Category Archives: Teaching

Performing, Teaching

Busy week ahead!

Okay, after a fairly relaxing week, this upcoming week will be nuts!  It’s all due to my upcoming performance with Chamber Project St Louis.  Well, not all–but the extra busy is.  I also have another new student this week (that makes one each week for about four weeks), and that fills up my home teaching schedule until something changes.  I can’t believe how many students I’ve added at home in the past month!  Usually I add more in August, but this year has been different.

I had a great lunch today with my friend Melissa.  We went to Bar Italia and sat outside (it was a bit cool, but nothing we couldn’t handle).  I hadn’t been before, but will definitely go again!  I was starving after my “long run” in the morning (ran 1 hour 10 minutes doing a 8 minutes run/2 minutes walk ratio, nice, slow and easy) and really enjoyed my lunch–food and company.

After that we had rehearsal for the Chamber Project concert.  We’ve been working hard and are down to our last few rehearsals.  It should be a great concert, but I am getting pretty stressed–it’s a big program!  I haven’t played at the venue “The Chapel” before, but people say it’s really great.  If you are local and free Friday night, come to our concert!

What else this week?  Two weddings, lots of running/working out, TONS of teaching as usual (no days off this week) and of course Election Day.  Yes, I’ll be voting.  Will you?

 

 

Running, Teaching

Fall Run

I took a few pictures on my run through the park today.  Ran up to the Piper Palm House and back, I think it’s about 2.5 miles–just an easy run.

 

Entrance (though I took pics towards the end of my run)

 

 

 

Little firehouse near my home

I was happy to get a run in before lunch.  My last violin class this morning was canceled due to a field trip, so I got home earlier than usual.  The kids LOVED the cookies, and begged for more (I didn’t have unlimited amounts, plus I didn’t want to spoil their lunch.)  We played some games today and generally just had a nice time in class, for a pleasant finish to October.

Tomorrow I have a bit of a holiday–parent teacher conferences at one of my schools so no school for me 🙂

 

Practicing, Teaching

Practicing…again

Another Thursday done…perhaps you are tired of hearing me talk about my busy Thursdays?

Today, as usual, my students ran the gamut from “didn’t practice at all…again” to “Wow, I can’t believe how well they are doing.”  Some of them are just doing GREAT, and making me feel like I really know what I’m doing, others…well…we just do the best we can with what we have.  I am annoyed by the non-practicing though…not practicing equals not trying.  And I do try to educate the parents about it.  Some times the parents are first in line for excuses.   I get tired of excuses.   Not to be negative, but if a child doesn’t have time to practice violin, then they aren’t getting much out of the lessons, and might as well not be taking…or need to prioritize which extracurriculars are most important.  I find there is always time in the day for things that are most important, just not for everything.

But I will continue to teach each child the best I can, of course, because that is my job 🙂  I teach the child who shows up that day, wherever they are.

Teaching

Negative Nellies

October is flying by…my busy schedule certainly helps.  Lots of teaching, workouts, and some lovely chamber music rehearsals (finally some real music!).  No orchestra on the horizon…it’s weird how longs it’s been since I’ve played in orchestra.  (It’s also amazing how much the people who actually get to play in orchestra around here complain about it, but that’s another story!)  I “just” teach children now 🙂  Naturally many people assume that means I am not a performer…otherwise surely I would be doing that.  But one of my good friends here said it best the other day…we do what we can to be as happy as possible.  I’d rather be here with Chris than somewhere else, so I do what I can 😉

A few weeks ago someone said to me “oh, you wouldn’t know good playing, you just teach beginners!” (paraphrased, as some time has gone by…).  It still bugs me that some people think those of us who teach beginners wouldn’t know good advanced playing, OR that we don’t know how to teach a beginner so that SOMEDAY that beginner could end up being a wonderful well-rounded musician (perhaps even a nice person, able to maintain relationships!).  The thing is…I prefer teaching older kids/more advanced kids.  I’m hoping in the near future that will be the case more often 🙂  But when I teach beginners, well, I sure make the most of it, because I know (not to sound totally cliched) that they are our future, and they should love violin/music because if NOTHING else, we need to pass on our love of classical music to the younger generations.  So I try to remind myself of how important a teacher is, and try NOT to let the naysayers and negative Nellies (even the ones in my head!) bring me down.  After all, none of us would be where we are today without good teachers in the past.  What I do impacts many people every day.

