THE NEWSPAPER CLIPPING

The music teacher was on her usual rounds, making a difference out there in the community.

“Overseas...” she said with a new kind of sigh, and paused.

There was a murmur of appreciation, but some kept their eyes on the food tray.  Teachers had spent long hours holding the line from the front.  Overseas?  Home had its own challenges. Escapism rarely helped.

“They wore their own clothes, and we were paid well.”  Her fingers touched the embroidered logo on the lapel of her freshly washed eco-cotton top, while the words industrial blue settled uneasily.

“It isn’t about the uniform,” she explained.

The teachers took careful bites of salmon delicacies, sipping Lindauer and apple juice from narrow flutes, avoiding eye contact.

It was Friday’s Happy Hour in the staffroom — that brief hour when barriers came down and conversations flowed that would never happen midweek.  The week had earned its reprieve.

Her gaze drifted somewhere far away.  "It’s about a sense of self.”

Tom, the English teacher — the one campaigning to introduce the Cambridge exam and facing resistance at every turn — hesitated over the salmon tray.   He frowned, eyes gathering those around him.

“You need to listen to this.”

There was already enough them and us going on.  But every child counted.

The small gathering watched to see if she would slap the file in her hands down like a gavel.  Instead, she threw both hands into the air, still gripping the folder tightly.  Her eyes blazed with undisguised passion.

“The problem,” she said, voice growing stronger, “is that this uniform represents slavery.  Silence.  Being under-appreciated.  Misunderstood.  Just another wheel in the economic machine.”

“The conservatoriums were the same.”

Two more teachers entered, unzipping heavy coats and dropping them onto the magenta-coloured chairs.  They reached for the crystal-clear flutes — Lindauer, apple juice, and the occasional merlot.  Better for heart health, someone had once said. Something to do with grape skins.

“Professors drilling into minds what was good for some — harmful for others.”  She paused.  “Leschetizky, on the other hand...”

Everyone knew the story by now.  Theodor Leschetizky — Polish pianist, champion of expression.  Mentor.  Therapist. Father figure.  Even the students had started quoting him after last week’s speech competitions.  A breath of fresh air after days of frustration and cramming.

She shrugged, turned away, and placed the file neatly behind the chrome sugar, tea, and coffee pots.  Her eyes narrowed at a greasy fingerprint on the countertop.  She swiped it with her fingertip, then wiped it down with a cloth.

That was better.

She would make a difference.  Music was discipline — yes.  And thank goodness for that.  But why was it still such a fight to be valued?

Aren’t we all being poured into the same funnel?

She remembered the song playing on her car stereo that morning.  “Dynamic,” the DJ had said.  Something about letting your light shine.  She unbuttoned her smock and laid it aside. Her fine merino top matched the deepening blue of the evening sky.  She turned when the door opened, and a child with a limp and oversized glasses entered.  His frames sat loosely against his cheeks like supportive props.  His eyes grew wide when he saw her, and she beamed back.

The Special Needs child.

No — not special needs.  Just special.  Like all of them.  Learning to be true to themselves.  Improving, even on the days when no breakthrough seemed in sight, because they know they’ll succeed eventually — not in league tables, not by test scores — but in something real.  Success, and celebration, for certain.

The atmosphere had changed.  The music teacher had shown a side of herself they hadn’t seen before — and they liked what they saw.  The music block, nestled beneath the old pōhutukawa tree, sat apart from the other classrooms across the carpark and was open to the elements, just like her.

She poured herself an apple juice and reached again for the file.  Opening it, she drew out a sheet of paper, divided it into sections, and handed it around.

“It’s a lottery,” she said.  “We all get to choose life — but that means knowing who’s on our side.  For the sake of the children, the teachers, the parents... anyone who cares.”

A newspaper clipping slipped from the folder and fluttered to the floor.

The principal stooped to retrieve it.  His crease-free suit gave him a look of authority that was accentuated by his ability to communicate to those around him with as few words as possible.

He laid it on the kitchen island.

Staring out was a richly coloured image of a child cradling a smaller child with a head that was tightly bandaged.  Both their eyes were wide with fear.  Behind them it was clear that they lived in a war-torn corner of the world.

The room fell silent, save for the strains of Bach's Violin Sonata in G minor, the Fuge, in which voices in dialogue cried out passionately what couldn't be uttered in words.