The Art of Teaching Music

1. Teacher

one teacher The role of teacher is one of many facets of our lives or one of several functions that we fulfill as human beings. It is important to discover what it is to be a teacher and what place this persona will play in the totality of our lives. How we conceive of this function and its location in lived life determines how we go about being teachers. Will it consume us utterly, will it have a central but circumscribed role, or will it be an activity that is marginal to our purpose as creative musicians or ancillary to other things? Practically speaking, what a teacher is and the place of teaching in our lives are interconnected matters. There is no one answer to these questions and we need to discover answers for ourselves. What follows are aspects that I have discovered to be important in my role as a teacher, namely, being true to oneself, learning to listen to one’s inner teacher, accepting one’s limitations , teaching to one’s strengths, keeping an open mind, and developing one’s art-craft. As a youthful teacher, I was inclined to devalue teaching. It came easily to me. The study of education was very accessible compared with my other subjects of study and I did not respect what came easily. It took me many years to come to see how invaluable is its work, how imperative is its mission to the wider life of music and culture, and how widespread an activity it is in our daily lives. I first learned to teach from my father, who was a teacher before me. As early as I can remember, I watched him teach. He was an expositor—a teacher gifted with the ability to break difficult things down into simple elements and present them in a clear and logical manner. I saw him preparing to teach, taking his students seriously, preparing outlines for their study, and teaching them for the long haul rather than for their immediate gratification. I suppose this extended apprenticeship , watching and listening over many years, led me to expect that teaching was the most natural and the easiest thing to do. I confess that I did not learn very much that was new during my teachers college experience . Much of what I learned confirmed lessons learned intuitively and very much earlier as a young girl. I also learned a repertoire of sophisticated vocabulary to describe what were essentially very simple concepts. And I learned sets of rules for how I should conduct myself in the classroom . When I became a teacher myself, I quickly discovered that my father’s style and the rules I had been taught at teachers college did not fit me. I had learned rules set up by men and I had watched a male teacher at work for many years. Here I was as a woman trying to fit myself into a model prescribed by men. I was a square peg in a round hole. Madeline Grumet describes my experience when she writes about school being our “father’s house.”1 For me, it was just that. It was a place where I aped what I saw men do even though it felt all wrong for me. Having never seen, heard, or read the work of outstanding teachers who broke these molds, I had no idea that there could be other ways of being a teacher and doing the work of teaching . And it seemed that to be myself as a teacher I would have to “transgress ” the rules I had been taught to follow.2 Being True to Oneself The answers to the questions “What place will teaching have in my life?” and “What will be my approach to teaching?” are first found in discovering who we are. We cannot teach like another because we are not that other, so we need to discover who we are before we can be great teachers. What do we love to do? If I love to do something, it is for me a form of play. It grips my attention, and the time seems to pass rapidly because I am intently focused on what I am doing. It is as intellectually, emotionally, and physically exhausting as it is restorative and exhilarating. There is a sense of ease, artlessness , and self-forgetfulness that transforms ordinary and prosaic activities into moments of pure joy.3 The closer I come to doing the things I love to...