- One of the things that always fascinates me,
is which of my students,
or which of anybody's students
are going to become teachers and great teachers
and have that become a focus of their lives.
Usually it's the students that are most curious
about their own progress,
and usually the ones that are the most consistently
asking questions and writing things down,
and journaling for themselves
trying to figure out answers.
They seem to be the ones that realize
the fascination of pedagogy,
and wanna know more about the history of pedagogy
and how things work, the physics of things
so on and so forth.
I don't know how to explain it for my own sake,
I do know that by the time I was finished with high school,
that I would find people
that would sit still long enough to take a lesson,
they were just enough younger than I was,
that I could ask them if they wanted help with something
and find a way to teach a lesson
even if they didn't ask for it.
And I certainly wasn't taking any money for it,
that wasn't why I was doing it,
I was doing it because I love the interaction,
I love the experience and it somehow takes me
out of my day-to-day mind and puts me in a place
that all time disappears, everything disappears,
but the interaction with that individual
it's a fascinating thing to me,
And it's as fascinating to think
which of my students current and past
are gonna be the ones that are most involved in it.
It's also something that many undergraduates
when they come in, are not aware of as a possible future.
The possibilities are actually limitless.
I remember one young man that came in
and he expressed no interest at all in teaching.
And by the time he stayed for undergrad
and he finished a master's degree,
his job, his first job which he kept for a long time,
actually involved three positions.
He went up to the Dakota area,
and then one of the larger towns,
and I can't remember which one it was at the moment,
there was a municipal orchestra,
and he played principal bass
in the municipal level orchestra.
He taught double bass privately at the local college,
and conducted the high school orchestra.
So there were three half-time jobs
that he divided into the three parts of his life
even though they were, you can't have 3/2,
that's how he figured it out.
And he actually made a very nice living,
and satisfied the various elements of his life.
And he did that for about 10 years,
ended up going back to school and getting a doctorate
and teaching at the university level.
So that's just one small example of somebody.
He literally created that position for himself.
I don't think they plan to find one person
that could do all the things that he was able to do.
But when he saw what was available there,
he said, "Yeah, I can do all that."
And ended up doing it.
The same has happened with one of my former students
that's becoming an early basis or a young basis teacher.
He got fascinated with the possibilities of teaching kids
which was certainly something he'd never thought of.
And he's so good at it, he's a pied Piper.
I find him in the Philadelphia in New York area,
where kids are just they're clamoring
to be in his class.
And he actually goes to their houses
and teaches at their houses.
And I've seen these kids in the summertime,
and even though they're doing really well,
technically, I'm very pleased
with the level of teaching that they're getting.
Probably the best thing that they've gotten
from this person is his excitement and his enjoyment
of music and his enthusiasm for being with them.
And that's a miraculous, it's a miraculous outcome
and I never would have predicted it or expected it.