Let Them Laugh: Self-Acceptance for the Young and Old
B y way of a setup, I’m an American music teacher working part-time in Yorkshire schools in the north of England. My employment is stable and enjoyable now, but for about six months in the beginning I was working as a high-school sub (or “supply teacher,” the thoroughly dehumanizing term used in the UK).
One day I was teaching music appreciation to a class of 7th graders (I’ll use the equivalent American terms). We were listening to and picking apart “The Lark Ascending” by Vaughan Williams. Not my choice, but I’ve known it ever since I heard Larry Coryell play it on acoustic guitar in the ’80s. I was ready.
This was a class that, under normal circumstances, I could not control at all. It was the worst class I had. The only reason they sat and listened to “The Lark Ascending” for even a second was that there was a monitor in the room with me. Allow me to explain why.
In the previous class period, same age kids, there had been a severe disturbance. A girl not enrolled on my register decided to attend anyway — I had no way of knowing who she was. Within the first 10 minutes, she carelessly tossed a chair toward others instead of simply moving it; laughed in my face when I told her it was not cool; raided the instrument closet and pulled out a guitar and pretended to play; then began hurling fully filled water bottles across the room with a loud thwack against the opposite wall, causing an immediate safety hazard and possibly damaging school property.
I had to summon the headteacher. About six or seven students had to leave the room and stand in the hall out of fear. One began having a panic attack.
In other words, Tuesday. I had had it, so for my next and last period of the day, I requested that a monitor be present. And we sat and we listened, quietly if not attentively, to “The Lark Ascending.”
A quick pause here for a public service announcement: PAY TEACHERS MORE.
There’s a hip clarinet line I wanted to call their attention to, so I sang it. I mean, sang it, leaned into it, with expression. And two girls in the front, miserably behaved from the first minute I ever laid eyes on them, started to laugh. They got into it, trying to repress the laughter and failing, which then of course made them laugh more, you know the rest. But still quiet, under the breath. The rest of the room was quiet. The music continued to play.
In behavioral terms, what I would counsel a young teacher to do at a moment like this is something called planned ignoring — you do not give it fuel or begin a power struggle. You press on and remain focused for the benefit of the class, and that is what I did. In time they stopped.
Giving that professional advice is all well and good, but if I’d been 23 years old and just starting out when this happened, the laughing really would have hurt. At 54, observing myself, I noticed in an almost out-of-body way that I did not care. The laughter was like bullets being stopped by Neo in The Matrix. It simply had no effect on my soul, my ego, whatsoever. And I thought, huh, that’s interesting. And kind of cool.
Reflecting afterward, I wondered what might have happened if I’d gone totally off-script that day. Teachable moment time. What if I’d stopped the music as the laughing grew more obvious, and more distracting, like Keith Jarrett during a coughing fit? I suppose I might have told the following story, not for the benefit of the laughing girls but for those who did not laugh.
When I was 17 … I was tempted to type “it was a very good year,” but it kind of was. I was getting better on guitar, I was learning jazz, I was playing in a small student combo and learning tunes like Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage.” We performed that and a couple of other things at a full-school assembly at my high school.
You might have noticed that when jazz musicians improvise, they often make faces. My hero at the time and still today, Pat Metheny, has spent about half a century going around the world being photographed making faces like this:
So we played “Maiden Voyage,” and while I played my mediocre solo over static sus chords I was making faces — I was going for it, trying to “say something.” And I looked out briefly at the audience of friends but also some miserable bullies as well, and I noticed that two or three girls were laughing at the faces I was making.
Deflating, completely. Totally threw me off whatever meager game I had going on. And it taught me a hard lesson about performing: that sometimes, it is emotionally devastating and completely sucks. Can’t deal with that, don’t be a musician.
Well, students, today I see some girls laughing at me for expressing myself musically, again. And I am not bothered by it at all, because I’ve performed a lot, and I have professional relationships with great musicians, and a little girl in kindergarten I’d never met before once told me, “I like when you sing! It’s pretty!” and my feet have not touched the ground since.
So I’m not worried for me, students, not one little bit. But I am worried for you.
I’m worried that you, too, are getting laughed at, in this building where your self-expression is supposed to be nurtured and explored and encouraged at every step. If I can provide you with even a little bit of the inner strength that I’ve had the good fortune to develop over the course of a life in music, then that will be my greatest teaching success, hands down.
So please remember this, and take it with you: Never, ever hold back musically for fear of being mocked. Like Jack Black admonished his shy student in School of Rock: “No More Secret Songs!” Sing out. No one can ever steal your joy in music. Remember this, always and every time: Let them laugh.◊
