I teach beginner piano at a music studio. For about a year and a half I have been teaching piano there on Monday afternoons/evenings. Since I am the least senior of the student teachers, I am often given the ‘leftovers’, i.e. the students that none of the other teachers want to waste their time with.
It is a popular practice among the student teachers to teach students with a natural aptitude for piano. Teaching these Mozarts is easier, and during recitals they play impressive solos. This, for better or worse, makes the student teacher look good. The first impression other parents often get is that if the child is that good, then he/she must have had a great teacher. However, often the truth of the matter is that the child is extremely gifted, or the teacher before the student teacher was very good.
I used to be terribly jealous of the other student teachers. I was rather insecure about the job in general, and always thought that the reason I always got the children with ADD, mild autism, the very young, or emotionally unstable was because I wasn’t good enough to teach the ‘talented’ children. The other student teachers, having a much larger pool of students, could afford to be picky. Because of my schedule, I couldn’t afford to be picky. I pretty much had to take any student offered my way. Most of the students I have now were students of other student teachers, dumped on me because the student teacher was either too impatient or frustrated with working with the child. At first this really bothered me, but at the time I really couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
Now I realize that having these students is the best thing that could ever happened to me. In fact I feel rather blessed to have them, because it has been a wonderful experience. I taught five-year olds how to play the piano and read sheet music, got some of the most hyperactive children I have ever seen in my life focused enough to sit calmly for a 30 minute lesson, and participated in half a dozen recitals. Through a lot of toil, frustration, and self-doubt I have managed to take ‘impossible’ students and help motivate them to pass their MTAC music theory examinations, as well as learn, memorize, and perform their solos for recitals.
For me, taking a “difficult” student and turning him around has meant more to me than the prospect of having a “good” student any day. These days I feel that I have gained more by teaching a year’s worth of “difficult” students than my coworkers have learned in 4 years of dumping them off on others.