A violin teacher's dream

August 23, 2006 at 5:29 AM

I once read that dreams are like letters to ourselves, if we only know how to read them. This one isn’t hard.

I went to a job fair held at a local hotel to look for violin teacher positions. I visited the booth of a local folk music store which has studios for music teachers on its staff and also gives referrals to other teachers. I like teaching music in my own home, but I wanted to consider teaching at a store where students could come to me for a few hours once or twice a week. To my surprise, the set up was completely different from what I had expected. The store had many, many teachers on its staff, and all the orchestral instruments were included. Instrument instruction was given as one big course which was team taught by all the teachers, in a manner similar to survey courses such as Introduction to Biology at a university. I asked how many times a week I would have to come to the store to teach, and I was told “nine.” This did not sound appealing. One of the staff who knew me suggested that I apply for an administrative position instead. The work would be coordinating the music course and would include such tasks as making phone calls, photocopying, and compiling and distributing schedules. In the past I would have shunned this kind of dum-dum work, but I decided that it might be more fun than teaching, so I applied for the job.

A violin teacher's dream

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