Guest Post by Jeanne Marie
Proud Teacher, Part 1 – Train Your Own Replacement
When I was in high school, my high school choir director singled me out during my freshman year, and started giving me weekly voice lessons after school. I was grateful, but didn’t think too much more about it – she was my teacher, she gave lessons to a few others on occasion, I liked her, and I liked the lessons. What was there to think about? This went on the entirety of my high school years, and she never charged me anything for the lessons. It wasn’t until I was in college and had to pay for voice lessons – and saw how MUCH I had to pay for voice lessons – that I started to get a glimpse of just what kind of investment my high school teacher had made in me, and what it had potentially cost her – free weekly voice lessons for four years?!?! Had she charged me, the income probably would have been welcome to a young high school teacher – but, had she charged me, I might not have been able to take them.
That realization made a pretty deep impression on me. According to my mom, my high school teacher had told her when I was a freshman that I had the potential to be a professional musician (neither of them said a word of this to me until long after I was out of high school, of course). I think that, in a lot of ways, my teacher felt that she was training her own replacement – teaching someone who would be able to continue the work of teaching music, even if I couldn’t afford to pay for the instruction at the time. Truly, an investment in the future, and one that she wouldn’t be sure would pay off for years.
Many years later, I found myself working at a smallish Catholic church, and within my first three months there, was asked by a parish mom if I offered voice lessons – her oldest child, eleven at the time, was interested in learning how to sing. When mom asked me how much I charged, I hesitated – pricing myself as a teacher has admittedly never been my strong suit, but in addition, I knew that this particular family had 5 kids, another on the way, and survived solely on the salary of dad’s high school teaching income. I told mom that we’d start with five dollars a lesson, and go from there. Within the first month of teaching Alex, I recognized what my high school teacher must have seen in me so many years ago – the potential to make it as a professional musician. And, I made the decision to “pay forward” the investment my high school teacher had made in me. I told mom that we could dispense with paying for lessons, since their family was part the church I served.
For the next seven years, I gave Alex free voice lessons. I invited her to become a Cantor in the parish at age 12. I told her about opportunities to audition for national high school choruses, and helped her to fill out the applications (Alex participated in two such choruses during high school). And, when Alex was a junior in high school, I helped to evaluate various college music programs. When Alex was accepted into a local college’s music program, and given significant scholarship money to attend, I think I was probably prouder than Alex’s parents – after all, I had succeeded! Alex was not only entering as a Vocal Music Performance major, but had plans to work in church music post-graduation!
Roughly half-way through Alex’s first year, I received the following email:
“So I found my [high school] senior solo cd and popped it in. OH MY GOSH! I’m so terribly flat – terribly because it’s just a hair flat in some places. *facepalm*… I can’t believe that it was only last summer…like before I came here. My voice has grown up so much since then it floors me. Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for hanging in there and teaching me for so long! I now REAAAALLY appreciate it! :)”
Talk about a Proud Teacher moment!
I think it’s more important than people realize to train your own replacement. None of us are going to be around forever, after all. But, training your own replacement doesn’t always involve simply teaching someone to do the same things you do. I think that training your own replacement can and should involve helping someone else to catch fire about the things you are on fire about. Giving someone insight into the passion and excitement that turns us onto whatever it is we are turned on to is something that all of us can do, no matter what it is we do! As many on this forum have related, there are more fun and exciting things to learn/do/see than can be comfortably accomplished in one lifetime! That’s the best kind of replacement training, I think – teaching someone else to love not only the things that we love, but showing them how to love learning and doing and seeing!
Alex, a sophomore now, performs in a musical this Wednesday, and I will be in the audience. It’s a joy and a privilege to be able to see my [former] student up there, wowing others with prodigious talent. I truly look forward to seeing what Alex makes of all this talent and training, and how her musicality continues to grow. My student, my replacement – one and the same!
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