But one everyday object like an umbrella cannot really be the subject of a big story. It really isn't. But it can be the subject of a kind, short one, in which we find ourselves when we need it but don't have it.
Teaching can be, and for me is, the most beautiful calling of my life. I have the privilege to meet different children and the great fortune to teach the most beautiful instrument in the world, the violin, as a musician. Some people say it is difficult to teach children to play this instrument, but I say it is much more difficult to teach them all the life lessons they need to learn through music. Work habits, precision, concentration, attention, following and following instructions, independence, self-confidence.
Above all, instrumental lessons are about socialisation. Student musicians often have to face group music-making during their schooling. Discipline and self-discipline, adapting, listening, cooperating with each other and with the leader of the ensemble. So that the compositions sound rhythmically ordered and harmonically pure and harmonious. So that in the end the audience who comes to hear us perform enjoys it. So that we are a team, a team that sounds sovereign on stage and at the end bows proudly together to the audience.
Girls are particularly interesting in their teenage years. Flies and fads fly around and around their heads. And in that early stage of growing up between girls and girls... Ugh. Those of us who have to deal with them every day, for years and years, know.
From: "We're broken up forever!", "... um, we're not talking because she said something about me", to "We're BFFs!". (translation: best friend forever, or bestici, or in our words, best friends for life).
Some of my violin classmates are also classmates in primary school, and Naya and Tara are too. With all the social interactions described above.
They swap lessons and extra exercises during the week, often waiting and going home together. Sometimes they are at loggerheads, but despite the explanations I don't know why, sometimes they are besties who sleep over at each other's houses, sometimes they can't exactly get along because they are each doing their own thing. Usually they come straight after school from the Tončka Čeč Primary School to the Trbovlje Music School, because the schools stick together. And so it was that one Monday morning we started our morning on a beautiful sunny day, which lasted until Naya came for her violin lesson. Of course, after primary school, when the day turns into afternoon time. And the weather also turned, changed in a flash. A gust of wind whistled around the corners of the school, throwing a waterfall of rain against the window shutters. Naya and I were finishing our lessons and the rain had not and would not stop. I look at my smartphone, the forecast for the day - heavy rain until the evening.
"Teacher, do you have any apricots to lend me, I came to school without one?" asks Naya in desperation.
"Do you know that I also came without an umbrella? Let's see downstairs if there's any to borrow." Because - hand on heart - on rainy days, these gadgets remain in a bucket at the entrance, without their owners. But not on this windy, rainy Monday; all the soaked umbrellas clearly had their owners that day.
"Naya, why don't you call your mummy and see if someone can bring you an umbrella or come and look for you, because you're going to be really wet, and your school bag even wetter." Oh, my bag was already wet from the spilt water bottle, which Naya explained to me when she arrived breathless in my classroom while the sun was still shining.
Unfortunately, my mother could not help, there was no service, no one who was free to come and look for her. "But you're not made of sugar, you'll get a bit wet..." Well, these words of her mother only provoked a teenage offended reaction and an unhappy look. She sat down in the chair by the door where we put the wardrobe away and stuck her head in her jacket.
"But then will you wait in my classroom until it stops?" I ask. I get such a sad shrug and sad eyes in response. Yah ..., waiting until the evening, and other students are coming to class. "Noup ..." That means - no.
It occurs to me that at the beginning of the downpour, when Naya was just playing her song for the show, Tara called me on the phone to say that if it was really blowing and raining, she wouldn't be able to come. We agreed that if it calmed down a bit, she should come to the violin lesson anyway. A big umbrella, she will.
"Naya, you know what, I'll call Tara. If she comes, we can ask her to bring you a spare apricot."
I call, explain that Naya is stuck at the music school without an umbrella and that she would be grateful if I could bring her one so she can go home.
I'm not making this up, but after that "yeah, I'll bring it, no problem", she was at the classroom door within minutes. And it's not exactly next to the school at home.
By the way, Naya later confided in me that they were not exactly besties at the time. Tara said that the rain had soaked her quite well because her umbrella had turned a bit in the wind.
I. Friendship, collegiality, encouragement to stand by each other, to help each other, whether or not we are on the same page that day, whether we are best friends or slightly worse friends, or whether we are something in between that day. To stand in solidarity, to help when someone is in trouble, if we can. Even if it's just a favour, to bring someone an umbrella in impossible weather. Yes. This is a much greater skill and these are the values that all of us who work with young people should instil in their consciousness. Learning for life. We do not need curricula for that. If we praise them, thank them and show that we value them when they do things like this, these young people will grow up to be good people. Because the world is built on young people. I am really proud to have such kind-hearted girls as my students.
Katja Mikula, 12. 2. 2025
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