By Khalida Sarwari
Benjamin Zander came to town to give a talk on “the art of possibility.” By the time the audience of nearly 500 walked out of the Los Gatos High School Auditorium on the evening of Oct. 7, they knew how to sing “Happy Birthday to You” not just one, two or three, but four different ways. The students in the audience learned the easiest way to get an A. And an aspiring cellist learned how to fine-tune his performance.
In between all of that, they listened to Zander, renowned conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, play Chopin. And they heard such life lessons as how to overcome failure and silence the voice in one’s head that criticizes and compares every move one makes.
The next time you make a mistake, Zander advised his attentive audience, tell yourself “how fascinating!”
“Because you’re going to learn something from that mistake,” he said.
On the topic of getting an A, Zander said when he starts his class at the beginning of the school year, he gives all his students an A–on the condition that they write a letter addressed to themselves six months in the future on how they got their A. In the letters, the students write about their strengths and how they’re going to achieve their A.
If the students can see how they are going to achieve a goal, they are more likely to achieve it. Or as Zander explained, it’s a method to give students “a possibility to live into” rather than “an expectation to live up to.”
“What happens when you give an A to somebody? The relationship is transformed,” he said.
There was hardly a moment when the audience was not clapping or laughing or standing in response to something said by the energetic and inspirational speaker.
One audience member named Gordon was celebrating a birthday. Zander brought him to the front of the auditorium and conducted “the most impassioned rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ that the state of California has ever seen.” Everyone stood and sang, with their arms extended toward Gordon. “It’s very unlikely that Gordon’s going to forget that,” Zander joked afterward.
Zander used the moment to illustrate the crux of his presentation: the power of possibility, opportunity and perception. “You can choose every single moment of every single day,” he said.
The program was cohosted by the Saratoga High School PTSO and the Los Gatos Parenting Continuum, a community alliance consisting of–among other groups–the Los Gatos High School Parent Education Council and Counseling and Support Services for Youth, or CASSY. According to the Parenting Continuum, Zander was invited to give a talk at Los Gatos High for his ideas and messages, which are aligned with Los Gatos High School principal Markus Autrey’s principle of helping students focus on their strengths by replacing negative messages with more positive ones.
