I was having lunch with a fellow music teacher and we got on the subject of what makes somebody good with kids. To be a good teacher, it really helps to be good with kids. Being a good violinist is basically unimportant, because if the student doesn’t see you as a real person, or if they don’t think you are being genuine, or don’t understand them, they won’t pay attention to you or what you are trying to teach them.

I think I’m good with kids because I remember how it felt to BE a child. It’s easy to relate to people when you understand where they are coming from, and weren’t we all children once? I hadn’t really given it a lot of thought, but it occurred to me during our talk that many adults have forgotten how it felt to be a child, a preteen, or a teenager. I guess one of my special skills is remembering my emotions from earlier in life (could be related to my violin playing, as I rely on my emotions to inspire my playing…) and that helps me relate.

“I am mentally preparing myself for the five-year-old mind. I want to come down to their physical limitations and up to their sense of wonder and awe.”—Shinichi Suzuki

Sometimes I feel like I have a much harder time relating to the adults. Maybe it’s because I still feel like a child so often! There’s that famous quote from the bible:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 1 Corinthians 13:11

Why should we put away childish things? In my living room I have the complete Harry Potter series, a Lord of the Ring Pez Dispenser collection, stuffed animals, a couple of tiny sombreros, and a cowbell, for starters. I also have boring adult things like wedding contracts, various legal forms, my checkbook and bill paying materials…but I’d say the childlike items are far more fun. When new kids come in and look around, I like for them to see that I am not so serious about things. Once you relate to the student, then you can convince them to listen to you, to trust you, and to play those 4 notes over and over and over.

I do have a problem though: I want my students to practice scales, but I recall that, as a child, I refused to practice scales. I pretended I did, I blatantly lied to my teachers about whether or not I had practiced them, but I didn’t practice them. But I DID practice them in college, and now I practice scales quite a bit, and I KNOW they are important and good for us, and should be practiced. But I have a hard time convincing my students of this. Perhaps because I remember how much I hated doing it when I was younger. So there’s a flaw here in my thinking…but I try to learn from my students too, in the hopes that I can give them my strengths and not my weaknesses.

Teaching is hard.

It’s hard trying to figure out what to teach a student at that time (and what to wait on), how to encourage and help a student without overwhelming her, how to break a difficult task into small steps, and figuring out when what you are doing isn’t working and you need to go a different way…for starters.

And sometimes you feel like you are failing the student, or that they are failing you (or perhaps that again you are failing them even further by failing to inspire them to do what they need to)…sometimes you feel like the student is learning and growing despite all the idiotic things you are trying to teach them…and sometimes it just all comes together and your heart just bursts with pride. Because the thing is, it really still all boils down to the student and their work.

And then you leave, and on their last lesson, they write you a note (and stick it in a beautiful Indian bag), thanking you. And the note tells you that, in a nutshell, that yes, you are doing okay. And we teachers need and love to hear this. We work so hard, we think about teaching and music all the time, we don’t get health insurance or stock options or paid vacation or sick days, so we really do need this. It tells us that what we are doing is worth it.

And it tells you ALSO that there is so much more to violin teaching than just teaching the violin…that private lessons create a very special bond between teacher and student, and it’s so often about much more than left hand technique or bowings or phrasing—it’s about life, and how to treat people, and giving a child somebody to tell about their day or another adult to bounce their problems off, or showing them how patience and hard work will produce success.

It’s been a hard year for me, and the last few days have been especially tough. But I feel like I am indeed on the right track, and I’m doing okay. Thanks to my students for reminding me of that.

(Chris playing on a tiny violin while we were visiting friends the other night.)

My heart is very full this evening. I think the older I get the more I feel affected by these things 🙂

Teaching violin often feels like a thankless, worthless job. (Like all teachers, I imagine.) Underpaid, often overworked, tired, and feeling like it just doesn’t matter. I mean, who needs violinists anyway? (Answer: we all do, but that’s for another day.)

As you may know, the school I teach three afternoon/evenings a week is closing at the end of the school year (beginning of June.) We had our last studio recital on Saturday. I’d been working hard, the kids had been working hard, and it’s a stressful thing for some of them—getting up in front of everybody, playing their piece from memory (some, at least). Performing is a tough thing! (and excellent preparation for the future…)

I always get really stressed out. Will people remember to show up? Will they bring their violins? Will they mess up and make me look bad? Will the other teachers judge me for having students with bad posture?

And as always, none of those things mattered or happened. It was a great day. My students did their best, and I was a proud teacher.

And at the end, one of my students, after finishing a very musical and exciting performance of the third movement of Vivaldi’s Concerto in G minor…after that, she gave a speech about how much the school has meant to her over the past years (she’s been there since she was 4, I believe) and how much she will miss it. And I got teary. And then she gave me flowers and the above note.

Sometimes that’s all that matters, isn’t it? Making a difference to one person. And I think, at least I hope, that I mean that to most if not all of my students.

Underpaid and often undervalued by society, yes. Thankless and worthless, no.

These next few weeks at the school will be bittersweet.