Practice

Practice has never been something I’ve been good at, or something I felt particularly compelled to do. At least, I’ve never felt compelled enough to do it. When I first began playing a musical instrument at the age of 7, practice never seemed that important.

I liked playing music, and I wanted to play my instrument well, but the repeated painful practice over and over of something I didn’t know (or something i did) never grabbed me. I didn’t enjoy it, and I do not think I really grasped, at that point, a reason to do it. My parents, also, though they may have nagged me a bit to practice, never really forced the issue or held me to it. I do not think, that at the age of 7, they felt it was something they needed to put the pressure on me for.

This is all well and good, but never receiving the pressure, or feeling the importance at that young age, I don’t think it is something I ever caught on to. This is not to say that now, as an adult, I cannot detail the importance of practice. I just do not think that I can put it into practice. I am not practiced at practice.

I have gone on, after that first musical instrument, to dabble in two more–but with lack of steady practice I have never been very good at any of them. Also, I have a messy house (and had a messy room as a child) because I did not practice at cleaning. I did not practice sports, because they did not interest me, and was only a school athelete for one term in high school. I did not practice my multiplication tables in third grade, and though I was always a good math student, I was never a fast one. It probably took me well into my twenties to master 8×7 for certain. Practice has never become a habit or a routine for me, and I suffer some because of it. I always thought I would like to be a writer, but this to, would take more practice than I currently put into it.

When it comes right down to it, the only thing I have ever done a really great job of practicing at, is being a teacher. First of all, in college, they made me practice in numerous education courses teaching lessons to my classmates and tutoring students at local elementary schools. (Not, of course, that this is anything like actual teaching, but I guess you could call it practice anyway.) Then, as I was nearing the end of my college career, there came the fateful semester when I was required to “practice” as a student teacher. While this is in an actual classroom, in an actual school, with actual students, it too bears little resemblance in many ways to “real teaching” that is done as a teacher, but it sure is a crash course with lots of actual practice doing the deed. I practiced more,later, as a substitute teacher when I could not find a job in the saturated local job market when I graduated. And I practiced, as it turned out, even more my first year teaching. And my second. And my third.

In fact, as it turned out, teacing is something that I get to continue practicing every year. It is something I am continually practicing with each new batch of students, and every year I get a little better. In teaching, my practice and my craft are one and the same (often), and I am living my practice every day. The practice is not removed from the “performance,” such as it is.

This is something that I could’ve stood to learn earlier, and it is something that I could put to use in writing, or cleaning, or any number of other things I wish I did, or wish I did better. If I practiced cleaning, I might not immediately become a good cleaner, but I would have a cleaner house. I think the parents of the Suzuki violin students I saw the other day at the farmers’ market had the right idea.

As I rounded the corner of a vegetable stand bearing tomatoes, and peaches, and everything else in season, by the fresh bread I saw two children somewhere between the ages of 5 and 9. In front of them there was a container where they were collecting money from kind passers-by as the played. And what were they playing? Their violin practice, I am pretty sure. Mom was paging through their song books, helping them find a song in this one, and another in that one. But what wafted out was the strands of Suzuki method music I recognized from my own childhood. Practice? Sure! But it wasn’t a chore. It was a nice Saturday outside in the fresh air at the farmers’ market–and a way to earn a little money!