Hi, Richard!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  AFAIC one can't be sure who will become a professional
AH>  musician or a teacher or a staunch supporter of the arts
AH>  later on & I owe it to my students to do my best....  :-)

RW>  INdeed, and a friend of mine went in with much the same
RW>  approach, he was a music major instead of pedagogy, but
RW>  fell into teaching.

                         [...]

RW>  This lady's daughter was one of his pupils and sang his
RW>  praises for getting the kids actually interested in
RW>  learning about music.


          I know many others who "fell into" teaching, as your friend did, and
turned out to be very good at it.  If he really enjoyed learning about music &
working with kids, his enthusiasm was probably contagious....  :-)



RW>  I play three or four instruments well enough, but I'm
RW>  not suited to teaching well.  I don't have the patience
RW>  for it, and part of that patience is an impatience with
RW>  myself if I"M not getting an important concept through
RW>  to a pupil.  That impatience with myself for not being
RW>  able to put it across manifests itself in the pupil
RW>  perceiving I'm frustrated with him/her.


          IMHO you have the right instincts!  Years ago I remarked to a friend
that I couldn't always be sure whether a particular feeling originated from me
or the person(s) I was with.  She doubted my sanity.  But shortly thereafter I
found a book written for teachers which said basically what you've said.  If a
student appears to be discouraged, bored, impatient etc. they may be mirroring
what they believe they're seeing in *us*... and vice versa.  The onus on us as
teachers is to recognize what's happening & make appropriate adjustments.

          Abstract ideas are especially difficult to put into words sometimes.
I'm reminded of an incident which occurred when my grade 9/10 band was playing
a tango.  I wanted it to sound sensuous, but not being quite as wordly-wise as
they thought they were they couldn't understand what I meant... and the more I
tried to explain the more frustrated all of us felt.  So I said "Okay, pretend
I'm wearing a slinky black dress."  Then, in my sensible tweed suit & sensible
shoes, I paraded in front of the class with an exaggerated wiggle of the hips.
One of these kids later became a personal friend.  According to his version of
the story, the guy next to him exclaimed "Did you see that??  She looks like a
streetwalker!"  We agreed that the guy next to him was a space cadet.  Even he
seemed to get the message, however, when I acted it out... [chuckle].



RW>  A friend of mine however says I'm a very thorough and
RW>  patient teacher, but that was in another subject, not the
RW>  music.  I"ve come to the conclusion that maybe I can teach
RW>  radio theory, or radio operating techniques, etc. but just
RW>  am not temperamentally suited to teaching music.  THat fits
RW>  too, as I'm the guy who will walk out on a bad performance,
RW>  or a musician failing to tune his instrument properly.


          When we were younger, Dallas & I often heard somebody's fridge or TV
whistling at a very high frequency and level of dissonance.  We'd ask "How can
you stand that whistle?"... to which the reply was invariably "What whistle??"
People who live and/or work in a noisy environment... including music teachers
... tend to become hard of hearing in later years.  Because you have little or
no useful vision I imagine you depend a great deal on hearing to find your way
around in strange places & cross roads safely as well as to earn a living.  If
you get positive feedback with regard to another subject area, what I see is a
thorough & patient teacher with a healthy sense of self-preservation....  :-))




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)