It’s early August, about four weeks before the school year begins, and I’m looking at my class rosters. I’m trying to learn names. Some of the names are familiar. Others are completely new to me. I’m looking at the list and beginning to imagine the students who will eventually walk through the door. I’m thinking about who they are, what instruments they play, what other ensembles they might be a part of, and what they might bring with them into the classroom. In some ways, the school year has already started for me. I just haven’t met my students yet.
At the same time, I’m thinking about the music. What will we play? What themes might shape the year? What might make sense for a class that meets all year, and what might work for a class that only meets for one term? I’m thinking about instrumentation and repertoire, but those decisions are connected to the students on the roster. The music I choose has to make sense for the people who will actually be sitting in front of me. Before I can decide what I want the ensemble to sound like, I have to begin understanding who the ensemble is.
This is one of the less visible parts of teaching. There is no performance attached to it. No rubric. No assessment. No one is watching me study a roster and try to connect names to faces. But I think this is part of the work of creating belonging. Before students can feel known in a classroom, someone has to take the time to know them.
Learning a student’s name seems like a small thing. In a music classroom, it is not. Our names carry identity, family, culture, history, and sometimes stories that we may not know. Getting a student’s name right is one of the first ways we communicate that they matter. It says, in a very simple way, I see you, and I am making an effort to know you.
That effort extends beyond names. I want to know how students see themselves as musicians. I want to understand what experiences they are bringing into the room. I want to know who has been playing for years and who is still figuring out how to hold their instrument. I want to know who is confident and who is hesitant. I want to know who has been waiting for an opportunity to play a particular kind of music and who might need an invitation to imagine themselves differently.
Every year, I also find myself thinking about continuity. I want to build a program where students can grow from beginner experiences into more advanced ensembles. I want skills to develop over time. I want students to look back and recognize that they have become better musicians, better collaborators, and more confident performers. As a teacher, there is a natural desire to build something that continues from one year to the next.
But students don’t always cooperate with that plan.
Every year feels a little bit like starting over because the personnel changes. Students graduate. New students arrive. Some students move between ensembles. Others develop at very different rates. The group I imagined at the end of one school year is rarely the group that actually walks through the door the following fall.
At first, I find this frustrating. I want the program to have a clear trajectory. I want to know where students are coming from and where they are going. But there is something useful about being reminded that a classroom is not a machine that moves students through a predetermined sequence. It is a community made up of people who change, grow, surprise us, and sometimes challenge the plans we thought we had figured out.
Maybe that is part of the invisible act of belonging.
Belonging is often described as creating a classroom where students feel welcome, safe, and included. I believe all of those things matter. But I’m beginning to think that belonging also requires something from the teacher: a willingness to pay attention to who is actually there.
The roster is where that attention begins for me. A list of names becomes a group of individuals I need to learn. Those individuals eventually become musicians I need to understand. And those musicians become an ensemble that we have to build together.
Four weeks before the first rehearsal, I don’t know exactly what that ensemble will sound like. I don’t know what challenges we’ll face or what unexpected strengths will emerge. I don’t even know all of the names yet.
But I’m starting there.
Because before I can ask students to listen to one another, take risks, collaborate, and make music together, I have to do the same thing myself.
I have to listen.
I have to pay attention.
And I have to be willing to meet the people who actually show up.
Ed Castro's Blog 