Teaching

St Louis Ballet School, part 1

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I teach one day a week at the St. Louis Ballet School.  (I teach violin, not ballet!).  It’s a nice place to teach–the people are very friendly and welcoming.  They are expanding soon and I’ll have a new room!

It usually takes me about 45 minutes to 1 hour to get there (in traffic) as it is in West County, out Highway 40. It only takes about 30 minutes to get home after rush hour.

The exit sign!

The school is located in a HUGE strip mall.  Every store you can imagine is in this strip mall.  Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club, Best Buy, OfficeMax, etc.

I have been teaching in the Artistic Director’s office for the past year or so.  Starting in a week or two I’ll have a new room.  Here is where I am right now:

I set up here, facing the student

 

Student stands in this area

 

Piano for me to accompany the students!

 

That’s my room now.  I spend only a few hours each week there.  I am excited to see how the new room compares–I think I might lose my piano, as the piano teacher will have a different room (though can probably borrow when I need to, as we teach on different days for now.)  But I know there will be more windows, and it won’t double as an office, so that’s great.  I’ll post again with pictures of the new room when I get there.

Food, Teaching

Flashback Friday!

I had a blog before this one, and I was just rereading it (yeah, slow night!).  I would like to repost most of an entry from Saturday, November 1, 2008 because it is a really great entry!

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Life in St. Louis

For those of you following my blog…haha! I know no one is. But anyway, at the beginning of September, my boyfriend and I moved to St. Louis for him to play with the SLSO this year. What have I been doing? Well, a few gigs, a few students, and really that’s about it. At first all the free time was really refreshing (I was used to working every day for about ten to twelve hours) but by now I’ve gotten a wee bit bored. So what I like to do is break up my day into thirty minute blocks, and plan activities around that. Okay, not really. But I’ve had more time to practice, sleep, cook, and work out. I also get a lot of business done.

One of the things I did recently was make some delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Only I used butterscotch chips. I’m going to give you the recipe here, because these cookies are truly awesome.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies:
INGREDIENTS

* 1/2 cup shortening
* 1 1/2 cups white sugar
* 1 egg
* 1 cup canned pumpkin
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
* 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, then stir in the pumpkin and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon; gradually mix into the creamed mixture. Stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until light brown. Cool on wire racks.

Notes from me: I did not include the walnuts, I’m not a big walnut fan. The dough turned out really wet, and the cookies do not spread, so you can put them really close together. Lastly, they took more than 15 minutes in my oven, so be sure to check. Even when I took them out I wasn’t really sure they were done because they were pretty light, but they passed the taste test.

I have been teaching a violin class at a nearby school–there are five kids in the class, and it’s beginning violin. I’m not very good at discipline–I tend to let the kids distract me with random questions too much. By random questions I mean questions like, how are bows made? I hate to not answer stuff like that, because I love when kids are curious, but it tends to derail the class. We’ve had about five classes so far. I am trying to be more in charge. I will have to lay down the law a bit more, and insist that we stay on track. On a bright note, the kids are doing well–each week they have met my expectations. I suppose I need to raise my expectations of them!

I also have three private students so far. They are fun–one adult, one high school student, and one 4 year old, all male (a big change for me). The four year old is so fun! At the end of the first lesson, I showed him the stickers, to pick one. He looked through a bit, and then said, “Where are the batman stickers?”. As if, naturally I had batman stickers, and he just couldn’t find them. Unfortunately I did not! Since I was so used to mainly girl students, I had a lot of hearts and stars, but no BATMAN. Since then I have purchased batman stickers.

The other funny story about my four year old. We’ll say his name is Daniel. The second or third lesson, I called him Daniel, and he looked at me, and said “That’s not my name, my name is Andrew.” I was HORRIFIED, worried that I had called him the wrong name, and I looked at his mother to apologize. She rolled her eyes, and said, “yeah, for some reason he has decided he would rather be called Andrew. Just ignore it.” It was hilarious!

Note from Hannah today (not from the past):  I plan to make those cookies again this month, I remember how delicious they were!