors, many competent mistakes. This year, I'm not teaching any new classes, so I probably won't make nearly as many.

But I'm realizing that in teaching, competent mistakes are part of the job description, not reasons to question my aptitude -- or calling.

Competent mistakes are evidence that I’m learning and growing in job that's complex, often paradoxical, and still the most rewarding way I could ever hope to spend my life.

The Teaching Life: Classical or Improv? (Part II)

(Part I)

Over the next few days, I wrestled with this whole “improv” concept. All my life, I’ve been naturally drawn to improv-type music. But you’d have never guessed it watching me in the classroom last year. In fact, last year was the most disharmonious, non-improv teaching year of my life. Why?

The answer hit me randomly while I was standing at the baggage carousel in Chicago, O’Hare airport, waiting for my family to arrive. It struck me so hard, in fact, that I began to tear up. (My family thought I was especially glad to see them, which I was, but...!)

I’ve defined my teaching in terms of my classical training, in which I equated errors with failure.

Piano competitions were the worst. The Friday prior, my parents made the required one or two hour drive to the concert location so I could spend five minutes practicing on the actual piano to “get a feel” for its touch. The day of, I sat for hours, chewing my fingernails down to the quick, listening to dozens of other amateurs destroying the same song I was soon to desecrate.

As I waited, and while I performed, error-focused messages played through my mind: “Don’t screw up. Don’t make an error. Okay, don’t make another one....”

No matter how hard I tried or how much I practice, I could never be as flawless as Daniel Lau. Take a moment to listen, and then tell me: how do you follow that? All I wanted to do after hearing Danny’s ever-perfect gold-medal winning performances was crawl under the chairs to the door and run home!

One year, I did accidentally end up with an “honorable mention” at a Bach festival. As I gave my pre-performance bow, I saw my brother in the audience, making a ridiculous gargoyle face at me. I started to giggle and couldn’t stop. Realizing that all hope was lost before I even began, I relaxed, sat down, and surprised everyone--myself the most!--with a reasonably good performance.

But all other years, everyone else swept the gold, silver, and bronze medals, while I collected more memories of making errors. I felt like the “special needs” mascot of the group; there were all my teacher’s award-winning students...and then there was Cheri.

My final recital proved this beyond doubt. Since I was one of her “senior” students, my teacher put me right at the end of the program. Big mistake. After twelve years of piano lessons, my crowning achievement was starting over not once, not twice, but three times...each time 2/3 thirds of the way through the piece. I finally ended the communal torture by stopping, standing up, walking out the front door, and never looking back. I was done with piano.

After all those years of lessons, all those years of practice, if I could screw up that badly, the only possible explanation was that I was a failure.

I’ve defined my teaching in terms of my classical training, in which I equated errors with failure.

Last year, error-focused messages played through my mind all day long, “Don’t screw up. Don’t make an error. Okay, don’t make another one...” I started each class period with hope, but the first error made me cringe, the second error made me tense up, and the third error -- especially within the first five minutes of class! -- triggered my survive-’til-escape reflex.

After several months of maxing out on errors multiple times a day, I began to despair. After nineteen years of teaching...after dozens of seminars and classes...after reading hundreds of books...after so much hard work, if I could still screw up this badly -- by making so many errors -- the only possible explanation, from a classical frame of references, was that I was a failure.

(Part III)

The Teaching Life: Classical or Improv? (Part I)

I grimaced suspiciously at the leadership conference schedule. Monday and Wednesday looked comfortingly normal. But Tuesday? "Leadership as Improv." Hmph!

I don't do improv. I love drama...as long as I'm performing a well-memorized script or directing. But improv? No way. I like my spontaneity well-planned, thank you!

I walked reluctantly into the auditorium on Tuesday morning (with secret plans to bail the moment my hyper-sensitive comfort zone indicators signaled the slightest discomfort) to find a jazz quartet warming up. Surprise and relief mingled; I would not be pulled on stage, given three random words, and instructed to "improv."

But the warning bells did begin to toll, signaling my love/hate relationship with music.

I started piano lessons when I was just five, and for several years, I loved playing. Somewhere during elementary school -- probably when "we" decided that I would drop horseback riding lessons but keep up piano lessons -- I started to loathe all things piano. I regularly asked for ragtime and bluegrass, the kind of music I loved. But always I was given Chopin, Mozart, Beethovan, and Bach.

You see, my teachers were the best classical competition instructors in the area. (Years later when I signed up and paid for my own piano lessons in college -- so I could finally play boogie woogie! -- the music department chairman took one look at my "former teacher" list and asked, "Do you want to be a music major?") My teachers didn't teach me to play the kind of music I loved; they expected me to love their expert classical training.

As Dr. Michael Gold of Jazz Impact began the "Leadership as Improv" morning segment, he discussed the difference between classical music and improv. Classical musicians are highly trained, skilled, and practiced performers. A classical musical score is extremely detailed; each note is precisely shown. The purpose of classical music is duplication, doing what's been done -- often many times -- in the past, honoring the composer (usually a dead guy.) The structure of classical music is set, stable, even rigid.

I recognized one more truth about classical music, at least according to my own experience. With classical music, errors mean only one thing: failure. When listening to a familiar piece of classical music, we wince at the first mistake, tense up at the second, and start shaking our heads by the third. One of the expectations of classical music is perfection.

With improv, the musicians are also highly trained, skilled, and practiced performers. But the score is minimal. (My favorite part of this illustration is the word "etc." -- you won't find that in a classical music score!) The purpose of improv is creativity, innovation, and dynamic change; in fact, the composer is the performer, and the composition occurs as (s)he performs, giving the music immediacy and life. I was surprised to learn how much structure improv actually involves; it is not chaos or "anything goes." But it's flexible, giving rise to a paradox: autonomy within community.

Another paradox is created with so-called "errors": harmonious dissonance. In fact, Dr. Gold referred to jazz "errors" as "competent mistakes."

Woah. Stop the show! What did he just say? These two words together created such an oxymoron, my brain simply refused to compute them. At the break, I had to go up and clarify, "You used a specific phrase about mistakes -- what was the word you used before 'mistakes'?" He laughed (because I was the dozenth to ask) and repeated, "competent mistakes."

I immediately texted my Melancholy husband: "I'm learning about "competent mistakes!"

He replied, "What the heck does that mean?"

I responded, "I have no clue. But I'm eager to learn!"

(Part II)