Music lessons

Last night, I met a guy who teaches the clarinet. He spoke of his love for teaching in a one-to-one environment. What he said about teaching music resonated with many of my feelings about writing tutorials. In a lot of teaching, we bring an agenda with us: this is today's subject and it's what I'm teaching, like it or not, ready or not. But in a writing tutorial, just as in a music lesson, we meet the student head on. We may have certain things that we want the student to know, but we have to start at the point that the student is at. We have to respond quickly to whatever is happening in the tutorial, reacting to the student's needs or emotions or ideas. To be a successful tutor, we have to be fully alert, and if we are daydreaming the teaching situation will often wake us up. When we are fully awake, time seems to stands still. Several of our writing mentors have spoken of their astonishment to discover that an hour has gone by. They are not thinking about time, because during a good tutorial they have thrown themselves into the tutorial and have ceased to think of themselves at all. When the student is also willing to throw him or herself into the tutorial, then a kind of tutorial magic can arise.

The Americans often use the term "conference" to speak of writing tutorials. The word "conference" is derived from the Latin verb confero, "I bring together", and a conference really is, at its best, a bringing together of student and tutor, a real collaboration (or "working together"). In a world where we spend so much time thinking of ourselves or struggling for ourselves, this can be something quite precious for tutor and student alike.

The tutor and student are not making music together, but they are making writing, which is not so very different. Like music, writing is at its best when it really comes from the centre of the person who is producing it. A good tutor can help the student to become aware of the difference between merely producing words and really writing, between merely producing notes and really making music, really playing. And, to push the analogy further, what is real writing if not a kind of play?

With music lessons, it is obvious that a teacher cannot simply teach music to the student. It is up to the student to learn for himself how to be a musician. The teacher can guide, help and enthuse, but the student has to be willing to make the journey for himself. It is the same with writing. The writing tutor can, where appropriate, offer the student the information she needs to progress - explaining the grammar and structure just as the music teacher explains music theory to the student. However, the best moments during a writing tutorial or a music lesson are not when the teacher is offering information to the student. What really matters - and this is where teaching can become something magical - are those moments during a tutorial when the student experiences for herself what it is like to really make music or to really be a writer. If we experience this for even a few seconds, then we will know that we are in fact able to write or to make music, no matter what we may have been told or what we may have told ourselves to the contrary. Then our attitude to music or writing might change forever. Even if we are still reluctant to admit it, from this point onwards we really are musicians, we really are writers. There is still a long journey ahead of us, a journey that will never end, but now the journey is less arduous, we resist it less and less and the prospect gets bigger all the time.

Now, I am, of course, being idealistic. Not all music lessons are like this and not all writing tutorials are like this. And that is one reason why there are so many bitter and cynical music teachers or writing tutors out there. But music lessons and writing tutorials can be like this and sometimes are like this. But they can only be like this if the tutor and the student allow them to be like this, and for that to happen both need to bring an open mind to the session. Beginner's mind. But I'll talk about that another time.