For nearly 19 years whilst I was teaching at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music I always knew that I had the teaching job that many teachers dreamt about. I was so busy with a large teaching load at the Conservatorium I did very little teaching outside of the Conservatorium until I started working with outreach students scattered far and wide across NSW.
Now that I spend a large amount of my time in New Zealand as Director of the Christchurch School of Music I have started teaching a very different type of student. To be honest none of my New Zealand students chose to learn from me because of my track record as a performer or a teacher — their parents chose me because I could teach their child on a Wednesday after their jazz ballet class. Teaching wise I was back to where I started when I first began teaching in Christchurch ages 14 – in many respects it was all a little bit humiliating.
Putting this aside I thought of all of those times I had stood in from of my Woodwind Pedagogy classes at the Sydney Conservatorium extolling the great joys of teaching beginners and students.
My students were an ill assorted bunch, the quality of their instruments left a lot to be desired and they just didn’t seem to be very interested. I had my challenges with a deaf student, a blind student and a student who never smiled even when the lesson was over.
I did not let on that I was feeling a bit dispirited and I started teaching with a fury and a passion and yes gradually the students began to respond. I had my beginners learning all the 12 one octave major scales and arpeggios from my magic scale sheet knowing that by starting early with technical work they would improve at a much faster rate. We navigated our way through the traumas of counting dotted crotchets followed by quavers and I taught the high register to my clarinet students in record time. Students who had signed up for 15 minute lessons increased their lessons to 30 minutes and I was getting more and more excited as each week went by.
My 8 year old blind student played Stranger On the Shore in a concert and my deaf student who has a cochlea implant can now play a chromatic scale for two octaves. My senior who has had a stroke can now play down to low E on the clarinet and a young Taiwanese student is sounding like he will be a saxophone superstar. My non smiling student does now occasionally smile now and she has nearly finished learning all the pieces book I felt was way beyond her. New students keep arriving each week and to be honest I haven’t enjoyed teaching so much for a long time.
The students do not see me every week for a lesson as I spend half of my life in Australia so right from the start they have to keep themselves motivated however I do at times when I am back in Australia teach some of them over the internet to check that things stay on course.
If anyone were to visit the Christchurch School of Music this time next year I think they would be very envious of the quality and enthusiasm of the clarinet and saxophone students.
I would like all my old Sydney Conservatorium Pedagogy students to know that when I extolled the virtues of teaching in the community that I meant every word. The power to do good should never be taken lightly by us music teachers.
Mark Walton — just another music teacher.