In fairly short order, a second gig has come presented itself, and I will now be teaching voice and piano lessons for Bay Colony Performing Arts Academy in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
I don’t know many details right now, other than I’ll be giving private lessons three days a week, for what sounds like a wide range of age groups and experience levels.
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I’ll confess I’m more than a little surprised to be taking on a teaching gig. I had, in fact, made a semi-conscious decision after leaving Bloomington that I would start moving away from educational work. It’s not that I don’t value or enjoy it — quite the contrary. It’s just that, if I’m being honest, I’m not entirely convinced I’m that good at it.
I realize, if you know me at all, what a ridiculous thing that is to say, considering theatre education had been the bulk of my work in Bloomington for the last five and a half years.
But I always felt like that was entirely accidental. I mean, my first education gigs were, in my mind, merely ways to expand my experience as a music director. I’m not trained as an educator, I have no pedagogical or developmental training. I have a genuine impatience for most of the behaviors that are generally accepted as “adolescent”. And my day-to-day language is not exactly, well, G-rated.
But, to my shock, something clicked and the kids I was directing decided they liked me, that they liked the way I worked with them. And so did their parents. Which meant my name got around, and I kept getting hired for more and more educational gigs, until it was almost an exception when I found myself working with adults.
There’s a lot more to the story than that, of course. The total sum of my teaching experience — and the impact it has had on me — cannot possibly be contained in a single post. Suffice it to say, for now, that by the time I left Bloomington I felt very confident in my abilities to lead an ensemble towards an artistic result they could take pride in.
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So why the anxiety now?
Well, because now what I’m doing is teaching one-on-one, which is actually an entirely new animal for me. And, because I’m obsessed with order and precision, I’m nervous about taking on a group of students — mid-term, mind you — and feeling pressured to have a specific, focused plan for each student’s vocal training.
I know I can use the first couple of lessons to get acquainted, to vocalize, to really get to know the students and their instruments. But beyond that? Who knows. I just have to take it week by week.
Eric anderson, jr 