Hippocamp 2018 Writer’s Conference thrilled me

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being yourself, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, teacher, writing

This year’s creative nonfiction writer’s conference, Hippocamp 2018, in Lancaster, PA was wonderful. I was particularly delighted with two contacts I made, both offering future collaboration on projects I am thrilled about. This doesn’t even cover the many other writers I met who were fun, inspiring, and helpful, the great speakers, and finding some wonderful books for sale at the book table.

One of the notable speakers was Lisa Romeo, who gave a talk titled, “Reconstruction: Transforming Essays into a Narrative Memoir Manuscript.” I’ve attended her workshops before and always, she had plenty of very useful information to share. This year’s topic, well it is precisely what I need to know right now: how to use what I have already written to recraft the story I want to tell. After the talk I spoke with her further, then ended up at a lunch table with her later in the day. We hit it off so well that she asked me to write a guest blog post for her blog, Lisa Romeo Writes (http://lisaromeo.blogspot.com/) about my job as a theme reader at the local high school. I am thrilled to tell people about the cool job I get to do as a writing coach to young people, that also supports my own interest in writing.

The second wonderful encounter I had was with Alexander Monelli who held a session titled, “Call the Doc: How Documentary Filmaking Can Help Creative Writing.” Well, I love documentaries, so sitting in a class where we discussed their structure was fascinating. It was actually a bit frustrating, though, because the instructor kept stopping the video to make a point about how the narrative was developed just as the story was most compelling! Got to watch those online to see how they end up!  (https://www.monellifilms.com/) During the course of a Q&A I realized he might be the perfect person to talk to about producing a short book trailer for my memoir. My book proposal, which goes to various editors, promises that I will put a book trailer on my website once the book is published. Yikes! What was I thinking! No problem, Alex told me, he’d be willing to work with me to put it together. Yay! This story will be continued…

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Reading with kids is a joy

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being yourself, Jane Butler, listening, reading, second grade, teacher

Today I started volunteering at a local elementary school, reading for thirty minutes separately with two second graders. I’ll be going every week throughout the school year to be their personal cheerleader in reading.

We had a lot of fun because discovering the story together, was a delight. Even though I know the story already, and even though I read it twice in one hour, it was a special experience each time. Each of the kids saw different parts of the story as significant and each was excited by different parts.

The little girl I read with was ridiculously cute, asking me when I would be coming back. She was clearly keeping tabs on me, calling out as she left, “See you next Thursday!”

If you give a student a choice, you have to honor his choice

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being yourself, Jane Butler, listening, teacher, writing

I am mighty frustrated today by my interactions with my Goth student friend in second period at the high school. My charge today, from the teacher I work with, was to help this gentleman get his essay accomplished since he’d missed a lot of school due to a suspension he fulfilled much of last week.

He wasn’t having it though. No, no interest in working on the essay. His preference, which is the case most days, is to sleep during class. The three adults in the room often, in turn, urge him to wake up. We hand him pens to write with, a book to read, the outline of the essay that was due last week. The other students are working independently, revising their essays, reading the next text or completing a study guide. I offer my help to them, too.

But when I suggest to my Goth student that he and I work on the essay, he says he’d rather read. I say I’d rather write. He says he’d rather read. Okay, I say, read it is. But I feel the pressure from the teacher who asked me to help him get the essay accomplished. I feel the pressure from the student who legitimately chooses to read instead. After all, the entire class is given the same choice, do one of the three tasks at hand: essay, read, study guide.

And he did read, a bit. He read and he dozed, and he read some more.

It’s never a good idea to get in a battle of wills with a student. It is his choice to fail the class. I cannot make him do anything, I can only offer my support. When class is done the teacher, the aide, and me, despite our frustration, appreciate that he did some reading today.

In the end, I gather the spirit of what is supposed to happen here and tell him that maybe tomorrow we can work on the essay together.

He says, yeah, maybe tomorrow.

Guess what, I was thinking about you

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being yourself, express feelings, inspire, Jane Butler, teacher, writing

Funny thing happened today in English class. My Goth friend, who earlier this week literally needed to be woken up from a sound sleep, suddenly was acting oddly interested. I hadn’t planned on it but I told him I’d been thinking about him outside of class. I’d been talking about him to a friend, I told him, for no reason other than that he is a standout in class for having fallen asleep so often.

Now normally all I’ve ever seen of this guy is the crown of his head, and a glimpse of his pale skin glancing past his long black hair. He’s usually hunched over and usually withdrawn, and usually doesn’t talk,

I guess I felt so encouraged with him looking directly at me, in response to the revelation that I’d been thinking about him out of class, that I just kept going. I told him the whole story of my friend, the person I’d told about my sleeping Goth student. I guess I told them both about each other, actually. And I didn’t hold back. My friend, I told my student, surprised me by telling me about how he too once was an army boot and flak jacket wearing teen who was headed down the wrong path, getting arrested and doing drugs, not that I presumed to know what my Goth friend did outside of class.  But this had in hindsight been a kind of reaction to the long slow painful dismantling of his family over the course of many years. Turns out his dad left the family and his mom was so deeply grief-stricken as to appear mentally ill, and it dragged out for ten years before it felt like it ended.

