Tomorrow is the last day of Strings Camp at the Portland Conservatory of Music. I've been teaching there all week. The kids are earnest, goofy, sweet, wild, exasperating, and it's been fun, but I'll be ready for a break. Today, after a particularly wild afternoon, I was seriously questioning whether I'm cut out to teach small children. Then one of them came up and gave me a big hug and said, "Valewie, I'm weally going to miss you aftew camp this week," and I suddenly felt better, and remembered why I like teaching music to kids: they encourage me to have more fun, be sillier, and remind myself why I love music. Maybe we all ran around more than I wanted today, but heck, we had fun, and they learned some rounds and some tango music and who knows, maybe they'll remember it later. That's the thing about teaching: sometimes you just never know if what you're doing will be remembered or make a difference in your students' lives. Come to think of it, they might not ever know either.
A Suzuki violin teacher at the Conservatory is retiring in the Spring of 2007. She, the director, and my co-teacher at Strings Camp have all mentioned the fact that there will be an opening for a teacher when she retires. Hint, hint. This teacher observed me teaching her student (weirdly, this did not make me nervous) and I guess it was OK because today we had an interesting discussion about technique and she spoke to me again about possibly taking over her studio.
There's no way I can do it. 20 more students would put me at 32 or 33 students, plus a high school teaching job on top of it, but it did get me thinking about whether I prefer the violin teaching to the high school teaching (not sure), whether I prefer having health insurance and summer vacation (yes, and yes), whether I would like to teach in a conservatory environment (yes), and how I'm going to continue to balance two jobs.
I can't picture giving either one up. The high school teaching has definitely honed my classroom management, and that has had a huge impact on my violin teaching style. This week I've been giving lessons to a wild 6-year-old who is super-sensitive and has ADD, and it's actually been going very well (I think...). The violin teaching keeps me loosened up and happy, and it's a treat to have students in lesson who what to be there and are excited about the violin, after a day of teaching high school students who would [mostly] rather be out smoking pot in the parking lot or, at the very least, playing computer games rather than learning.
Hmmmmmm.