How to Build Your Reputation – the Kind You Want

“Do you worry that your poor students will ruin your reputation? I am trying to build my studio and worry that these few students (among many who are good students) may affect my ability to earn a living.”

A young teacher, rightly concerned about building her studio and keeping it thriving, asked me this question.

My answer? It all depends on what kind of reputation you want. There are lots of different ones and some of them can be combined while others are in a class all by themselves. Here are a few examples:

one who turns out only competition winners
one whose students all play well up to teacher’s very high standard
one whose students faithfully obey all teacher’s studio strictures – or else
one whose students enjoy playing music at any level
one who wants her students to love music as she does
one who will teach any student who wants to learn, no matter what
one who will teach any student as along as the parents are willing to continue, no matter what

The first three don’t have to worry about poor students: they don’t have them. Who might worry would be those in the last four categories. So I will address this to them and my young colleague who said that she believed all students should have lessons as long as they enjoy them.

If you worry about your reputation while you’re teaching, you are focused on yourself and your goals instead of what you should be focusing on: your student. The one thing you should never worry about is what other people think. If you do, that’s a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Why? Because your thoughts are putting you into a different teacher category than the one you may want to be in. You stop doing whatever you are doing for your student and start doing it for yourself. Is that what you want? No, I didn’t think so. So here’s how to build a good reputation:

Have you ever heard of Tchaikovsky’s white horse of happiness? He said it was on his enormous estate and you could only find it if you didn’t look for it or think about it.* So don’t think about it – or your reputation. Decide what kind of teacher you want to be and then be it without worrying about how you look or even thinking about yourself at all. This may mean you wind up teaching poor students, i.e., the ones who don’t practice, listen to you, take your advice, etc.. This can be hard on you, if you let it, but it surely be difficult if you are worrying about how that student will make you look. You are in a service profession which means you should be worried about your clients’ (i.e., the students’) problems, not you having a problem with their problems and what that means for you.

28/03/2019 09:46:19 Scritto da: Eloise Hellyer