Klarinet Archive - Posting 000040.txt from 2000/02

From: "Rien Stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: [kl] teaching (was: Why?)
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2000 21:47:31 -0500

In a long mailing to this list, Patty Smith posed and answered several good
questions about teaching (Mon, 31 Jan 2000 01:39:50 -0800). I found it very
interesting to read, as I have been thinking a lot about the same subject as
of late.

One of the questions was, why someone wants to teach. In my case the answer
is quite simple:

Just one week before Xmas, three years ago, my own teacher told me she was
going to stop all her teaching as of Xmas, she could get a job (for David
Glenn: "een baan" in Dutch) only if she could enter it immediately. She was
the teacher of saxophone and clarinet for the band in the village I am
living. We found another girl, a student from the Utrecht conservatory, to
continue her lessons, but she announced immediately she would do the job
(for David: "het werk" in this context) only till the summer, because she
would follow her friend to Israel. It proved impossible to find a new
teacher.

Now I do not want te be proud, but I am the best player of this band - what
rather is an indication of its low level more than of my good qualities -,
and technically I am the most advanced one on both "single reeds"- clarinet
and saxophone, so the board asked me whether I would not be willing to take
over. What I did. I started with a man, 49, and a woman, 36 at that moment.
I am very proud that the woman passed her first exam after only a year and a
half, both the theoretical and the practical part, with only A- and two
B-grades, and one F. The funny thing was, that at clapping rhythms she
failed (it was the F), but when sightreading a piece with exactly the same
tempi (she never noticed till I told her afterwards!) she got A's on all
aspects!

I do not do it for the money: I am unpaid for. My students only pay for the
rent of a room in the local village home. Two girls, both had their 11th
birthday last months, who I am teaching two years in April, also already are
in the main orchestra, one boy on soprano saxophone could have joined the
educational orchestra, if he would not have church activities on Friday
night, and thinks those are more important than playing music (I agree ith
him).

My youngest student is an eight years old girl on clarinet, my oldest a
72-years old very nice woman on tenor saxophone, never played an instrument
before, both as off last September. Both will join the educational orchestra
in a few months, they are progressing very rapidly.

In the course of these three years I lost only one student, a girl on alto
sax, not because she disliked it, but she was a rooky(?) in highschool, when
her parents decided to divorce, and all those sensations were too heavy a
load on her mind. She had to endow too much to continue. When I saw her
mother last week she said the girl was considering to start again, but was a
little shy about it. Most, if not all of my students enjoy my lessons very
much. When I talk with students or parents they always say it is my
enthusiasm, my gay mood, and the way I try to make things clear to them. One
of my students said she liked particularly the way I always tell them that I
must be a bore, as I am very severe.

And that is, I think, also my strongest point: I am but mediocrily gifted,
made probably all the mistakes one can make, and thus always am continually
looking for elemantary and less elementary faults like breathing on top of
the lungs, wrong finger positions, and so on: all the wrong behaviours I
displayed myselves, or are aware of that can be displayed.

Several times I suggested to the board, that we should look for a "really
good" teacher, that is, a professional. And several times they did. In
September they refused to do so: some of my students had announced they
would not take any lessons anymore, if I would not be their teacher.
Very enjoying for me.

Hope I can continue to be as enthusiastically as I am today, but as long as
my students continue to be as inspiring to me, as I obviously appear to be
to them, that will not be a problem. They even helped me to improve my own
playing, both in my study and in public.

The methods I use are quite diverse. For saxophone I used a method written
by Jan van Beekum, that student (the woman I wrote about above) now selects
her own methods; when I say I don't like it she will look for another one.
At this moment the main part of her lessons is filled with playing duets
(from a book edited by Rubank, I think), and with etudes from the second
book by Jan van Beekum. With the girls that I teach longest I have been
using "A tune a day", "Intrada" by, again, Jan van Beekum, and parts of
Klose 1, afterwards I switched over to a method, written by the Dutch, most
underetimated clarinettist I know, Hermann Braune, but the best method I
know, and use now is the one edited by de Haske (Heerenveen, the
Netherlands). I have posted a mailing on that method a couple of months ago,
and I still am really enthusiastically about it. If anyone on this list also
is teaching to the real beginners, I can advice him or her this method, it
is technically challenging, apt to be used by the ungifted, but also by the
great talents we seldom meet.

With kind greetings to everyone on this list

Rien (note the correct spelling) Stein

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