My Heroes: Private Music Teachers

When I do workshops for my colleagues, the response is usually terrific. The kids are inspired, they are pleased with their performances and my response to them, and the teachers tell me it is a wonderful experience for everyone.

Hearing the students of my colleagues perform the music they have learned and being in a position to comment about their accomplishment is a great privilege and carries with it a tremendous responsibility to do no harm.

As a teacher, I know how vulnerable my own ego is if anyone else is going to evaluate my students. Only I can know how much each one is trying his or her best, how much I care for them and how proud I am of their efforts. No one else can possibly know the background, family and/or musical, of that student, and what challenges that child faces on a daily basis. Every step of progress is a victory for them and me, regardless of how it seems to the outside world. Therefore, to let some outsider have the possibility of seeing only the snapshot of that moment and to judge it from their own point of view, is a risk that a teacher needs to be confident of taking.

We all know that a careless comment can not only wound but scar for years, if not life. Further, those comments can destroy the relationship between the teacher, student and parent. It is not unknown for students to quit the teacher and even music altogether after a negative, relatively public humiliation.

Explicitly stated to the teachers ahead of the event, my only goal is to enhance the relationship between the home teacher, the student and the parents. My ego has no place at a workshop: the experience is definitely not about me. My job is to help the group celebrate their accomplishment and what a joy that is!

We teachers of Mastering the Piano believe in teamwork and that each part of the team is necessary and valuable. It takes the contribution of all to cause any progress in learning for the student.

It is the home teacher, though, who sets the tone and provides the impetus for learning and my admiration for my teacher colleagues is limitless. They are the ones on the ground forty or so weeks a year, often for up to fifteen years with some students. They are the ones planning a long-term trajectory for each student, a year-long goal and each weekly lesson. They are the ones listening to the no-practicing excuses, being exposed to whatever virus is raging through the schools, lending a sympathetic ear to the loss of a pet, and being a cheering section for the victories, musical and personal. They are the ones constantly learning and growing, paying to go to workshops and conferences, spending huge amounts of money to buy new and exciting materials for the kids. They are the ones who can compartmentalize their own challenges in order to be fully present for each lesson of the many students they teach each week.

They are my heroes.