Building Trust

Author: Amanda Goodwin

For the past two months, I have been teaching two Latina middle-schoolers how to play the violin as a pair, rather than just individually. So, occasionally they would speak to and make fun of each other in Spanish. Unfortunately, I never learned Spanish (I wanted to take Japanese in high school, but opted for Latin because I was told it would help SAT scores) so I would feel awkwardly left out. Over the course of these two months, I had been thinking that I should ask them what certain words are in Spanish as a way to connect with them, however, I didn’t know how to do so organically. During my most recent service, one of them took that first step for me.

I was going over the piece they were playing for class and trying to get them to play as much of it as possible without having to stop completely. My goal, aside from making sure they know their part, is to train them to jump back in if they do stop because of a mistake. As it usually goes when we’ve stopped playing, the two girls teased each other for their mistakes, some of it being said in Spanish. This time, one of the girls said a Spanish word and quickly explained to me that it means ‘be quiet’ (unfortunately I don’t remember what the word was, but maybe I’ll pick up a few words sooner or later). I didn’t give it a lot of thought at the time and continued the lesson.

It was only later in the day that I realized what a significant moment it was. It was a quick and small moment, but I realized that she had taken a step of letting me further into her world. I had built enough trust that one of them was willing to explain something they were saying. It was an overwhelming revelation for me and I feel so humbled by this small showing of trust.