The One Room Schoolhouse
When my mom was a girl, she attended school in a one room schoolhouse. As a product of the public school system of the 70’s (in the U.S.), I didn’t understand how it was possible to teach kids of such varying ages and capabilities at the same time. The idea of a one-room schoolhouse seemed archaic and outdated to me.
Though I still don’t know how the various aptitudes of children in these schoolhouses were managed in my mother’s day, I got a flash of insight about how this might have worked when I recently entered a one-room schoolhouse — of sorts — myself.
At the beginning of this year, I joined the Austin Civic Wind Ensemble (ACWE) as a flutist. I haven’t played in a group since high school and I hadn’t been keeping up my skills over the decades, so I was entering this group as perhaps the least skillful player they currently have. I’m not exaggerating on this point and not trying to be humble. It’s just a fact that I’m new to this experience and so I am, at the moment, a flute-playing diamond in the rough. ;)
I’ve already written about the challenges I experienced and the help I received when I hit my musical hurdles in ACWE. The help I received was substantial and even though it’s been four months since I began this journey, I am still learning at least one new bit (and often more) of information every week that is making me a better musician.
What surprised me the most was that this new information doesn’t always come from the director. In fact, most of the time it doesn’t. The help I receive often comes from my fellow bandmates. The folks in this ensemble are quite willing to help others. They share tuning tips, alternate fingerings for difficult passages, and even how to drop notes when needed for breathing or to reduce difficulty for us less skillful players.1
Many of the players in ACWE are former or current music educators and so it makes sense that they would be helping the rest of us. However, I noticed something interesting: Information doesn’t just flow from only the most experienced folks to the lesser experienced folks. Most of the players have an open mind and a willingness to help, so they do help, at whatever level they can.
When I noticed that, I realized that perhaps that’s how one-room schoolhouses worked. Perhaps each student shared the knowledge and skills they had with the younger students or their less skillful peers, leaving the teacher time to pass down information to the most advanced students, who would then begin to teach their fellow students.
Generally, information flows “downhill” from the more advanced to the lesser skilled but the overall secret to success of the schoolhouse is in the less skillful students realizing that they, too, have something to offer those who haven’t yet learned what they have.
That being the case, in any learning situation, there is only one person who is the “worst” and everyone else has something to contribute to the advancement of others. Knowing this, as I sit in an ACWE rehearsal, attend choir practice at RRCC, or participate in a Toastmasters meeting, I realize that I likely have something to contribute to at least one person in the room. To steal a phrase that Charles Eisenstein recently penned, my contribution may be modest, but it is not zero.
Even that limited viewpoint isn’t entirely accurate because the “worst” student may know something that others do not. We each bring a wealth of experience from other situations, education, and life events that makes us uniquely qualified to contribute, even in new-to-us situations.
Take my experience as a newer flutist in ACWE as an example. While I may not have the chops to play difficult passages (yet) on my flute, what I might bring to someone else is my experience of singing with a group. Perhaps I know something about dynamics or musical expression or even how to organize my music so the wind doesn’t blow it away when we play outside gigs.2
Everyone has something to contribute in a world that is, essentially, a one-room schoolhouse. Our ability to learn from others is limited only by our egos. When we take the approach that we don’t know everything (and that’s OK!), we can begin to observe with an open mind and learn from anyone and everyone.
Look around you. Who have you written off as not having anything to teach you? If your mind was open to it, what might you be able to learn from them? If you had something to teach others, even in an area in which you have limited knowledge, what would it be?
As I’ve pondered the concept of a one-room schoolhouse, I’ve tried to view the world in a new light. The prevailing concept of some folks being “experts” and others being “learners” is incredibly limiting and prevents us from taking full advantage of the endless learning opportunities that we encounter every day.
To enjoy the many possibilities in your own one-room schoolhouse(s), learn to be a mindful student of life, sometimes as the student and sometimes as the teacher.
One of the reasons this was surprising to me is because I have not had the same experience in the choirs of which I’ve been a member. My instrumentalist friends seem more willing to lend a hand musically than my vocalist friends have been. Why might that be the case? If you’ve had experience in both situations, do you have any thoughts about why this might be so? Is it just a coincidence, my own experience or attitude, or something inherent is the way that vocal groups are different from instrumental groups?
True story: At my first gig with ACWE and the related Violet Crown Flute Choir, I had organized my music similarly to the way my voice teacher had taught me to do for singing. While a few of the much more advanced players were chasing their music — and sometimes even their music stands! — on that windy Saturday, my music stayed put throughout both concerts, allowing me to focus on making music rather than chasing it. ;)