Tonight was the last choir concert of the year for my students. While it was a fantastic concert, I am left with a bit of a disappointed feeling. The kids who are graduating this year are the first class to graduate that have gone all the way through high school with me volunteering my time to teach them music. These kids really mean the world to me and have had an impact on my life that I cannot ever hope to describe. However, the further along the night went, the more that a thought kept occurring to me -- I don't think I mean as much to these kids as they mean to me.
After the concert tonight, there was not a single hug; no "thank you"s or "you made a difference". Please do not misunderstand my intentions here; I do not mean to sound as if I expect to be cast into some sort of limelight, because that is the last place I want to be. What I hoped for was at least one child to say, "You made a difference."
Maybe they don't tell me that I've made a difference because I haven't made one.
You spend valuable time volunteering, putting in hundreds of extra hours and effort on top of your normal responsibilities just to create something bigger than yourself because you think that maybe it makes a difference in peoples lives; you think it matters to people. If you're lucky, you don't ever have to find out anything different than that. I was not so lucky. If you know me, you know I like to think. I spent a lot of time thinking about this situation, and a lot of time thinking about what teaching music to people has come to mean to me.
Consider this: when I started teaching people music, there had been no Hurricane Katrina; there was no such thing as Blu-Ray; Saddam Hussein was still alive, and America had never had a black president. The world has changed in a million ways. That is why I have always tried to teach my students something that will be useful no matter what.
So many things have gone out of date. But after all these years, music is still important. Music is still needed by everyone. Music is used to think with, to dream with, to hope with and pray with. And that is why I love music. It endures. It works. It changes and grows.
I had hoped that my students would allow me to teach them all of these beautiful qualities about music, and allow me to pass on the art form that has come to mean so much to me after all these years. Apparently, I have failed in the goal of teaching my students something meaningful and memorable. To the people whom have most impacted my life in the past few years, I am forgettable and expendable.
