Teaching is a performance art—a didactic, communal, interactive performance art. I learned a little bit about it from my parents, both teachers. I also learned a few things about music teaching in particular from Wynton Marsalis and Leonard Bernstein, two of my musical heroes.
Teaching has the potential to harness all the domains of art (visual, performing, theater, technical, language, psycho-social) in order to achieve its goal. This goal should be for students to understand the need to constantly learn new things and to acquire and develop the fundamental skills necessary to do that. The goal should not be to learn any set canon of facts, assumptions, dogma, or traditions.
The teacher’s stage is the classroom, but I strongly believe the classroom walls to be a semi-permeable membrane. Of course, we want them to keep out things like noise and street crime and snow. But I want a little bit (or a lot!) of the real musical landscape outside of school to creep in beneath the door; and I want students to keep rolling their lessons over in their minds once they leave the room. Anywhere can be your classroom. Anything can be your teacher. Music is everywhere.
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