Why do I teach

“Those who can, DO… Those who can’t, Teach.” Every single one of us in the education field have heard this nonsensical statement ad nauseum. In the beginning, it can make us feel like a failure, ESPECIALLY if you are teaching something outside of the core curriculum (I know, I know… there it is: core curriculum… I spent HOURS agonizing over whether I should write this or not). Physical Educators must be inundated with the same questions as Fine Arts Educators. Why did we not “make it” to the next level where our skills and talents can make a way for us? Who am I to teach and mold young minds? Yeah, Imposter syndrome is a huge problem for us…

Let me stop saying “US” and just get honest: Imposter syndrome has been a huge hurdle for ME… Even with all of my successes with my students (and even my own professional performing career), I still have bouts with IS. It’s not as frequent anymore, but every once in a while, IS will pop up like “Hey mayne,” (for some reason the voice of my IS sounds like Terrence Howard from “Hustle and Flow”), “You cain’t do this. You ain’t ready. Why should anyone listen to you?”

Almost immediately I remember the reason I teach. It’s because of the moment of discovery on my student’s face… The realization that something they thought was difficult, something they never thought they could do; that right now, In this moment… they can do it! I live for these moments!

I remember early on in my career, I was teaching percussion. I am absolutely NOT a drummer. I had one percussion pedagogy class. I remembered how to hold the sticks… I remembered some of the rudiments… I remembered… well that was probably it. This was also before the internet was really useful for anything other than email. I don’t even think GOOGLE was a thing yet… I think the big search engine was “Ask Jeeves” and it was never really helpful for me.

So there I am… In front of a classroom full of elementary students excited to learn how to play drums, looking at me because I was the “expert”. Cue Terrence: “I told you Mayne. You ain’t cut out for this. Now you about to look like a fool and everyone is gonna realize that you don’t know what you’re doing.” And he starts laughing. So I take a deep breath and start the lesson. And they are captivated! I mean I DO teach with a lot of enthusiasm (I am a Que after all- if you know, you know) so I figured that they just love the energy. By the end of class, they have learned how to do paradiddles, 5 stroke rolls, 7 stroke rolls and 9 stroke rolls. And that’s all I really have at this point.

Over the next few weeks, I assess how their rudiments are coming along and I divide them up into different sections. I decide that we are going to make a drumline in this bad boy. Younger children stay more engaged if they are DOING something as opposed to sitting through a lecture. So boom! I have them divided up into Snare, multi toms, tenors and basses. The only problem that I had was that the school couldn’t afford the instruments I needed. All they gave me were some busted down drum sticks and some drum pads (they were garbage). I had to get creative. I built a drum section out of buckets and trash cans. The snares were particularly difficult to figure out, but I ended up stacking two buckets together with some aquarium rocks to mimic the sound of the snares. And it was so much better than I expected! the quads took a lot more work, but my love for engineering (it’s a long story) was crucial in the construction of bucket quads. Basses and tenors were the easiest, they needed no engineering or fixing whatsoever.

Now we officially have a drum line and they have to listen not only to their individual parts, but how it all fits in with the whole. They are about to make a beat… Nah, they are about to play some cadences.

THIS was the moment I truly developed my philosophy on Education: “Students do not know what they don’t know.” I took away the barriers of what they were supposed to be limited to knowing and they FLOURISHED. I was flabbergasted. Outdone. Hornswoggled. Thunderstruck. They exceeded anything I ever expected from them. And the majority of them could outplay me on their drums.

That first performance… Everyone in the audience was laughing at first. What are these children going to do with some buckets and garbage cans? They started playing and the crowd shut right up. I knew it would happen. and I wanted the students to feel the sense of accomplishment of having ownership of their performance. The other fine arts teachers performed with their students; while it gave them the confidence of having the teacher there, it was also a crutch. Not my students. I had 100% faith in them. They counted themselves off, they ended each cadence on their own and they chose which cadence would come next. And they KILLED it!

I reflected back on that first class when they didn’t know anything, and I looked at what they accomplished, and I realized that teaching was not about me. It is about THEM… the students. I am just the guide who points them in certain directions. Educators have to take all of this information and break it up into smaller, more easily digestible portions so that the students can shine.

It is that moment when a students just “gets it”; that moment of discovery. I teach because “Those who can, TEACH.”