from Kris B.

Last Monday brought with it the beginning of another school year and my return to work after being away from school for three and a half months.  Yesterday, the Labor Day holiday, was ‘a day set aside to honor the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, laws, and well-being of the country.”  With all of that, work has been in the forefront of my mind.

I, like most educators, often hear, “Teachers are so lucky because they only have to work nine months out of the year.”  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy having my summers off, but I wouldn’t necessarily call having them off “lucky.”  First of all, teachers also only get paid for nine months a year.  For most that nine month salary is divided over a twelve month period.  If I want to get paid for twelve months, I have to work twelve months, just like most others.  Almost no one gets paid for doing nothing!  And, during those nine months that teachers are working, our workdays are 14-16 hours a day, maybe more.  All of that time may not be spent at school.  If we are lucky, we can grade or prep at home on the couch in our pajamas with dogs curled up beside us.  I am not complaining about my job; I’m simply stating that with almost every scenario in life, there is much more to it than what  may appear on the surface.

All that said, I do love my job.  Getting to the place where I can do something I love every day, well every day for nine months a year, took a lot of a different kind of work to get to this place.  Last Monday I posted this photo on Facebook with the comment that I now have been a professor as long as I was a student…26 years.  

A friend exclaimed, “You went to school  fourteen years of school beyond high school?!”  (I resisted the urge to say, “No.  Four of them were ninth grade.  I’ve learned that sarcasm doesn’t become me.). Seriously,  I hadn’t thought about it quite like that before, but I guess I do.  Admittedly, the last few years I was only doing research and taking clarinet lessons, but I was still a student; I still was under the spell of a grade at the end of the semester.  Those twenty-six years of being a student are what allow me to now spend every day doing work that makes me happy down to my core.  There were many occasions during that time of being a student where it would have been much easier to throw in the towel and do something else.  Academia, particularly at the doctoral level, is not a place where people always play well with others!  But thankfully, all that is now twenty-six years behind me and I feel blessed to be where I am doing what I do.

I am often asked what I teach.  My response is that I am a professor of music theory.  With a blank stare on the face of the questioner, again comes “so what do you teach.”  I used to go into this long discourse about what music theory is, unintentionally making the one who asked me the question very sorry for having done so.  Lately though, I’ve reconsidered my answer.

For many academics, their expertise in a specific field is how they define themselves.  “I am a biologist that also teaches.”  It has taken me awhile to realize that though all of my training is as a musician and I do teach music, at heart, I am a teacher first.  Music is simply the vehicle through which I came to teaching.  For me, teaching is much more than imparting targeted knowledge; its about equipping students with tools that will enable them to become creative thinkers and problem solvers.  It’s also about being a positive role model.  It’s about being an example in showing respect and compassion for every person in the classroom.  It’s about demonstrating the power of disciple and the power of forgiveness.  It’s about explaining the importance of both success and failure.  It’s about knowing when to talk and when to listen.  It’s about being a caring person.  That’s the real work I do.  That’s the work that all of us should do no matter the job we have.

I feel much more fulfilled when a student remembers me for having let them cry in my office after they broke up with a boyfriend or their parents kicked them out of the house than when they remember augmented sixth chords.  Though I am happy when my students go on to fulfill their dreams in music, I’m equally happy for the ones who have no dreams, the ones who stop by to see me before they make a choice that has only one final outcome.  Trying to give hope to someone who has never known hope is the real work, it’s the most challenging work anyone can do.  

And it’s work we all must do if we want a world that is happier and healthier. 

It doesn’t matter whether you are a teacher, a grocery sacker, a doctor, a truck driver, a homemaker or anything else, respect and compassion for all those we encounter is the most important work that any of us can do.  The hours are grueling; it’s a 24/7 job.  The pay may not be good. But, the rewards are immeasurable!