Why I Love Teaching

I know what you’re expecting here. A confession about how much I love children and just look forward to every day with the little—and big—darlings. About how much I love teaching, the satisfaction of passing needed knowledge on. About how much I love getting paid for playing, singing and dancing all day long. About how much I enjoy my dedicated colleagues who are passionate about their craft. And of course, about how much I love over two months of summer vacation!

All of the above is true. But today I came up with a new reason why I love teaching, more important than any of the others.

My second big Jazz Show for kids with my Pentatonics Jazz Band is this Saturday and while the SF Jazz show was sold out a week or so before the show, sales for this seem to be going slowly. So I’m splashing out announcements on Facebook, sending them to my Orff mailing list, alerting the 50 + staff members at my school to please come, putting something in the school’s “Tuesday Note Home,” passing out postcards to kids. My lips are sore from blowing my own trumpet. It’s exhausting!

And then after the concert, I’m always tallying up the people who should have come and hey, I went to their art show or their theater piece or their kids’ recital, why aren’t they at mine? And all these people who I think would be loyal to supporting me just because we’ve known each other from 10 to 40 years and this is new exciting territory that I want to share with them, where are they? Not at my concert.

And so it struck me why I chose teaching over performing. The kids ALWAYS SHOW UP!!! I mean, a few might be absent here and there, but mostly they’re there, class after class and I have a guaranteed audience for everything I worked so hard to put together. I never have to send them notices like,  "Hey, hope you can make it to my class tomorrow. I think you'll like it and there are still tickets left." 

So, my reader friend, I know you're not enrolled in my class, but hey, there’s still tickets left for the concert.