Some like to put teachers into two categories: the ones who teach for thirty years, and the ones who teach the same year thirty times. Ideally, of course, we as teachers continue to evolve, grow, and change. And just as important, we should note that it’s virtually impossible to teach the same year even twice in a row, because the students are never the same…so how can the lessons be?
Nevertheless, there are those who can deliver an identical lesson four times in a row, to different classes of students, year after year. This is a factory model: when I was employed to teach SAT and ACT test prep for a big company, the expectation was precision – the same lesson delivered every time, down to the minute. It left little room to teach to the students in the room, but it offered repeatable, deliverable, marketable results.
Contrast them with every choir director I know.
Every choir director I know doesn’t just teach different curriculum every single year, they never have the same prep twice. Literally every class, every day, every year is a new opportunity to teach in new ways.
It’s exhilarating to have this constant evolution, day after day, year after year. Even when we conduct pieces we’ve conducted before, the challenges are different with different voices, different mindsets, different current events to relate to the work.
It’s exhilarating, but it’s exhausting. You know that the lesson plans you do for tomorrow’s classes will never – literally never – be used again. The planning is vital, but never repeatable.