Musicality
I’ve known I wanted to be a teacher since the eighth grade, when Mrs. Zohn walked into our chorus class singing. She had big shoes to fill: the man whom she replaced had been our favorite, and we were all prepared to hate her on principle. All during the previous summer we’d talked about how we couldn’t believe Mr. Holben was leaving, how we’d never betray him by even liking her a little, how we’d simply refuse to do anything she said. But we couldn’t do it; she took hold of our hearts from that very first day as she belted out the chorus of “Sloop John B.” We barely registered the news that soon each of us would be singing “Gee, Mom, I wanna go home,” solo, in front of the rest of the class (until, of course, we actually had to do it).
Deborah Zohn was a striking woman. She was young, but she had taught before. Dark, thick, curly hair, olive skin, tall (at least to an eighth grader), and often dressed in black leather. She exuded confidence and ebullience and she reminded us of all the great women from history we’d learned about – a mover and a shaker for sure. She made us smile while we sang (imagine that), sometimes by reminding us of little in-jokes that had developed during practices, sometimes by pushing up the corners of her mouth with her index fingers in a purposely campy way that made us crack up every time. She told us that smiling improved our pitch, but over time we realized that there were other benefits too.
A day wasn’t a day without a little Zohn. I wore my first self-chosen dress for her, for our first concert (quite a contrast with my tomboyish ways). She gave me my first on-stage feature, the alto part in a duet from Les Miserables; I learned all the music for that play before I ever read the book or set foot in a theater to see it performed, and to this day it’s still my favorite. And listening to her stories about past students who would come back to see her, all grown up and almost unrecognizable, was the first time I had conceived of the idea that a teacher could be that influential in a person’s life. I knew I would be one of those students, and I hoped I would be one of those teachers.
Many of us had already been “musicians” for about five years before she came into our lives, but she taught us the real gestalt of that word. She taught us about the things that have to happen before any of the notes or key signatures or breath marks can make sense: things like discipline, commitment, confidence, positivity. She also taught us about something called “musicality,” which I define as the art of synthesizing the technical with the interpretive, the theory with the practice, the external and learned with the internal and inherent, thus creating a seamless performance unique to the musician. And, though I didn’t realize it until much later, she taught us that another term for “musicality” is “teaching.”
Mrs. Zohn used to tell us that she and her husband would never have children because she had enough kids already. We’d laugh at her sarcasm, knowing how true it was that dealing with us must be exhausting indeed. But I didn’t realize until I became a teacher myself that the exhaustion came not from frustration and stress (although I’m sure there was plenty of that) but from caring. Her rule on signing yearbooks was that she would only do it for ninth graders, who would be leaving junior high and venturing into the unknown of high school – that way, she said, she could focus on writing a truly personal message. And, as with all of her other rules and expectations, she followed through. In my copy of the 1991 Troxell Junior High yearbook, where all my other teachers simply signed their names or wrote, “It’s been a pleasure,” or “Have a great summer and good luck in high school,” Deborah Zohn made her mark. “Certain students seem to stand out in a teacher’s mind,” she wrote, “you, of course, will always be among them.”
Explaining what made me want to become a teacher isn’t hard; but delineating what makes me a good teacher is a daunting task. It feels overgeneralized and somewhat contrived to say that I get to know the students, use my sense of humor, establish and enforce expectations and consequences, constantly search for new ways to break down abstract concepts into accessible chunks, and try to show students how literature applies to the real world, even though all of that is exactly what I do. The musicality of teaching isn’t about the broad strokes; it isn’t really about your philosophy or your curriculum or your classroom management. All of those things are subject to change anyway, because of the variables we call life. The musicality of teaching is about the day-to-day: the conversation you have about the best sports cars with the kid who always sits slumped down in the back; the smile in your eyes that no one else sees but the shy kid who’s just made a breakthrough in analyzing a poem; the endearing nicknames you give them, and vice versa; the concerts and games you attend; the times you make a fool of yourself and laugh with them; the words you write in their yearbooks. Very little of it has to do with literature, or music, or whatever subject you think you teach. But it all has to do with learning.
Certain teachers seem to stand out in a student’s mind. Mrs. Zohn, of course, will always be among them. And now, thanks to her, so will I.
