{"id":439,"date":"2008-07-30T08:30:27","date_gmt":"2008-07-30T15:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/?p=439"},"modified":"2009-08-10T14:29:12","modified_gmt":"2009-08-10T21:29:12","slug":"my-first-teaching-experience-in-over-18-months-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bassic-sax.info\/blog\/2008\/my-first-teaching-experience-in-over-18-months-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"My First Teaching Experience In Over 18 Months: Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

The reason that the\u00a012 year old from\u00a0yesterday’s Part I<\/a> of this story struck a resonant chord\u00a0with me was that his story really\u00a0is parallel to mine.<\/p>\n

I started playing alto sax in grade 7, on a brand new, shiny, Mexican-made, Conn\u00a0Shooting Stars\u00a0model. It looked\u00a0pretty much like this one:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Conn\u00a0Shooting Stars\u00a0model alto sax. Made in Mexico. Source: www.ebay.com<\/h6>\n

Then, after only 1 year, I knew that alto was not my voice. I pleaded with my parents to rent me a tenor. They got me a\u00a0brand new, shiny, Bundy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bundy tenor sax by Selmer USA. Made in\u00a0the US. Source: www.ebay.com\u00a0\u00a0<\/h6>\n

After a year renting it, my parents realized that they might as well buy me a sax, since unlike guitar, I wasn’t going to give it up. So my parents scoured the Vancouver papers, and we ended up buying a used\u00a0La Monte tenor<\/a>, which I still own to this day…I still even have the original classified ad from the Vancouver Sun<\/em>. (Talk about being a pack rat!)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 La Monte tenor sax by Orsi. Made in Italy.<\/h6>\n

I took\u00a0private lessons from grade 8 through grade 12, and was heart broken when my\u00a0private instructors wanted their summers off \u2757 \u00a0What was up with that anyway?\u00a0(That’s why when I ran my studio in Fredericton with a full slate of students, I always gave them the option of taking lessons in the summer. I had a few that would take me up on it, for at least part of the summer.)<\/p>\n

Whenever\u00a0there was a band playing that had a sax player, or sax section\u00a0in it, my\u00a0parents would take me. I was a shy child (if you know me\u00a0now, you’d never guess that)\u00a0so my dad would always go up and engage the sax player in conversation.<\/p>\n

He (the sax player seemed to always be a\u00a0man) would take the time and talk\u00a0to my\u00a0dad, and if I wasn’t there, make sure to call me over.\u00a0I don’t remember\u00a0what the guys said, but I\u00a0know that\u00a0I loved looking at their saxes, and\u00a0felt really special when\u00a0they\u00a0talked to me. I looked up to them, and\u00a0wanted to do what they were doing.<\/p>\n

Now I am doing what they\u00a0were doing,\u00a0and have always felt like I’ve wanted to give back in the same way these guys gave to me. I make myself accessible at shows, either before or after,\u00a0&\u00a0during set breaks.\u00a0I am always willing to provide input or advice if\u00a0it’s asked for.<\/p>\n

When it comes to teaching, I\u00a0have a\u00a0very simple belief: I believe that the student and the teacher have to like and respect each other in order for the\u00a0transfer of knowledge to work.\u00a0So to\u00a0help determine if the student\/teacher\u00a0relationship is going to\u00a0be beneficial, my first lesson is always free: this gives\u00a0both of us an out.<\/p>\n

I also think that if a student is paying for a teacher’s time, the teacher owes it to the student (and to his\/her parents if they’re\u00a0paying for\u00a0the lessons)\u00a0to be 100% there, 100% of the lesson. That is something that I can’t currently be. I’m too dizzy, medicated for symptom management, & unable to multi-task, to be an affective, reliable\u00a0instructor. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

If I had any doubts in that department, that hour\u00a0I wrote about in Part I<\/a>, quickly put\u00a0those to rest.\u00a0I am certainly not able to be there 100% of the time at the moment, so it wouldn’t be ethical to take on students at this time.\u00a0(BTW, I will keep my commitment, and do another lesson\u00a0before September, but I won’t take money for it either.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’ve been very lucky in my musical life, to be surrounded by, for the most part, really great teachers. My hope as an instructor, is to be a role model for my students, so that if and when they become instructors themselves, they have some positive\u00a0experiences to build on.<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago I spent an pm shedding with\u00a0the man who had been my\u00a0first private instructor starting at the age of 13. (Who also happend to be my Jr. high band teacher.) It was a really eye opening experience. He told me that of all the sax students he has taught over the years, I\u00a0was the only one who had gone on\u00a0to play\u00a0professionally. He told me how proud he was of me, and how he loves to hear me play.<\/p>\n

We honked around and experimented with different effects\u00a0for a while on his 2 tenors: an ancient\u00a0Conn that pre-dates anything I’d ever used, and his 5 digit\u00a0Mark VI\u00a0that he bought new. Then we sat down and we played some jazz duets out of the Lennie Niehaus Jazz Conception For Saxophone Duets<\/em> book.<\/p>\n

We started on the easy ones, and when he had me lulled into a false sense of security, he flipped\u00a0the book\u00a0open\u00a0to the harder ones, and proceeded to mop the floor with me. (I was sight-reading, and we were doing them at about 180 to\u00a0200\u00a0I think.) He then laughed, and said: Not bad for an old guy, huh?<\/p>\n

From someone else that might have been considered nasty, but knowing him as I do, I knew he was just playing with me. I outshine him in some aspects, and he knows it. He’s OK with it, and encourages it. He has a great sense of humour, and knows me well enough to know that I wouldn’t feel insecure or threatened by\u00a0being\u00a0ouplayed\u00a0by him…Especially\u00a0out of a book that he used to use in our lessons… \"\"<\/a>\u00a0Guess I should’ve practiced before I went over. \ud83d\ude09 \u00a0<\/p>\n

As instructors, we\u00a0should never underestimate the influence we have over our students, sometimes years later still.<\/p>\n

\n
…this is just my blog<\/em>. <\/span>My \u201creal\u201d <\/strong>website is<\/span> www.bassic-sax.info.<\/a> If you\u2019re looking for <\/span>sax info<\/strong>,<\/span> you should check it out too.<\/span>There\u2019s lots<\/em> there! <\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The reason that the\u00a012 year old from\u00a0yesterday’s Part I of this story struck a resonant chord\u00a0with me was that his story really\u00a0is parallel to mine. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[90],"tags":[87,638,635,644,91,647],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-saxophone","tag-bundy","tag-conn","tag-la-monte","tag-photos","tag-student-model-saxophones","tag-teaching-saxophone"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t