Do we like it or not?

Have you ever asked yourself whether you enjoy teaching?  My first pedagogical experience took place in my alma mater, Novosibirsk Music College.  Staging a school play based on Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion but adapted to our student realities, I (as Mr. Higgins) got to teach violin to one of my classmates.  Due to some “unforgivable” mistakes made by the flower girl, the exchange became so emotional that one of my school instructors suggested that I should stay away from teaching to protect my health.  Just a couple of years later I had a significant bouquet of young students using me as a violin tutor to ensure their steady progress in Moscow. I loved it!  It is possible that the main reason for my excitement was the material compensation.  The job was paid so well that when my parents would offer to send me money, I refused every time causing my father severe perplexity.  I suppose the other reason could have been that my students advanced very well, even by their musician-parents’ standards, making me feel more confident, curious and greedy for my students’ future successes.

These days I teach approximately sixty children a week: individually and in ensembles, not counting another ninety people in the community orchestras that I conduct which, due to their nature, represent a different venue of pedagogical instruction.  I often hear from my colleagues-performers: “You must really enjoy it?!” with the subtext that not all of us do but commonly have to teach in order to supplement a musician’s income.  Do I? And if teaching gives me pleasure, do my students share my attitude or just have to endure my pedagogical expansion over a great geographical area? And if we all are fond of each other, do we actually musically benefit from spending time together?

Whereas by numerous accounts in Musical Futures, students’ motivation and enjoyment are closely connected with their achievements, teachers’ emotional satisfaction of their profession is stated only once in the Executive summary of the Musical Futures: A case study investigation.  Yet, after three years of the project designed to study the implications of the Musical Futures approach for school music pedagogy, the researchers found that 81 percent of the teachers reported positive change in their demeanor towards teaching. If such significant improvement was noted in teachers’ conduct, does it have a reciprocal effect on students’ learning outcomes? 

In a recent study by Frenzel et al (2009), Emotional transmission in the classroom: Exploring the relationship between teacher and student enjoyment, the authors hypothesized that teachers’ and students’ enjoyment are favorably connected.  They found that students’ appreciation of the class directly corresponds with teacher’s enjoyment manifested through enthusiastic style of instruction. Interestingly, even when the students were not fascinated by the subject, their level of enjoyment got boosted by teacher’s excitement.  In fact, even when teachers pretended to be happy, the learning environment in the class appeared to be positive.

I hope, especially because I genuinely like what I do, that my students reflect on my affection to music and teaching by enjoying and learning. I certainly grow better as a teacher by not seeing grumpy faces.