Any Students In The Offing?
In the ongoing quest to build an Alexander Technique teaching practice and find students, one of the questions that I’ve spent a lot of (relatively fruitless) time on is, what kind of student do I want to attract? As with my early days of teaching piano, the immediate answer is that I will take any student who turns up just so that I can get things going. This is the wrong answer - as I learned in my later days of teaching piano. It’s best to be selective and take the time to ensure that the student wants to learn what I can teach. When I found students who were willing to practice and learn music theory and challenge themselves to continue to improve, it was worth the time and effort of making a schedule and choosing new music and planning recitals.
“The offing” is originally a nautical term, meaning the part of the sea which can be seen from land. Ships “in the offing” are visible from the shore and will arrive at the dock soon.
Photo taken by William Bajzek during an Old Anacortes Rowing Society (O.A.R.S.) sunrise row.
I’m having a difficult time figuring out why people might want to take Alexander lessons, so that I can say the correct things to make people interested in trying it out. Side note: I’ve been doing this for nearly 30 years so I tend to wonder why anyone WOULDN’T want to take lessons! Presenting AT as The Magic Thing That Makes Your Life Better apparently just makes people skeptical. A lot of our marketing is centered around dealing with pain but I haven’t found a way to explain that I can help with pain but it will take a while and some weird things might happen along the way…in a way that draws people in. I’m not involved with a college performing arts department at the moment so opportunities to talk about AT to musicians or actors are a bit thin. So…who do I want to teach? What’s the Alexander equivalent of learning music theory in order to better understand the pieces you’re working on??
Just waiting for my ship to come in…
Ideally, there are people out there who do want to improve their life and are willing to spend some time working on it. They don’t want a quick fix and they may have already realized that the journey can be more interesting that reaching the destination. Maybe there are some pain issues, maybe they want to get better at a sport or hobby and can’t figure out how, but they’re curious and open-minded and willing to try a different approach. A few of those people would be a terrific start to a little Alexander Technique teaching studio. Now I just have to find them.
