I have been surrounded by music my entire life. My father is a musician, and I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, where it seemed that everyone was connected to the music industry in some way. In school, I jumped at the first opportunity to learn an instrument. I was so excited the first time I held my violin, 30 years ago. I was good at school in general and learned like a sponge, and learning to play violin was no different. I ended up playing through the end of high school, eight years total.

And then I stopped. I had no intention of playing professionally, so it got pushed aside. When I found an adult orchestra group for all levels last year, it was the impetus I needed to open that violin case again, and I felt the same excitement as I did that very first time. I was nervous about how much I would remember after all these years, and the answer came pretty quickly—not much. Some things started to come back to me through muscle memory and dusting off old neural pathways, but there are some things that I just have to straight-up relearn from scratch.

Y’all, it’s hard! Learning a skill with precision and fidelity is tough, and honestly, I don’t know how our students do it. Though their brains are significantly more flexible, they learn brand new things. Every day. All day long. The skills I am working on are covered in just one of my students’ EIGHT different classes. It’s a lot. 

This experience of being a learner again has taught me a few things about teaching and learning. 

  • Learning is hard work. Plenty of students struggle every day. Whether due to neurodivergence, circumstance, or task difficulty, the acquiring and constructing of new knowledge can be daunting. For this upcoming year, I’m thinking about how I might incorporate a greater variety of structures to help give students moments to breathe between learning tasks without losing momentum.
  • Chunking is REAL. Since finishing school, I have recognized my own neurodivergence, and chunking large skills into smaller pieces is a life saver! Can I play this Bach piece? Not yet, but I can work on the first section, and eventually, I’ll get there. As a teacher and librarian, I always attempted to chunk information and tasks to make them more manageable, but now that I better understand how crucial it really is, I want to more consciously focus on it this coming year. Goblin Tools’ Magic ToDo is a great resource for this!
  • Instructor patience and feedback are everything. Acquiring a new skill is difficult, but it helps when my instructor recognizes that and patiently affirms and corrects. A teacher who is frustrated by my struggle or who only tells me to ‘keep practicing’ would crush my motivation. Students deserve our patience and empathy, even when it’s challenging for us.

On the other end of the musical spectrum, there are those that first picked up an instrument and never looked back—the ones who make sense of the world through the lens of their music. From a friend’s suggestion, I checked out the Drumeo YouTube channel which, along with other content, features videos of professional drummers learning a song they had never heard. As I fell through a time warp watching too many (I highly suggest the Chad Smith and Nandi Bushell videos), I thought three things: these are geniuses, I have students with similar genius, and all kinds of genius should be honored in the library. 

Our educational system is not designed to respect, nurture, and glorify the kinds of genius that are featured in those videos. I suspect many of those gifted musicians struggled in traditional academic settings, facing disciplinary actions and feelings of inadequacy. As brilliant as they are, they were once students in a school, just trying to make it through the day. Though the similarly gifted students at my school may wish they could spend all day in the music room, they still have to pass chemistry.

So how can we help the students whose gifts are not served by traditional academic coursework feel seen and thrive, showing respect for their skills and pride in their achievements? It often starts with truly connecting with them and taking an interest in their passions. While I have not yet figured it all out, a few things my co-librarians and I do are: showcase student art around the library space, host performances by our music classes during lunches, and attend as many student performances and presentations as possible. Our Zen Zone also provides a calming, self-regulating space for students when learning gets overwhelming.

There are so many different ways to be talented, and I hope all of our students feel valued for exactly what they contribute whenever they interact with the library. Also, learning can be difficult, and I want students to know that they have so much support and encouragement around them to help them confront any obstacle. May we all work to make our libraries not just places of academic knowledge, but vibrant hubs where every student feels seen, supported, and truly empowered to learn and shine in their own way.