Checking out, getting into trouble, these were ways to carry on in the face of disaster. My friend said he landed in a foster care situation and then his father did something unusual for fathers who leave their kids, he came back and got his wayward son into boarding school. From there he made it to college and onto a path that was healthier. I told all this to my student in a long exposition I hadn’t planned, and so I laughed at how us adults, this friend of mine and me too, project our experiences and understanding onto others. How he had suggested that maybe my Goth student was like him, reacting to issues at home. I had said, who knows, maybe.

By now my Goth student was quite present with me. I wrapped up my monologue and explained about the power of words and why we bother with the writing assignment before us. About how it’s hard to let kids know the value of learning, and how to communicate through writing, but this assignment is, unfortunately, how we do it. I told him no matter how crappy life is or what you do or do not have, communicating with words can get you all kinds of chances – jobs, college entrance, scholarships, girls, apologies, everything. So let’s humor the system, I proposed, and work on this essay together.

That’s when all of a sudden, he started talking, stringing whole sentences together, and looking right at me.

Letting kids lead the way

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being yourself, Jane Butler, joy, piano lessons, teacher

Last night one of my piano students, my very youngest and most wiggly, played his piano piece entirely with his nose! He did not get tired of how hard it was, apparently finding it preferable to struggling through the difficult fingering I was looking for. His nose is tiny, too! He is a little guy with a little nose, but he persevered. I allowed it because it was the most focus I’d gotten out of him the entire lesson, and he was hitting the right keys. He tends to dash around the keyboard playing whatever he’s learned, showing off and enjoying the thrill of knowing what to do with all those eighty-eight keys. Granted, it is pretty basic stuff since he’s only had about five lessons so far, but I see the joy in his actions and know he is having a great time. So once he was done playing Mississippi Hot Dog with his nose, I proposed we try it again, this time with the right hand.

He conceded, but at the end of that ordeal he laid his head down across middle C and told me he was really tired.

I bet!

Anybody in there?

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Jane Butler, relationship, teacher

In English class this week the kids have been tough to engage. They politely but temporarily put away their cellphone games or tentatively take out just one earphone of their iPods when I seem to want to talk to them, or directly ask if they’d be up for working with me undistracted, but really that is a lot to expect of me since I need to know English, too, not just child psychology. One young man barely speaks when I meet with him, and he keeps his Goth persona, grunting and avoiding eye contact consistently. He’s always tired because of the job he works late at night, but I can’t make exceptions, we have to do the work.

Not too long ago I sent my daughter into the QuickShop to pick up two gallons of milk for our household. She came back with the milk and exactly two dollars which I knew wasn’t the correct change. I’d nearly missed it myself recently when one of those change contraptions that has a chute directly off of the cash register delivered precisely the correct coinage while the cashier handed over the bills after my purchase. I told my girl that the only reason I knew about all this was because I’d heard the clinking of coins cleverly hidden between the gum displays and the latest candy trends on the counter top and realized it was for me. Cool, but so easily overlooked.

So today just after buying my two gallons of milk I looked over and was surprised to see my Goth friend standing at the counter making his own purchase. I heard his coins clattering down the chute to the cup. “Don’t forget your change,” I called pointing at the coins as I headed out the door.

I guess I caught him off guard or was out of context or something because he broke character, looked right at me and smiled, and seemed surprised and glad about finding his money.

An unconventional piano concert

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being yourself, Jane Butler, piano recital, teacher

Last night my living room was packed with kids and their parents, all smiling, all happy to be there, and all ready to hear the kids share their music. It started out the way you might think, rather serious and quiet and nerve-wrackingly formal! I explained about putting names in a hat and how anyone, student of mine or not, was welcome to play piano, whatever the caliber. I asked for a volunteer to go first, a hand shot up and we were off. After she’d played she picked a name from the basket and my newest little student came up. He has had two lessons yet sat down to play “The Pecking Hen”, a challenging exercise in hitting each white key in succession all the way down the keyboard. The crowd went wild.

Besides the prepared pieces of my students, a friend of a student, a nine-year old girl who doesn’t take piano lessons anywhere got up and played a one-finger rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. A mom and her daughter did “Heart and Soul” and called over to me after quite a few rounds, “How do we stop??” Kids came up in twos and played two different songs at the same time as a ‘duet’ because we let them.

It was an unconventional concert but it was low pressure and high fun. My student who declined to participate last year agreed reluctantly this year on the strength of the stories of last time, and ended up being one of the ones to return to the piano two more times to show what she could do. Her parents and I were delighted to see that she stretched herself by playing a piece she hadn’t planned on. The setting was right for risking it. The praise and recognition were genuine and supportive and easy to get if you stepped up to the piano and tried something new. One girl even suggested she play “Over the River and Through the Woods” while others sang, so an impromptu choir emerged to cap off the evening.

What a great night. What a fulfilling experience to teach kids to play music and then have them share it with the rest of us just for the fun of it. Low pressure, high fun. Thanks everybody.

