So you are a professional musician and we are still in a measure of lockdown. If you are a performer only, your livelihood is on hold until ???? If you are like most of us and teach a modicum or a lot of students, you are probably doing okay but more than likely have lost students due to financial issues on their end…loss of jobs, etc. And we ALL are teaching online. O joy O rapture!

I’m tech savvy so teaching online wasn’t a huge leap for me but I did watch a 2-day webinar sponsored by MTNA about teaching online. Good points made and good advice given. Piano is easier online than voice. But we press on.

Will it ever get back to the way it was? No. Online teaching will be with us until the end. It has made a rather abrupt entrance into our lives and actually isn’t all that bad. I suspect teachers will eventually settle into a good mix of in-person and online teaching and that will work very well. Takes a little more legwork on both sides. I find myself doing more little recordings of new music and sending it to my students. It gives them that extra piece to listen to, something not included in a live lesson unless teacher plays/sings it, which is ok but can also be a bit intrusive in the lesson, although I’ve done it. But it does make the student take a bit more responsibility for their own actions…set your own practice schedule so you stick to it. Make sure you know where your music is. Mom can’t always drop everything to look for it.

So we gain more attention to the lesson details in spite of losing that in-person touch. Maybe that’s the payoff here? We teachers have to re-evaluate the way we communicate with the student and the student has to be more attentive on their end and make sure they understand what the teacher is asking of them…aka take more responsibility.

This too shall pass. But it will resurface with a new look. I hate the term “new normal.” We musicians re-invent ourselves all the time. So one more time won’t make a whole lot of difference. And now I’m trying to refine the process of finding new students online. Another learning curve. Well, 2020 has been that kind of year…curveballs all around. Ha!