An Empathy Symphony Connection

I started out writing about symphony, but after I’d been typing a few minutes and went back to read, I realized I had drifted more into empathy than symphony. And truth be told, I’m probably better at empathy than symphony. I look a lot at how what I do fits into the human side of where I am, and I spend time thinking about responses I get to things I say or do; but that probably would be more about empathy and human relations than about seeing a bigger picture or making conceptual connections. I’m looking at how what I do affects other people and thinking about how they will feel about and respond to that. It doesn’t necessarily involve making broad connections – just individual ones. If the idea of symphony, and synthesis, is first about seeing, and then about connecting ideas, maybe this is more of a symphonette, since it’s about making connections to people and ideas on a small scale with a larger picture in mind.

If I want to work well within my building, I know I need to understand the people I work with, big and small, and be able to connect with them and even understand how they connect with each other. To the extent that they don’t get me and I don’t get them, we’ll probably struggle. If I only look at how things impact the band program, it’s going to be hard for me to foresee challenges that may come up related to how other people will react. I need to always be thinking about how what I do will impact other programs, and maybe especially other people’s daily school life. To the extent that I can do that, I will probably get more long term buy-in and therefore support. I think the same idea holds true for connecting with my students. I love playing the oboe, but not necessarily for the same reasons a third grader is motivated to learn the trumpet. If I assume the same things motivate us both, I’ll probably miss the mark and they’ll eventually lose interest. But in that light, if I don’t see for them the big picture of what is possible, and let my teaching be guided by that, whether or not those things are part of their 3rd grade goals, I will probably limit them because I won’t be helping them prepare for goals they may have later, and maybe that connects back to symphony as well.