LeslieUpchurch.com

I teach better when I don't teach too much.  How about you?

In the past i called myself the music machine.  I literally taught 55 to 60 classes a week.  All day every day, preschool classes.  I taught 2 full days at the Horace Mann School for Nursery years.  That was from 9:30 to about 3:00 on Tuesday and until 2:00 on Friday.  I think there were about 200 kids in this school.  I cannot recall if I had them once or twice a week at this point.

I taught all day Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, for the JCC on the Palisades nursery school.  I had the students every other week - 30 minutes for ages 3 and up and the 2 year olds had 15 minute classes.  There were maybe 300 kids in total.  

After school I taught from 3:45 until 6:00 or 6:45 on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday at the JCC for the music school.  I also taught Tuesday from 4:00 to 5:30 PM there.  Friday I was off after 2 PM!!  Yeah!!

At one point I also taught on Saturday morning, but I had to give this up.  I was going crazy because the JCC had Sunday morning classes and I taught from maybe 9:30 AM until 12:00 PM.  The reason I stopped on Saturdays because I got separated from my husband and had to take my daughter with me.  On Sundays I had to do this too but she had a class and was able to hang out easily in my room.  She would put some chairs in a corner and play in there.  Of course she learned alot of music!

I was the music machine.  The kids loved my classes but I had chronic voice problems and eventually gave myself an overuse injury - several.  I had "popped" something in my hand - right hand trigger finger - in 1982 I did this and then in 1991 it started to act up because I was playing so many Dalcroze classes. So, I got a shot in my hand.  Then, I also had carpal tunnel syndrome in my wrist from playing the autoharp in all of my 55 or 60 classes a week.  In addition I always sat leaning forward so I developed a shoulder injury.  Triple over use injuries and a vocal problem too!  This was the music machine breaking down.

I moved to Vermont and cut WAY back - but returned to NYC about 8 times to work with Dr. Jake Kella, a violist with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra and a PhD in robotics and biomechanics from MIT.  He was a genius and the first person to really get me to connect my Dalcroze training in a physical way to my piano playing.  He revolutionized my playing and my piano teaching.  

So, this year I have 23 students so far and anticipate having 14 classes so far.  I may try for one more.  This is saturation for me. If I need more income I will have to do something else.  I realized I have to listen to myself in this way.  I am not the music machine anymore.  But it was weird how popular I was then. But then, people love DJ's and that is just electronic.  So, maybe being a machine "sells"!

To me what I am doing is "a little bit of teaching"!  It is all relative.