a moment of spontaneous gratification

i've been tutoring a ten year old named enrique for about two and a half months now. one hour once a week doesn't sound so bad in theory, but when those sixty minutes are spent with a child who is about as stimulating as a pile of rocks, they seem interminable. for a while i wondered if enrique was simply the inevitable product of an educational system that places more emphasis on discipline than it does creativity and i just hadn't been exposed to its eventual effects. after all, one of my primary job responsibilities is making sure children don't joust one another with fiskars, not edifying them.

at any rate, enrique's blandness and lack of desire to learn culminated three weeks ago when he told me that he thought all music was stupid, meaningless and not worthy of time. i asked him why he thought that, and he either refused to elaborate or wasn't able to do so. i then proceeded to ask if he had ever tried to play music--or to even listen to it--and he responded to both queries with an exasperated "no."

i was PMSing, so it was pretty easy to fan my proverbial flames and i probably was unnecessarily harsh on him. i retorted by telling him that if he never tried or bothered to learn or even appreciate music, he really had no room to speak; that music is valuable and worthwhile to many people, that it has the potential to convey emotions that are often difficult to articulate and that, in some ways, it's more valuable than conventional language as we know it. obviously i said all of this in a ten-year-old-learning-english vocabulary level, but he flippantly replied with "i don't think so." flustered, i told him that if he didn't want to try, he was wasting his mother's money and i would tell her so. after a few moments of silence, i asked him what he actually did like. "computers," he said.

the next week, i returned--albeit begrudgingly--but with a new POA. i brought my computer since he's only expressed real interest in materialism and the apple brand and based the entire lesson on online english computer games. and yo-yo ma, though i didn't tell him so. as the games were loading, i began to subtly inject various cello concertos into the lesson. enrique would obviously enjoy the computer-based activity, and so i figured that an efficient and effective way to make him come to appreciate music would be by introducing one of its masters to him in an atmosphere that he already found pleasing. i'm sure there's a name for this technique, but it escapes me.

either way, at the end of the session i turned off both the music and exited the games simultaneously. as i had hoped, he expressed genuine curiosity about the sounds he had heard. i told him that not only was it classical music (which he portrayed as the bane of his existence the week prior), it was bach and it was being played by one of the world's most talented musicians. i also said that, should he be interested, we could discuss music the next week and the vocabulary english speakers use to describe it. he said he would like that very much.

unfortunately (well, fortunately for me since i needed a break), i was out of town the next week. returned today for another english lesson, this time with itzhak perlman and adjective activities. as i was leaving, enrique stopped me at the door. "hold on," he said, "i need to show you something."

he returned a few seconds later with a miniature keyboard and began playing a simple melody. he smiled. "savannah, i can play music."

maybe it's selfish for me to say, but this is the most fulfilled i've felt since moving here.