Klarinet Archive - Posting 000216.txt from 1998/09

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Teaching Lessons
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1998 23:52:20 -0400

At 08:17 PM 9/6/98 EDT, Lelia Loban wrote:
>Even a good teacher can have some quirks that mess students up bigtime. I
>loved my childhood piano teacher, a sweet-natured man who probably never
>yelled at or belittled a student in his life. No, his way of expressing
>disappointment was to start sobbing quietly, as in, "How can you do this to
>me?" I would practice my hands off to avoid that!--but in the long run, I
>ended up catching his awful stage fright from him and quitting music for
years
>because of it. (I'm not shy in most areas of life.) I think that for all
his
>good intentions and enormous skill in imparting knowledge, he may have done
>more damage than the ogres. Stable, healthy kids will push back against a
>meanie. Some of my best teachers were Grade A jerks.

Yes, but what about the rest of us? Those of us who have fought low
self-esteem all their lives would be CRUSHED by the same techniques, just
as you were harmed by your teacher's tactic. Thank God my teachers
understood well enough that individual students require different
approaches. Both of my daughters quit band because of a poor teacher.
Fortunately, the same school had a terrific choral director, and both
developed into pretty good singers.

Bill Hausmann bhausman@-----.com
451 Old Orchard Drive http://www.concentric.net/~bhausman
Essexville, MI 48732 http://members.wbs.net/homepages/z/o/o/zoot14.html
ICQ UIN 4862265

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is too loud.

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