minstrel: teaching

[Heather Rose Jones]

At 10:38 AM +0000 2/6/03, Barbara Webb wrote:
>I thought I'd ask this list for advice on a situation that might have
>happened to some of you. Where do you draw the line when encouraging
>people in the bardic arts, so as to avoid the result that people
>innocently assume they have an open-ended opportunity for free individual
>tuition?
>
>I've had a couple of people decide to take up an instrument, and come to
>me for advice and guidance. So far I've been happy to help, e.g. in
>lending them an instrument to try out, advising them on acquiring their
>own (including helping them make it and or get it well set up), showing
>them the basics of how to play, suggesting books and giving them music,
>recording examples for them to listen to, offering them tips and feed-back
>on how they are doing etc. However the result was that they, effectively,
>started turning up weekly for their next "lesson". This was not a
>situation that I was comfortable with as I'm not actually a music teacher,
>just a bit more advanced on the instrument than they are, and moreover, if
>I was getting that kind of individual musical tuition from someone else,
>I'd normally expect to be paying for it.

<snip>

My rule of thumb in life is that anything that is done regularly 
three times is no longer informal or random.  Once is a favor; twice 
is an extra favor; three times is a regular lesson.  At that point, I 
think it's perfectly acceptable for you to tell them that you 
consider it a formal teacher-student relationship and either: A) ask 
for payment; or B) tell them you don't consider yourself qualified to 
be a professional teacher and recommend someone who is.

Yes, I know the SCA is a volunteer organization and people feel weird 
about money in situations like this, but there's no reason to.  Just 
as you might sew something for someone once as a favor, but charge 
them for a project that ate significantly into your free time, it's 
ok to both offer free "getting started in music" sessions _and_ feel 
that a regular private tutoring arrangement should be on a 
professional basis.

Two of the apprentice/sort-of-apprentice relationships I've had 
started out as paid harp lessons and continued on a monetary basis in 
the one case after we agreed on a formal apprenticeship.  It's an 
acknowledgement that what they're asking from you is more than they 
have any right to expect on a volunteer basis.  (They may get it on a 
volunteer basis, but they don't have a right to _expect_ it for 
nothing.)

Depending on what the learner is interested in, even an "amateur" 
teacher may be useful at this stage.  My own experience has been 
that, for SCA people beginning an instrument, often the main purpose 
of lessons is to create a regular motivation for practicing.  The 
formal environment (and monetary investment) means that practicing 
doesn't get shuffled off into a corner as often.  If they get really 
serious, then they're going to want a more skilled teacher (and will 
hit the sticker-shock of what real-world music lessons cost), and 
there's always the possibility that they'll have to unlearn 
something.  But all-in-all the chances are that you're competent to 
teach them (or guide them through) what they need to do right now. 
But then, I'm very much a proponent of "music is too important to 
leave it to the experts" -- you'll run into other opinions.

Tangwystyl
-- 
*****
Heather Rose Jones
hrjones at socrates.berkeley.edu
*****