A six-year old’s first impression

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being yourself, express feelings, Jane Butler, piano lessons, relationship, teacher, trust

The mother of one of my piano students came to me last week and asked if we might start her six-year old boy on lessons on a trial basis. We’d do a fifteen-minute lesson and see how he took to it. After all, he’d been asking for lessons and copying his sister for weeks now.

So, after his sister’s lesson I sat down with him at the piano and we started. All we do at the first lesson is touch every key and name it, spell some words on the keys like DAD and CAB, and then I usually do some silly quizzes about which hand is which and which finger is which. It gives us a chance to get to know one another and to introduce the piano, and it is easy.

In just fifteen minutes, I can decide whether the student is ready and able to take lessons. For instance, this little boy stayed focused and engaged with the process the whole time. He didn’t get frustrated, and he did know which hand was which. It’s hard to teach kids piano if they are unsure which is the left hand or if they keep looking back at their mom to see if they are getting the right answers. But he was willing to trust in the process and allowed a fifteen-minute relationship with me all for the sake of learning piano. They say first impressions are real so I am counting on it, and I feel this guy is ready.

The crazy thing about this experience is what he did next because it is a reminder that kids are just as capable as adults of sizing up the situation. His first impression is valid, too. After we were finished and I told him he’d done a good job, he ran right over to his mother. I got a perfect look at his back as he spoke to her.  In a clear and loud voice, as if I couldn’t hear him he told her, “I want piano lessons.”

Kids are great. They know how they feel. And there is such a short line between how they feel and what they say without a lot of smoke and distraction in-between, that if the adults in their lives are good stewards of that we can trust them to be honest with us for a long time.

Just south of F# is a whole new way of seeing things

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control, fear, Jane Butler, piano lessons, teacher

One of last week’s piano lessons was unusual in that light bulbs went off in MY head. My little friend did not like the idea that I cover her hands with a book as she tried to play a piece, pushing my book away and pulling it up to look under it. She did everything she could to thwart my efforts to encourage playing while reading the music rather than looking back and forth between music and keys. It got to the point where I was ready to give up because it was getting a little physical for a piano lesson, and she said outright it was too hard. She really believed it. It was just something she COULD NOT do.

So in my usual way we wrote that in the lesson book,”This is too hard to do” with an arrow pointing towards the name and page number of the piece. She agreed wholeheartedly this was indeed too hard to do.

I told her that I did not see it as too hard for her. She does hard stuff all the time, and this was just one of those things. I am confident you can do this, I told her. She did not like this plan at all.  This is a student that is cautious. She checks everything before she begins. I urge her on, saying, let’s go, no more stalling, do it. She wants to readjust her seat, crack her knuckles, give heavy sighs and mention the weather, coming up with all manner of distraction rather than try the difficult task.

Ho hum. Get on with it. Eventually it occurred to me that fear was driving her actions or should I say, inaction, and I decided to break it down to its component parts to demystify the project. I think she feared making mistakes and hitting the wrong keys if she couldn’t look down and be sure of what she was doing.

I showed her how she could feel, with her fingers alone, where on the keyboard there are three black notes in a row. We practiced both looking at three notes in a row and looking away and feeling three black notes in a row. I showed her how just south of one of the black notes, F#, is the F we’d be needing for the song in question. She was delighted to see that she could do it. So we tempted fate and I had her wave her hands in the air and swing them around behind her, close her eyes, look here and look there, and then close her eyes again and then place her hands on the F. With no problem at all, there it was, under her fingers where she needed it to be, without any looking at all. F!

Next thing you know, playing the song with a book over her hands made not a difference. Now that she knew where F was without looking, and how the other notes related to those, because we of course walked through a conversation about that, she was golden. All the fear seem to drift away.

I was not that clear on how my little friend felt about all this until her father walked in at the end of the lesson. She called out for him to be awed by her ability to close her eyes and miraculously locate F on the keyboard and she grandly demonstrated this new ability. He had no idea what this meant or why it mattered but he applauded her success and celebrated in her great achievement.

Phew! I told him, even if he doesn’t understand, he should know for sure that he got his money’s worth today.

Twinkle twinkle little star

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Jane Butler, piano, piano lessons, teacher

All my piano students are excited right now because we are planning a concert. I do not want to call it a recital because that sounds too much like a judged event with pressure and pain, just like all those piano recitals of my youth. Someone from the guild was always there and you had to dress fancy and curtsey and otherwise behave abnormally.

Those childhood recitals really turned me off to the whole idea of playing music for other people because there was an inherent threat in them. You might get it wrong and disappoint or embarrass someone, like your parents, or your teacher.

My concert will be as free of stress as possible. We will put names in a hat at the start of the program, including parents and siblings and anyone who wants to play. So I know already there is one mother-daughter team working on Heart and Soul. Former students of mine, siblings of my present kids, will be there and if it is anything like last time, they will fight the younger kids for their chance to show what they can do. We draw names from the hat and if you want to play something when your name comes up you can and if you do not you may pass. Dads got in on it last time and plunked out a Mary Had a Little Lamb to everyone’s delight.

The idea is to celebrate music and that it can  bring us together.I want my living room, full of kids and parents, to be a happy place where we showcase our ability to connect through music.