To all the teachers

with our art teacher.

I think about quitting Mark Zuckerberg’s little social network every time the negatives get overwhelming -- the constant feed of tragic news, the despairing reactions to said news, the insensitive responses to said reactions. 

And yet, I haven’t, because once in a while there comes a positive that reminds me why social networks can be really great. One such positive is reconnecting to people from my past: activity buddies from college, classmates from high school, musicians from long-ago festivals or competitions. Often, we connect even better now, unhindered by the silly insecurities and superficial norms of youth. 

Few rediscovered connections, though, go back as far as the one I just found: my 1st grade art teacher, Mrs. Siegler! 

A funny thing about discovering people from your past is that you also discover yourself from the past. I forgot that I used to be a doodler. I doodled ponies in grade school, landscapes in the middle school artistically-talented program, and mandalas on my book covers in high school.

I doodled even though I knew I wasn’t great at it. My obsessive fussing only resulted in mundane drawings while my younger brother effortlessly threw off art that sparked with life: collage puppets that winked at you, clay pots shaped as wizened human hands, four-foot-tall papier-mâché figurines he set up in the driveway to shoot hoops against. Today, he does insta-sketches for his daughter, like this joyful little guy he dashed off at Christmas.

With permission from the artist.

As a first-grader though, ability doesn’t matter. I loved art class. I loved Mrs. Siegler’s art class. I often claim I learned nothing in public school, but I sure learned plenty of crafts: clay pinch pots and coil pots, wax batik textiles, yarn weavings on cardboard looms, watercolor techniques.

I loved the class so much I came back in junior high to volunteer with a student group called Student Action for Education, which entailed showing up to an elementary school class every week and trying to make yourself helpful. Not sure I was any help, but I did get a kick out of being back in that classroom. All kids need a happy space, and that was mine. 

Over the years, that doodler identity disappeared. Let’s just say doodling doesn’t come up much in corporate law or piano performance (unless you’re on a very long, boring, conference call). But this recent reunion prompted me to wonder: in an era preoccupied with cuts, curriculum, and costs, what is the worth of an early exploration of the arts? What was its worth to me?

Well, early exposure to the arts can have long-term effects, as I know from personal experience. I talk often about how my musical journey began with free piano and violin lessons in an urban magnet school for the arts. I am living proof that early exposure plus innate interest can be an explosive combination.

People also like to talk about how the arts build productive virtues: patience with a long process, discipline to prep and clean up, focus to visualize a result and go for it, resilience to adjust along the way, and (best of all) joy at completing a task and knowing that you made that.

The most important benefit, though, and the one that I remember the best, was the license to explore, free from the standards, tests, and pressures that would dominate school and life so soon after. How often do we get to do that anymore? I learned in that art class that exploring made time fly, maybe even reached that elusive state of total immersion that psychiatrists and pianists call “flow.” If I close my eyes, I can still see the sinks where we reluctantly rinsed our brushes at the end of every class, keenly aware that our time there was too short. Time melted away as we played, even if that included launching clay at the ceiling and squealing with delight when it stuck. Didn’t I become a science major because I loved playing with chemicals in lab? Exploration is the gateway to lifelong interest, or at least to another temporal dimension, removed from worries and cares.

These memories are particularly poignant right now because of all of the kids who can’t gather in art class, who can’t huddle around each other’s paintings of rabbits and ducks, who can’t sink their hands into a block of clay and lose themselves in the tactile delight of endless mashing. I feel for them, and I hope that along with all of the worksheets assigned through the internet that they are also given some ways to explore and create. 

These recollections also strike me differently now that I am on the other side. As an educator, I know how hard teachers are working in the shadow of COVID-19 to give their students as much as they can from a distance, to keep them learning, to monitor how they’re doing without the all-important cues of eye contact and body language, to maintain a semblance of normalcy when their own lives may have been upended. Many of you know all too well how this pandemic has added extra demands to workloads that already seemed maxed out.

To all of those teachers: I see you, and you matter, even and especially if you teach in that spiritual realm we call the arts, because you are able to give your students temporary reprieve from the realities of daily life. Your impact may not be seen today or even this year. Your extra efforts in this difficult time may pay dividends you may never see. But they will emerge across the span of lifetimes. It is entirely possible that, decades later, your students might be stressed, overwhelmed professionals who suddenly remember a sun-filled classroom, tables splashed with brush water, spools of yarn lined up like colorful cornstalks for the picking, the bright chatter of kids discovering their creative potential. They will remember these things and, in a time of trial and tribulation, be soothed. 

Thank you. Thank you for all you do.