I had these words in mind today as I taught class piano for the first time to 39 second graders with 21 keyboards. It was actually pretty fun!

My first teaching experience was as a nervous TA coaching a chamber music ensemble. It wasn’t hard to be humble when I really wasn’t convinced I had anything to offer. I don’t think I’ve ever lost the sense that I’m not sure I have something worth hearing to say, but neither can I claim humility.

Most of my teaching nowadays involves coaching amateur chamber ensembles. It’s easy to forget that the people I’m addressing aren’t only amateur recorder players. In “real life”, many are brilliant and highly respected doctors, lawyers, mathematicians, historians, linguists, mechanics, etc. In “the company of those who exceed me” in their own fields, French and Italian translations I’ve provided have been vastly improved and pronounciation amended, countless musical mistakes drawn to my attention, dates, historical facts and even acoustical observations corrected - always gently and respectfully. Their humility has humbled me, and been a true blessing.

Eric

“This is not a hobby.”

“Log off! Go Practice!”

“Meaningless musical metaphors, espoused while you wait!”

“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”

“You know, you can play Xbox and surf myspace at home for a lot less than $30k a year.”

“Yes, the sword is real. Enter at your own risk.” (Gretchen gave me a sword for Christmas)

“How you spend your minutes is, of course, how you spend your life.”

that sort of thing. Mainly pithy truisms that students then deface by adding extra words, or erasing some.

What are some of your weekly office door quotes?

If you ever can’t think of any, I’m sure we could help. They’d be taglines, only complete sentences.

I have no idea how I missed your comment the first time, but I just laughed out loud and woke up half the neighborhood. That’s awesome.

I might make “Don’t let the rhythm sticks touch your mouth” my office door quote for the week, and just see how many odd looks I get.

hilarious.

As a musician, I have both opinions and informed perspectives, but when I’m talking to my students, many of them don’t have the advantage of knowing which well I’m drawing water from. They don’t know that when I talk about which B3 drawbar stops to use, that’s informed perspective, but that when I talk about classical vocal tone production, that’s largely opinion. I get the same positive social feedback from espousing either.

Scot’s comment that you have to weight differently the feedback of students and the feedback of peers, and “those who exceed you”, seems so stupidly obvious, but I’m just now starting to sort all of this out.

When I started teaching, my oldest students were only 5 years younger than I was. They were, for all intents and purposes, still representative of my peer group, and it was a peer group that I wasn’t all that successful in navigating when I was a student (which is, I think, why all of us ended up here at the RoadHouse). To suddenly be back a part of that same environment, but in a position of authority and some respect, flipped me upside down a little bit. That positive feedback from them seemed like peer feedback, even though it wasn’t.

Cool is directly a function of your opinion mattering, informed or otherwise.

Wanting to be cool, wanting your opinion (informed or otherwise) to matter in the eyes of others, is a function of pride.

So, thus this post, and my need to get past the desire to be so cool in 2007 that it somehow echoes back in time to 1997, which is really just a matter of pride, which is what this whole thing was about in the first place.

Therapy session has now ended. You can all bill my insurance directly.

Agree with all you said, Mike. But a careless reading of what you wrote might suggeest the unstated notion that maybe nobody’s opinion matters more than anyone else’s, really.

I don’t buy that. And neither do you, I think.

The point, to me: your very good advice is to put yourself in the company of those whom you see as exceeding you. The flip side: you have to understand that your students are doing exactly that with you. You are allowed to take yourself exactly as seriously as you take the advice or example of those by whom you feel exceeded.

If you do that, your opinion DOES matter more, because it isn’t just “opinion” in the everyday, throw away sense of the term, it is expert insight and practiced application.

I have a few musician friends who appear to me to live in some other universe than mine… I have no idea what’s going on in their heads… I listen very carefully, and watch closely, and figure out a little bit of it…. and that little bit I can pass on to my students. I try hard to give credit for where it came from. But I DO get the credit for doing that work, and my opinion of music it’s based on deserves more consideration than someone who hasn’t done it.

Confession time: when I was about 35, I think I believed I knew what I needed to know about jazz. Boy, was I wrong. Thanks to Alex Galvan at Citrus College for opening my eyes and getting my attention, in the humblest possible way… by playing things I didn’t quite understand, but loved.

good stuff dude. Especially in a world where to get anywhere you must be able to effectively “sell yourself” (as a musician…per se).

I agree with Aly. I was the top dog in a fairly sizeable consumer goods company and would get the same kind of attention from people who reported to me. And it is seductive. What I found later (but not too late!) in my career was that the best work usually wasn’t my work, but the collaborative efforts of those same people. As a result of listening and being open to other’s ideas, the feedback I received was that it was really empowering. The associates were more motivated and felt valued. The price you pay is that your ego doesn’t get fed at each meal, and that can be unsettling when you see many of your peers leaving the table stuffed. The work…whether its teaching or business…in the end, will speak for itself. Therefore, you shouldn’t have to do all of the talking. I firmly believe that it is the only way to go. Michael, well said.

1) Singing the lyric: “February Two, he’s out to play / Here he comes, it’s Groundhog Day!”

2) Singing the lyric: “Pleasanton, you’ve got what it takes / to make a great city, in this state.”

3) Instructing, “Don’t let the rhythm sticks touch your mouth.” (And “Rule Number One: No poking your neighbor’s eye out.”)

Two things: First, you’ve already figured out a major, major temptation for teachers.

Second, you are on the right road of learning that our competence can’t be assessed by those we teach but by master teachers, peers, and the academy.

That you’ve learned this so soon evidences character. I applaud your post and your wisdom.

Thank you. I’ve always known myself to be the most amazing writer ever on the topic of my own humility. It’s nice to finally be recognized by my lessers.

Embrace your inner smartass, sir. It’s what we all automatically click to your posts first for.

Cerise

I especially like #1, which is the reason I’m hanging here with y’all.

[sign language]You exceed me.[/sign language]

Cerise

This is a good list.

Cerise