My high school’s marching band director once advised me that “becoming a music teacher because you like music is a lot like becoming a butcher because you like cows.” Clearly I did not take this advice to heart, but I admit there is some truth to it. Teaching music takes patience, perseverance, and a willingness to see something you love be (occasionally) destroyed beyond recognition.
But so does learning music! Anybody who has ever picked up an instrument or a piece of sheet music has seen, firsthand, the long and winding journey of music education. As a teacher, I subject myself to this journey over and over again. I get to join new musicians as they take their first steps and I get to be the person who offers them advice and tools to help them along their way.
LESSON 1 – I LOVE THE JOURNEY
I’ve learned a few important lessons about myself through teaching, but this was the first — I love to teach! Practically speaking, teaching music has forced me to keep sharpening my musical skills and building my performance repertoire. And on that note, it gives me the financial freedom to choose when and where I want to perform. Because I don’t rely on performance opportunities for the bulk of my income, I can focus on artistic pursuits that truly interest me.
But more importantly, teaching provides me with ample opportunity to share one of my deepest passions with the world, to take what I used to do alone in my room where nobody could hear me and to add to it an element of community. It allows me to show people what I love about music. It’s hard to beat a reward like that.
LESSON 2 – BURNOUT IS REAL
One thing nobody mentions about doing what you love is that it’s exhausting. Putting together a good class means putting in the time at home to work through everything that might go wrong. It means practicing songs. It means tightening up skills. And at the end of a long day of teaching, I rarely have the energy left to go home and play even more music.
So what do I do about it? I allow myself to take breaks. I care deeply about bringing my best self to my classes, so it’s my responsibility to make sure I keep that version of me clean and healthy, both for my sake and for my students’ sake. There’s only so much music-making I can do before I burn myself out, so when I need to say no, I say no. I find other ways to make money and I find other ways to express myself. That way, I can keep loving what I do.
LESSON 3 – THERE IS ALWAYS MORE TO LEARN
This one is not really a “lesson I’ve learned” so much as it is a lesson I continue to learn several times a day. Nobody’s perfect. There is a LOT I don’t know about music, but I’m nothing if I’m not a good learner. My first real trial at Mister John’s was during my training when John had me sing a Phil Collins song in one of his early childhood classes. I’ll never forget the stress I felt that night before, just going over the song again and again, hours past my normal bedtime. I thought to myself, “If it’s taking me this long to nail down one little song, how I am ever going to find the time to prepare a whole new class every week?” But as time went on, I figured it out. I discovered my process. And now I can bring those skills into the classroom and help my students discover their own processes. Or as Phil Collins put it, “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”
When I think back on the best teachers I’ve had, I recognize they all had enough confidence in their knowledge to humbly admit when something was outside their wheelhouse. One of my favorite music teachers would say “I don’t know, but I can know by next week” and I think that’s exactly the right approach. If I had to pick an analogy, I would say I feel less like a butcher who loves cows and more like a librarian who loves books. My job isn’t to cram all of the knowledge into my brain, but rather to organize it. To know where to put it, and when to put it there. And that’s a job I can feel good about.