It’s funny how the pandemic combined with semi-retirement has changed my teaching. I don’t advertise for new students now and haven’t accepted any in a while. The few new students I have are on the ukulele and they all started about two years ago or so. That means I haven’t taught “Hot Cross Buns” or “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in quite a while. I used to teach those weekly.
I now have more intermediate and upper-intermediate students than ever before. In the pre-pandemic years when the young students got a bit older their progress generally slowed because of competing interests. When I stopped accepting new students I anticipated losing all or nearly all of my students through attrition, but the pandemic changed all of that. All of my guitar students have now been with me for several years and are getting very good as a result. I’m now teaching 15yo students music that I generally reserved for my college students.
Another obvious change is the many ways I use technology. I actually started doing online lessons about 10 years ago at the request of a student’s parent (that’s a story for another day). I had started to use my computer to create lesson materials before that. I also used my computer, actually my hand-held gizmo, to maintain my schedule and do other business kinds of things too.
I originally created my website to be a sort of online brochure to attract new students and to get gigs. Because I no longer perform and am not seeking new students that has morphed into something a bit different. It is now a platform to sell my CDs, my ukulele course, and to give away some odds-and-ends information to folks who are trying to improve their guitar knowledge. I’m tying this in with my YouTube channel which is a kind of “catch all” for songs and information. I also created this blog about 8 years and am currently in my 4th season of my podcast.
So I’m still teaching…but in a different way. I can’t imagine not continuing in some fashion. I look back at the way I did things back when I started and compare it to what I’m doing today and realize there is no way I could have predicted this. But I also plan to continue (until I can’t) and am excited about the possibilities before me. Without the demands of performing and teaching 90+ students every week, I’m free to explore other avenues. I am, by nature, a creative person. (Actually I think we all are.) So I’m just going to keep cranking out stuff with the general idea of teaching or entertaining people.
When I was young I dreaded the idea of getting old. But here I am…..rocking it! I still feel productive and useful and so I will just keep going. Hopefully the stuff I leave behind will continue to help and entertain folks long after I’m gone.