Trails of Water

"There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind."

-C.S. Lewis

A raven, flying over the Gastineau Channel.

I was talking to one of my six cello students (yay Juneau- thank you for bringing me students!!) the other day as we were packing up our instruments after her lesson, and she was telling me all about her job training and how busy life gets (she’s an adult, and I am greatly enjoying working with my students, who now range from age 8 to 50+). While talking about maintaining a consistent schedule, she named one of the biggest obstacles I have faced and often overcome this year: leading a balanced life. She couldn’t have known how much her statement, “It’s just really important to set boundaries and keep things balanced in your life”, meant to me. And I feel like since the beginning of the new year, I have developed a much healthier outlook on my needs and have been able to keep them fulfilled most of the time. And it just makes for a happier, more stable teacher! So although it is Sunday evening and I feel like there are potentially hours of work to do tonight, I am taking the time to write out my thoughts about the last incredible week I had...and then I’ll see how I feel about doing work. ;)

MusicFest was one of my highlights of the year in so many ways. First of all, taking the ferry was a whole new experience for me, and I loved it! It reminded me of the train with its open, spacious areas. It was obviously even more open and spacious, which was nice- especially since we were crammed in the ferry with our 160 students, PLUS students from at least 4 other schools in Southeast Alaska! Picture large, carpeted rooms lined with chairs facing the windows overlooking the ocean. Then, picture sleeping bags and high schoolers sprinkled all over the floor- in between the chairs, all over the aisles, in the middle of the room. Oh, and don’t forget the two completely overloaded powerstrips students who have obviously done this before brought. Fire hazard much? But yeah, that was pretty much it.

Aboard the Malaspina!

I enjoyed the ride because the ferry was so smooth and quiet, and there were beautiful sights. What wasn’t as thrilling was trying to get over my sickness on that 36-hour ride. Did I succeed? No. Just hours after I wrote my last post, I was casually blowing my nose, as one does when one is sick, and all of a sudden, the world became a lot quieter (too graphic with the nose-blowing scene?! Oh well!). So for the next two days I could hear almost nothing out of my right ear. That got really frustrating, really quickly because it took so much effort to focus on each person to hear them, and it was just not working in the packed ferry. The plus side is, it did help me sleep better the second night when a bunch of the students in our large room decided to keep talking loudly into all hours of the night, even after Sophia and I pulled the “chaperone card” and asked them to be quiet. After that remained ineffective, you know what I did? I snuggled into my sleeping bag in between two rows of chairs, laid my head on my pillow, and promptly turned onto my left side so that I could milk my half-deafness for all it was worth. The ignorant, muffled bliss was glorious. Being a chaperone for a high school trip was a new experience for me, and I really wish I hadn’t been sick for it because it took a lot of energy out of me, and I didn’t feel like I was very good at it! But I helped keep the kids safe, and we all got there in one piece, so it’s okay if I couldn’t hear every little thing they said or I couldn’t get them all to be quiet at exactly 11pm!

I had some great bonding moments with students on the ferry and throughout the week, though, and that were some of my favorite times. I love talking to my students and getting to know them better! And my orchestra students are so respectful and kind. It’s wonderful. :) One of our students ran to find me and Sophia late on that second night (before our supposed 11pm “quiet time” curfew), excitedly exclaiming that the Northern Lights were out! You’d better BELIEVE I booked it out of my seat and ran outside! And there they were. A phenomenon that many people only dream of seeing was spread across the sky in green ribbons. Seeing these magical streaks nestled in the clouds that hung low above the dark water was an unforgettable moment.

The view of the ferry when we first boarded it at 2:30 am on Tuesday...!

We arrived in Ketchikan the next afternoon, and it was miraculously sunny! It actually continued to be for the next 43 hours that Lindsay, Sophia, and I were there. Ketchikan is a beautiful place. It’s smaller than Juneau and much rainier, as it is farther south, so it was really amazing that it didn’t rain the days I was there. We all arrived at the local high school to find that the students had welcomed all of the other Southeast Alaska schools with posters using our school colors, and we were directed to the gym to our “school stations”. After announcements were made and instruments were unloaded from the U-Haul we took on the ferry with us, the kids (and chaperones!) were set free to explore the town before our lovely spaghetti welcome dinner. Our wonderful new chaperone friend/Thunder Mountain colleague, Phil, drove us around town, and we stopped by the grocery store to pick up some snacks. I walked down the aisle, looking for something caffeinated, only to see some of our high school band students hugging a large pile of tea and taking Snapchat photos of themselves with said pile. One of them gleefully said, “Things are so much cheaper here!!”. It’s the little things. :)

Me, conducting the Thunder Mountain Intermediate Orchestra
in our performance at MusicFest!

