I know a high school choral conductor who said, “My job isn’t to train future church choir members.” She meant community choir, even college choir, too – her goal was to put her most talented students on Broadway.
I know another teacher whose goal was clearly to make her room a safe space for every student; the fact that her choirs always sang beautifully was a result of her brilliant teaching, but clearly secondary to the love they reflected on each other.
A third teacher’s choirs always sang a shockingly ambitious mix of music brand new to Medieval: perhaps he would describe his primary goal as reaching collegiate-level with his choirs.
What are your goals? Have you consciously considered them? Written them down?
If you don’t make them clear and specific, you won’t move towards them very effectively.
Your goals must reflect you: your passions, your interests. Match a teacher above with another’s goals and the outcome would be unhappy teachers and students, lack of progress toward the goals, and rapid burnout.
Get the right goals for you and you’ll find yourself flying down the career highway at 75mph in no time.