There are people in my life that brought me to this point of my career and I am so grateful for them. At 18, my teacher for 10 years, Ibu Indra, pushed me further to the world of music by giving me my first job as piano teacher. Afterward, as I began to doubt myself, Lendi came to my life and made me completely in love not only with teaching music, but with music itself (one of the biggest accomplishment a teacher can achieve). Later on, when I felt that what I do with music didn't get me anywhere, Leonard van Hien came and opened the door to a new and exciting world that I've come to love more and more every day. And recently, somebody stopped by for a short visit and changed my life.
Julie Spithill is a special lady in her, my guess is, mid 50s with a bright and cheerful personality, a great sense of humour, a super-smart brain (well, she has to since she's a professor at the Sydney Conservatory) and a passion for good food. She was initially invited to give an annual training programme to the teachers at the music school where I work but she ended up stopping me from giving up my career as a music teacher.
Note: I was seriously thinking of committing a career-suicide. To describe the seriousness of the matter, here's the story: I was admitted to the school February last year and as a welcome drink, I got a dozen-plus of transfer students with very poor basics. Some of them have had lessons for 3-4 years, some even longer, but none of them could play simple music without stopping. For 50 weeks after that, I've told them to curve their hands and bend their fingers, make them count or count with them, read the exact notes written on their books, find the notes, observe the signs and symbols, speed up (they all play with a snail-pace tempo), and listen to the awful sound they produced and do something about it. Not only that, all my kids, special as they are, have at least a bit of personality disorder, from extreme laziness to extreme quietness that result in a refusal to activate communication devices (such as mouth and vocal cords) during lesson.
Anyway, Julie taught me how to fall in love again with this job, by showing me how much she loved HER job and how much she cared for us. She told me that in her 20s, she once had hated teaching so much but came to a realisation that she might have to teach for the rest of her life and so she better made it more fun. For me, it was like a knock on my head, since before this episode I have never thought of giving up teaching and couldn't actually see myself not teaching. So she taught me how to bring the enjoyment back, by asking more and letting my kids do the bigger portion of the work, seeing through their eyes and thinking through their minds, trying to adapt to them, and with that, she also helped me understand more things about life and human.
Julie went home early February. During the last 4 weeks I've been applying everything she advised me and magically everything changed. I am now far more relaxed and happy, less tired on week-ends and my kids started to practice more and enjoy their lessons.
Yesterday I had a studio class followed by a parents' meeting. It was such a bliss to sit there and heard them played their music, this time finally without stops. Some could even do more with dynamic and expression. Occassional slips were still occured, but they're only little humans. The more rewarding part was to see the radiant smiles and the look of pride from parents as their children went forward and perform their pieces. The best part, of course, was to see the happy smiles of the kids, knowing that they've accomplished something, that they are the stars of their mums' and dads' life, and mine, too. It reminds me of a wood engraving I gave to my teacher Lendi some years ago that said, "To teach is to touch lives forever."
(Imported old blog, originally written on March 2, 2008)