After we all ate dinner, my orchestra and I went to the band room to run through our four pieces we would perform the next morning in the Library, bright and early. Let me say that running through a program just hours after being on a ferry for a day and a half while also being sick is not a good plan. I started off the rehearsal by conducting the first piece in the wrong meter...twice...and after I looked up to see my students’ faces displaying severe looks of confusion, I realized what I was doing. I just got more nervous and hot from there, and all of a sudden I was dehydrated and beet red, and everything was blurry. And HOT. How did it get so hot in there?! We somehow made it through, but both I and my students seemed stressed, and we all pretty much felt like musical failures- haha! We all laughed about it afterwards, agreeing the rehearsal was for the best. But we also accepted that all of us just stunk. It’s okay, because our performance the next day ROCKED! A good night’s sleep does a lot! But seriously, it couldn’t have gone smoother. I am incredibly proud of my students. We were a true team, and I couldn’t stop smiling when I was in front of them. Our adjudicator was pleased with our sound and energy and had some helpful tips for us; we all greatly appreciated that feedback.

It was not only special to work with my adjudicator, an esteemed music educator in the teaching world, to get her feedback, but also for more personal reasons. Before our performance, I read her biography in the festival program and noticed that she taught in Wooster, Ohio, where some of my family members have lived and gone to school. I mentioned the woman’s name to my parents, and it turns out she is a good friend of my dad’s side of the family because she taught my uncle when he was studying to be a band teacher in college. It was really important for me to make that connection with her because my uncle passed away when I was 4, and I have no memories involving him except a few overheard conversations about how funny, kind, and caring he was, and a couple photographs. I was able to spend a meal talking with my adjudicator about my uncle, learning about how funny, calm, sure, and respectable he was. That meant a great deal to me. I know that he was a fantastic teacher who really invested in his students, which I have come to decide is the most important thing a teacher must do. It feels like an honor to be following in his footsteps and meet this woman who met my uncle when he was just about my age, when he was also beginning his exciting journey of teaching music to kids.

Me and my cello/bass clinic students! They ended up all being
our Juneau kids from the two high schools: TMHS and JDHS,
and they all happened to be friends..they were a lot chattier
than I expected!! Haha!

After teaching a clinic on lower strings technique and another on performance anxiety and stage presence, I soaked in the glorious moments of watching Sophia conduct her two ensembles: the advanced string orchestra from Thunder Mountain and the wind ensemble. Not only was it impressive because the wind ensemble was the strongest group of the night, but also...Sophia had zero wind ensemble experience before this year! I jumped into teaching Spanish to get more teaching hours, and she chose band. It’s pretty cool to see how we have grown by taking those risks. Lindsay, Sophia, and I returned to our Super 8 motel room afterwards and celebrated a great day with McDonald’s milkshakes and long conversations about how we have conquered so many battles this year and where the fight of life will take us next. They “conveniently” (haha just kidding!) drifted off to sleep as I talked myself into a voiceless oblivion (oh yeah- I started losing my voice that morning). At that point, I just received responses of grunts, so I decided it was time for me to turn off my Energizer Bunny brain and go to bed as well. It’s pretty entertaining how much energy I have when I am around people I care about.

I woke up to discover my voice had progressed into “toad mode” (i.e. I sound like a toad when I talk; especially when I laugh! Don’t even ask me to sing...) and also noticed that the rain was starting to sprinkle the land just as we prepared to leave it and return to Juneau. Phil kindly dropped us off at the ferry terminal, where we boarded the tiny ferry that took us to the airport on the island on the other side of the water. Our plane did the “milk run” trip, which involved stopping in the cities of Wrangell and Petersburg before Juneau. We just sat on the plane for a little bit each time we stopped. I liked it because now I can say I’ve been to more places! We also stopped in Sitka and those two cities on the way down, so there you go! I’ve “been” to a lot of different cities in Alaska now. :P

The three of us flew home early from MusicFest to be there for the final rehearsals for our Juneau Symphony concerts this weekend. We performed gorgeous, haunting repertoire, including Elgar’s Nimrod from Enigma Variations and Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem. It was a program of beautiful, glorious music. I can’t even express what it means to me to be part of a group of people who work together to make something truly stunning and moving. Playing in an orchestra is definitely part of who I am; without it, I feel hollow and dim.

The concerts are over, but the playing is not- thank goodness! We have our giant cello ensemble concert that will showcase the Symphony cellists and over 50 JAMM and high school cellists in Juneau in a couple weeks (April 30th at 2pm at Egan, for my Juneau friends!). I also have some gigs (including some lovely weddings- my favorite gigs to play!) coming up.

I also have a feeling I should be feeling really stressed about my final UAS class assignments, and yet I know it will all get done. Sophia and I spent a few hours on the ferry working on our classroom research assignment, which is shaping up to be an interesting project, as we attempt to quantitatively measure the character strengths of growth mindset, belonging, and self-efficacy in our JAMM students. We are furthering the El Sistema movement by using a national El Sistema survey and providing the survey authors with our results- all while creating a stellar class project. Besides that, I have to complete my teacher work sample, which outlines the details of how my unit plan went (which is still going on this week and next! So I can’t finish it until it has actually “went”). Those are the two assignments standing between me and graduation. Oh, and four summer classes haha. But I will graduate FIRST and cross that summer school bridge when I get to it!!

I don’t know how this happened, but I feel more grounded these days- in who I am, and in what I want and need. To me, being grounded doesn’t mean finally knowing who I am or what I want; it is actually the embrace of the never fully knowing. Granted, these are “life lessons” from a 22 year-old. Let’s see how I feel a decade or four from now! No matter what, I am content in the chaos of the unknowns, knowing that God is good, and He has a plan.