School of Rock

Last week saw a trial run of a new program--a three day mini music school at New City kids. The idea for a music school came from Greg, one of our teen employee musicians (see also previous post). Greg has long envisioned a music school as part of the programming at New City. Greg plays drums phenomenally well and teaches them with creativity, tact, and yelling. I am rather confident Greg will one day run a music school of his own.

Being, myself, a guitarist, I found myself rather captured by the idea of a music school. Being also, myself, an “intern,” I found myself with rather enough creative license in my schedule to pursue such an endeavor. And nearly immediately the endeavor revealed benefits at least twofold: (1) I could teach guitar, therefore increasing the number of guitarists in the world and thus contribute (directly, mind you) to the general social good, and (2) I could learn to play the drums under the guise of creating an atmosphere of mutual learning.

Now, I jest about the “guise of an atmosphere of mutual learning,” behind which I could legitimately be paid to learn the drums, but mutual learning was, in fact, a legitimate hope and goal of the music school. And although our numbers were not huge—only about six folks (teachers included) were regular attendees of the music school—a small seed of mutual learning actually took root. For instance, For the first half of the morning I taught a guitar lesson to three students: Will, Naya, and Derek. Meanwhile Greg taught Taylor to play the bass. And after an hour or so, everybody would switch. Will, gave keyboard lessons to Taylor and Naya while Greg took Derek and me to show us the drums.

I had just taught Derek his first guitar lesson. He grew visibly frustrated when he couldn’t get his fingers to make the C major chord sound right. Derek is not a proficient guitarist, yet, but he is a rather proficient drummer. When I sat down at the drum set, I looked at Derek and said, “Remember how your face looked like you were in a battle with your guitar?” He looked back with a face that said I didn’t know you could tell I was frustrated, but yes, I know exactly what you’re saying. “Well,” I said, “You’re about to see my face look like it’s in a battle with this drum set.” He smirked, knowingly, back at me.

So perhaps it was a clever guise behind which I could learn the drums, but I think there was something to this idea of creating an atmosphere of mutual learning. We were all each others’ teachers, and I think there were moments when we all sensed how much we appreciated each other—both how much each of us had to offer, and how much each of us had to gain from being with each other.