I am among those fortunate people who landed a tenure track teaching position some years ago. That process, in itself, is a story. The short version: after several years of searching and over two hundred rejections later, I landed a full-time position in Texas and twenty-three years down the road, I am still here. I enjoy teaching. The opportunity to share with aspiring musicians my own experience, knowledge and wisdom is humbling and gratifying.
Still, each autumn is greeted with a certain sense of loss and wistfulness. Summer affords one the “big time” to be creative; the luxury of long hours to let ideas percolate, and equally long hours in front of the piano and laptop making sense of those ideas (aka composing). While it is possible to compose during the semester, the demands of classes, grading, office hours, and the inevitable committee meetings, makes doing so challenging and restrictive. (Usually, short pieces, especially songs and choral settings, are easiest to accomplish in situations where interruptions are likely and consistently dependable chunks of time are improbable---as often as not, composition is relegated to the back burner while the demands of academia are met.)
The good news for creative types is that teaching can be a creative endeavor. Finding ways to connect with different personalities in a class, discovering new, hopefully more successful ways to present material, having sudden insights that lead to engaging interchange…all ignite the creative spark. These things make the transition from the freedom of less structured, deeper time of the summer to the relative narrow, shallow time of the academic year somewhat less traumatic.
One of the greatest risks one faces after teaching the same course for 20+ years is running on autopilot. This fall I will be experimenting with a few new (to me) ideas in Freshmen Theory and Ear Training classes. There is a recent initiative among some in higher education in music to revamp the undergraduate music curriculum. The guiding principles surrounding this initiative include a greater emphasis on improvisation and composition, as well as a more inclusive, multi-cultural approach to music studies. While I was initially skeptical, I find the more I engage with the ideas and discover relevant materials the more excited I become by the implications for creating more engaging, exciting and meaningful content.
New course content and a fresh approach help me look forward to the new semester with renewed enthusiasm. Rather than regretting the time I won’t have to compose, I am looking forward to spending the time (which, after all, would be spent one way or another) exploring fresh possibilities. I have already spent several weeks assembling new material and re-structuring course “flow” and content. It will be interesting to see how this all unfolds over the course of the semester, and how students will respond to it. I expect I will encounter more than one hiccup along the way, but even the hiccups (perhaps even most especially the hiccups) will undoubtedly give the creative juices a boost.
How about you? Have you been teaching the same course for several (maybe even many) years? What keeps you excited about teaching? Do you try new things? Has something ever failed so epically that you had to make a course correction mid-semester? Do you have an annual transition? Do you have a strategy or perhaps a ritual you use to smooth the transition? As always, your shared experiences are welcome. (As for my own experiment, I’ll try to remember to post an update here at least once during the semester to let you know how it unfolds.)