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That's what one of my students said to me today on his way out of the last piano lesson (most likely ever), "Have a nice life" .This student had some other, nicer things to say but it kind of drove home that feeling that I may never see him or any of my students again. To clarify, so I don't sound so grave is that I've had the wonderful opportunity to work at a music school in Toronto. Compared to other music school's I've worked in, this has by far been the nicest, friendliest, cleanest and certainly most organized.
Despite all that, my schedule for my (hopefully) final year of undergrad has arrived and has made the cost-benefit analysis a little more difficult. It's always hard to leave students, or to leave a place that I know will have students for me to teach and be a great working experience but I can't manage to split myself. I've moved back home to the GTA so I'll be commuting to the city for school, and attempting to grow my own studio - the cost of running around and being obligated to another boss just seems like overkill. But, since I haven't put in my letter yet, let me just say that the studio was a wonderful place to be and it's possible I could be back there one day.
WIth that said, this student that I had today has been quite the character. Grade 10, a little shy, kind of awkward but very smart and well spoken. He had a very dry sense of humor and really hated finite sentences, so he'd always preface or answer with "I suppose...." Teaching him opened my eyes up to the possibility of what a piano lesson can mean to a student. I'm well aware that most of my students will not go on to study music at a level anywhere close to what I'm studying right now, but that doesn't discredit the purpose of this lesson. I learned awhile back that what D needed (first name initial) was to be in an environment where he had no pressure. The minute I put pressure on him to practice, to change something to be different it almost always fell to pieces. A week after I told him that he should quite piano (which I did tell him), he came back a different person. Able to sight-read hands together, maybe 3 or 4 different pieces a lesson. I was astonished. This whole time I was wondering what I was doing wrong and what communication style error I was making, but really he just needed space. Space to not have to be anything else. It really changed our lessons. D had been taking lessons at this place for maybe 6 or 7 years and said that I had been the only teacher to really get through to him,
I was "Quite possibly the only piano teacher I've ever liked or listened to".
Thanks D.
For the record, I hope he has a nice life too - that all my students regardless of how long they stay, that they have a positive experience with me. As much as I want them to stay and have mild anxiety about them leaving me, sometimes in the grand scheme of thing, the purpose of the lesson is to teach them to embrace what they are not being called to and follow what does call them, in other words quit. *****I listen to a lot of podcasts, one being Freakonomics, who recently did a podcast called "The Upside of Quitting" and I highly reccomend it********