Teaching is Jazz

I love jazz. There is such an energy and free­dom to the music, and it has this capac­ity for plug­ging directly into my emo­tions. The same piece can move me on so many lev­els. I can expe­ri­ence it raw, or I can process and ana­lyze the intri­ca­cies of the music’s struc­ture and the performer’s sub­tle interactions.

Last week I attended a per­for­mance by the great Barry Miles, accom­pa­nied by Bob Shomo, Tim Lekan, and Paul Han­nah. The quar­tet played a vari­ety of num­bers, and I was blown away by the way they com­pletely inhab­ited each piece they played and brought the audi­ence inside with them on the journey.

At some point dur­ing the con­cert, though, I became aware that my mind was begin­ning to do its split atten­tion trick. I was immersed in the jazz, but at the same time I started think­ing about how much teach­ing is like the per­for­mance that was going on in front of me.

Jazz is hard to define, but one of its core ele­ments is impro­vi­sa­tion. Each piece began sim­ply, piano and bass build­ing the chord struc­ture on top of the foun­da­tion set by the drum­mer, and the sax player weav­ing a melody around this frame­work. As the piece moved on, though, the roles of the combo slowly and sub­tly shifted. The four men would trade respon­si­bil­i­ties, shift­ing from melody to sup­port and back again. Some­times one of them would take off on an extended solo, riff­ing on the ideas in the melody and play­ing with dif­fer­ent sounds and how they inter­acted with the chords. Some­times they would deftly toss lit­tle motifs back and forth to each other like jug­glers, the music cre­at­ing intri­cate, lay­ered patterns.

The music always seemed to become more and more chaotic and unstruc­tured as it went along. As the chords and rhythms got more com­plex and the melodies strayed fur­ther from where the song began, I often got lost in the beau­ti­ful jum­ble of sounds. What amazed me most was how the musi­cians seemed to lose them­selves in the expe­ri­ence, too, but always, with­out fail, they came out at the end of the piece in the same place at the same time, some­how tying it all together in a way that was totally sat­is­fy­ing and seemed com­pletely inevitable.

I real­ized (in my ana­lyt­i­cal brain) that even though the music seemed (in my emo­tional brain) to have lost its way, that at no time did the musi­cians ever for­get either the foun­da­tion they set up at the begin­ning or the goal towards which they were mov­ing the whole time. Even though we in the audi­ence may have felt like we were lost in an exquis­ite anar­chy, the musi­cians knew exactly where they were the whole time. This was dri­ven home to me at the moment when the musi­cians, all four impro­vis­ing at once and appar­ently going in com­pletely dif­fer­ent direc­tions, landed with­out warn­ing on the same note at the same time. It was like watch­ing a kalei­do­scope where all of the col­ors and shapes are swirling around and sud­denly form a rec­og­niz­able pic­ture out of nowhere.

Good teach­ing should always be like this. The teacher and stu­dents should always start in the same place and know where they are going, but in the midst of the learn­ing process (activ­ity, les­son, unit, what­ever) can wan­der and impro­vise and go where their ideas and instincts lead them, but keep­ing that end goal in view the whole time, aim­ing to land on that final note and together wrap the pack­age up in a sat­is­fy­ing and under­stand­able (and even per­haps inevitable) way.

Another aspect of the con­cert that struck me was how the four musi­cians inter­acted. There was a clear leader the whole time: Barry Miles. He selected the music, he started each piece, set the tempo and feel, and guided the group through the song to the end he devised. Yet the whole group worked as a team. Barry stepped back and let the other musi­cians play their parts, and at times he dropped out com­pletely to allow some­one else to take over. They each some­times seemed to pull away from the group, doing their own things, but they always came back to where the rest were head­ing musi­cally. What was espe­cially inter­est­ing was watch­ing their eyes. The four of them watched each other intently through­out, mak­ing eye con­tact fre­quently. It was clear that this was how they were stay­ing con­nected and com­mu­ni­cat­ing. It was also clear that no one in the group was more impor­tant than any other–including the obvi­ous leader. In the midst of the song, all four had very dif­fer­ent but equally impor­tant roles, and they all respected the neces­sity for bal­ance and sup­port­ing each other.

I thought about how I wanted my teach­ing to become more like this. Yes, I’m the teacher, and I need to start the learn­ing process, set the goals, deter­mine the struc­ture within which the learn­ing will take place. But once the song gets going, I want to step back and let my stu­dents shine. They each need their space to have a solo, they each need an oppor­tu­nity to sup­port the oth­ers, and it’s my job not to keep the piece tightly con­trolled like the con­duc­tor of an orches­tra, but instead to pay atten­tion to where the group is head­ing, to keep the goal in view, and to help each mem­ber of the class stay in tune with all the oth­ers and help them all land on that final chord at the same time.

Finally, the last thing I noticed about the group was that while they were work­ing very hard and were intensely focused the entire evening, they were hav­ing fun doing it. There was a joy and sat­is­fac­tion on their faces dur­ing every song. They were exhausted at the end of the con­cert, but at no time did any of them seem to lose energy. If I can do that for my kids: give them expe­ri­ences where they pour them­selves into what they’re doing, work hard, and come out on the other end with joy and sat­is­fac­tion, then I’ve done my job.