Dave Wirth
Teachers have a much harder job than most people realize. A short list of their responsibilities:
- Teaching students.
- Creating and/or maintaining curriculum.
- Maintaining good relations with the administration.
Each of these tasks could potentially lead to the dreaded world of burnout, the place teachers go when they give up and collect a check. The less a teacher has to deal with administration, the fewer but more concentrated the student body they are in charge of, the better. Most teachers are not afforded these luxuries. Burnout is a tough thing to contend with, and if the teacher is not in the right frame of mine it will happen. Vitality can dissapear, and for more reasons than the above.
This is one of the reasons I am extremely tough on (admittedly well-meaning) guitarists who wish to moonlight as guitar teachers. When they send me their resumes, I look hard at them and see if they truly want to do this. I tend to be careful because not everyone wants to teach. Many guitar teachers aspire to play in front of 10,000 screaming fans. It was the reason I started playing guitar! However, Nicholas Goluses, the Professor of Classical Guitar at the Eastman School of Music, contends that no guitarist can be a stellar performer without also being a stellar teacher. Nicholas, by-the-way, learned from Manuel Barruecco, a guy who definitely knows a thing or two about teaching and performing guitar.
Burnout is a tough thing, but guitar teachers have it easier than other teachers. There are about a thousand different styles of guitar to learn, millions of people to learn from and teach, and the amount of music created with a guitar is astounding. Burnout is the enemy, vitality is the goal. Your students want that just as much as they want to learn guitar, so how are you going to remain vital to them, year after year? It's a good question to ask yourself.
