There are so many dualities in life:
Yin/Yang
Sun/Moon
Black/White
Light/Dark
Up/Down
Inside/Outside
Right/Left
Soft/Hard
Red/Blue
Heavy/Light
Broke/Rich
Fast/Slow
Loud/Quiet
East/West
Life/Death
Grape Jelly/Strawberry Jelly 😏
(The abovementioned list is not comprehensive but just a short list illustrating duality.)
Nonetheless, the duality that I reflect on most is quality and quantity. These quantifiers are comparative, but in my experience, there have been significant times when quality has trumped quantity, even in situations where quantity seemed should reign supreme.
Situation #1- The Largest Choir I Ever Taught In Class Was The Worst!
When I graduated college with my K-12 Choral Music Education degree, I knew I’d teach at the elementary level. In my student teaching experience, I had class hours at all levels, but being in the elementary music classroom felt most comfortable. I taught elementary music for three years before being presented with another opportunity: teaching at the middle school level. I once said I could do high school but NEVER middle school! Middle school was tough for me as a student, so I could only imagine what teaching middle schoolers could look like on the teaching side. (Looking back, I now know you have to be a special kind of person to love the chaos and fluctuation of emotion that teaching middle schoolers will bring. I started to question my sanity!)
However, I’m a person that believes that an opportunity will never present itself unless you’re meant to explore, consider, or take it. After three days of prayer, I decided to take the job! (And I must admit that although I only spent four years as a middle school choral director, that experience taught me the MOST about myself as a career woman. My whole environment was a lesson.)
As middle school teachers, kids will choose your class if they like you. My class was elective, so kids got to CHOOSE to be in my class outside of quarter-long general music classes. That was cool, and I didn’t mind it. I was flattered by it. My choral program was growing exponentially, and I was excited about its rapid growth until the very last year I was there. The year before the year I left, my 7th Grade Choir had NINETY singers sign up and show up! When I saw the number on the list, I was so excited. I’ll never forget when they all showed up, and we had to borrow chairs to fit all the students in the room. Despite the quantity of students, their choir was the BEST behaved choir I had ever taught. The wall of sound they created was mighty. It was an honor they wanted to be in my classroom and trusted me with their voices (aka extensions of their souls). I was sad we couldn’t compete that year because they were impressive. But of course, since we were all having so much fun and making the most beautiful music, those students started to speak with their friends who were not signed up for choir that year and encouraged them to join. I may have even told them to invite their friends to join. I don’t remember, but if I did, in hindsight, I regretted it. That next year, my 8th-grade choir had ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-SIX students signed up for choir. I was initially overjoyed and started planning big things for them, but I quickly found out that some students were there for the wrong reasons. They had signed up for a class they thought was a slack-off class, and we were not going to get to work. They were in for a rude awakening, and so was I. That year almost stressed me out to the point of no return. I put in a transfer request the very first day they were due. I. WAS. OUT! Luckily, an elementary music teacher wanted to trade spots with me. I am forever grateful. And the icing on the cake was that I received death threats on Snapchat from two of those 8th graders because I didn’t put them in all three performances of our spring show. I had to create a system of accountability because our school stage was too small to have everyone on the stage simultaneously. These students inconsistently showed up to school and missed rehearsals frequently. So they got upset when I enforced the consequences. Unfortunately, they were suspended for the rest of the school year, missing the Spring Show and being with their friends as they wrapped up their 8th-grade year. And that was my time to exit stage left.
Small Choir that sings well and respects the rehearsal space >Large, rowdy, and disrespectful choir
Situation #2- The School Day Doesn’t Have To Be 7.5 Hours Long Anymore
The one thing that all of us who have breath in our bodies have experienced is the COVID Pandemic. As a collective and individually, we experienced simultaneous difficulty in many facets of life. Professionally, I was an educator teaching my students online while pursuing my doctorate online and was not given any choice in the matter. Every day, I was learning how to do my job differently, engaging children virtually while engaging my child in person, AND learning virtually in a space where my instructors tried to modify their teaching to fit an online environment. There are no words I can immediately capture that can fully quantify the difficulty of those tasks, among the other facets of everyday life that were being juggled around. Thus, one lesson I was sure would become a modification in the public school schedule was the LENGTH of academic instruction during the school day. Students can learn incrementally and for a shorter time (granted, they’re adequately supported). In my opinion, one of the public school’s functions should be to provide abundant opportunities to promote healthy socioemotional and behavioral development. That’s why I greatly support year-round schools (9 weeks on and 2-3 weeks off). We learned during the Pandemic that students didn’t need to sit and get for that long. For example, the most excellent school system in the world (statistically speaking) only has kids going 5 hours a day (and also offers free college...shout-out to Finland)! If kids go to school for fewer hours, parents could work fewer hours, leaving time for families to enjoy each other. The cost of living would reduce, and there’d be more time to relax and decompress. Only in the ideal world, I suppose. I believe it’s entirely possible with a change of mindset.
Real-World Application>Sit and Get Instruction
Situation #3- Should All the Years In The Relationship Count?
I’ve been in a relationship with my partner for almost 18 years (see the previous blog about our soul collision), and we’ve been married under the law since 2010.
I asked him today: do all the years of the relationship count? He said all the years counted because we wouldn’t be where we are today without them. Most people accept this paradoxical unity by ascribing to take the good with the bad.
I get that to a certain extent, but mostly, I respectfully disagree for one reason: in our relationship, we were separated and had divorce papers on the table. When those divorce papers were on the table, it went from being a loving relationship to a relationship full of discontentment. We were at each other’s throats, and it became all about harboring what we thought belonged to us. Our son was right in the middle of it all. Not to mention, this all happened DURING the Pandemic. Two weeks after being quarantined together, he asked me for a divorce. There was so much to process already, and now…THIS?!?!?!
(Mind you, I come from divorce trauma, as my parents were separated when I was two and divorced by the time I was three years old. It was not an amicable divorce and generated a lot of deceit, anger, and hateful actions between my two families. I don’t remember as many happy interactions between my parents and our families then. My situation brought those feelings back AND some. Still processing it all.)
On our 10th wedding anniversary, I was alone and in mourning. We were still living together, but Raymond had left somewhere. I remember he wasn’t with me and made it a point to be gone. My dog died two days earlier, and I was doing EVERYTHING not to fall apart. Someone had to be there for my son, and I felt I had to be the one to do it. I didn’t have the freedom to fall apart. I didn’t have the freedom to emote. I didn’t have the freedom to stop grinding. I NEVER STOPPED. I took to social media to announce the end of our marriage. With my WHOLE heart, I believe some people were rooting for us to be great, and regarding the great duality of Yin and Yang, I know that some people are looking for us to fail…especially the ones who think they may have a chance with either one of us. I was thankful to receive virtual comfort because I sure wasn’t receiving the emotional comfort I needed in person.
I don’t want to count that year or the other years we struggled/lived lives so parallel and distant that we didn’t even know who the other person was. They weren’t QUALITY years, so why should they be counted in the SUM?
So, according to the law, we’ve been married for 12 years. But I call it 12-2 years…at the very least.
QUALITY LOVE EXPERIENCE>SUM OF YEARS SPENT
Alexa, play “Level Up” by Ciara (song lyrics contain many dualities and are all about quality)
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