Two more weeks of school! I have 8 more early mornings to get up for, and then I’m done with my before school job until the fall.

I remember finding out about this job opening and thinking about applying while we were in Yellowstone last summer. I wondered if I could manage to survive getting up so early.

The fall wasn’t so bad, because it was just teaching from my home, but once we went back in person in January, some of those mornings were really rough. Between getting up at 5:40 am or so, and then having to go out in the freezing cold and spend 5 to 10 minutes cleaning off my car, there were definitely mornings where I swore I’d quit after this one year.

But then the mornings got lighter and warmer, and over time I’ve completely changed my sleep patterns…if I sleep in on the weekends until 8 it feels amazing and decadent, and I usually go to sleep around 10 and it’s wonderful…and did I mention the mornings got lighter and warmer?

And then my students have learned, and I’ve gotten more connected to them, and I got my vaccine earlier because of this job (and getting the vaccine was the biggest thing that happened, of course) and one of them wrote a really wonderful poem about her love for the violin. Basically, I have really grown to love the job DESPITE the early hours, and I plan to continue next year, assuming they’ll have me.

I did decide to resign from Lindenwood University however. I felt like I just had too much on my plate, and something had to go. It’s the farthest drive and the lowest paid of my work, and I decided it made the most sense to leave. I am sad to leave a few students but confident somebody will come in and teach them well in the future, as there are always more good teachers around looking for work. I will still have too much going on in the fall, I’m sure, and I’ll have to be careful not to accept too much weekend work for my sanity, but not having to deal with that commute as well will be helpful on Mondays.

I took a walk with a friend the other day and we were talking about teaching, and how the pandemic has changed our feelings about teaching. I’ve always taught, and mostly because it was a good way to make some extra money, and then because it was something people wanted me to do, but I feel like the pandemic really made me realize that I’m actually really making a connection with all of these students, and in a way I just didn’t really pay attention to enough before. I’m always a little slow to pick up on emotional, human, things…

When the pandemic started and all of my playing jobs went away, all I had was my teaching. And seeing those students every week was a great thing, and I felt my connection to the world through them, and I have realized that these families absolutely kept me afloat during this time, but I think I did the same for them. We held onto that connection, both musically and human, and that was one of the things that held us together during this time. Nobody cared that I wasn’t playing the violin for money, and all of the jobs and friendly colleagues that I enjoyed playing with, that all disappeared entirely, but my teaching stayed, and kept me going.

I also find that, for many students, the more I put into the lessons and the relationship, the more I get back. So it’s a worthy endeavor.

I was watching a seminar the other day online and the speaker was talking about radical empathy, and having radical empathy towards our students and their families. I have operated under this philosophy for the most part, without giving it that name. I have thought of it as “allowing myself to be taken advantage of”…and while yes, I do charge them for no-shows and set up firm payment policies and such, when they come to me with a sob story I usually cave and offer them an extra lesson, particularly if I know they’ve been having a hard time or if they don’t ask for very much from me. And now I have a name for it, “radical empathy” and I like it. It makes what I saw as a negative trait in myself into a positive.

And I also got another thing from that seminar, or maybe another one I watched the same day, which is that it is okay if my students aren’t superstar students, that we don’t all have to have the same goals for our students. I do want my students to be good violinists, but yes, I do want to have them be good humans, and perhaps that is more important. I don’t think that people can only learn to be a good human through music lessons, but it is one way to learn a lot of wonderful life lessons, and I would far rather my students be caring and loving people than be winning this or that competition at a young age. The world needs more loving and caring people. There can never be too many!

Now, this is not to pat myself on the back and say, go you, for being such an awesome person. But to say, if another teacher is reading especially, that not all of the students will learn the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto by the time they graduate high school, but hopefully all of the students will look back on their time with you and have some behavior from you that they will model into their adulthood, and that it’s okay if your students aren’t the best violinists in their city, as long as you are giving them the best you can.

I’ve had parents of students tell me I need to yell at their child more to practice. That’s just not something I’m ever going to do. I will ask them about practice, I will suggest they practice more, I will challenge them to do so, I will ask what are the things holding them back or what are their excuses, but I will not yell at them! There are violin teachers who will, I’m sure, but that’s not me, and I don’t think anybody should.

Anyway, this is a sort of rambling blog post about teaching and stuff, but to sum it up: it’s been a wonderful and busy year. I’ve pushed my students the best I could for what they needed this year, and so many have done better than I could have ever imagined, but I am equally proud of them all for making it through.