Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Memoirs of a Piano Teacher...

"Not Intended for Younger Audiences"
(especially the ones I teach...)

It's the beginning of my fifth year as a piano teacher. Holy crap, time flies. Each year I wonder, "Will I do this again next year?" When I tell people that I'm a piano teacher, they usually say things like, "Oh, you must really love kids!" or "You must be really patient." As time goes on, I begin to question some of these hasty assumptions made by the general public. If you stood inside my head for a couple of lessons, you may soon realize that what is often interpreted as "patience" is really just "commanding your tongue in a split second to not say what was on the very tip of it to say and dying to erupt." When they play their song, and it sounds exactly like it did the week before, I split-second command my hands to just rest peacefully in my lap instead of taking the student by the shoulders and shaking them violently for the rest of the lesson. Or perhaps patience could be perceived when really, I'm forcing myself to remain calm in demeanor though I feel like smashing a baseball bat against the wall when I've explained something three times and it still seems I haven't explained anything at all.

So perhaps I'm in need of some anger management (or maybe just impatience management, if they even have that?) Or maybe I just need to keep looking for the good stuff, which really does exist, with more hopefulness. Even if it's just in the fact that most of my students seem to like me, and come to their lessons with a smile on their face rather than looks of extreme terror. And young aspiring "Johnny", who walks into his lesson and tells me he likes to get there early ahead of his brothers so that he can listen to me play while he waits outside the door.

And maybe sometimes if I do let relay the honest comments, they'll know I'm not really the ignorant softie my kind exterior might otherwise communicate... Ah, teacher growing pains.

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