Of all the jobs I have had in my life, teaching has been the one I liked the least. Maybe because I started quite young, or because it was imposed, or I just don't have the vocation for that. But since june I have an oboe student who I teach online, but not here in Venezuela, in PERU!
You see, due to the economic situation here in Venezuela, many of us have had to look for other jobs that generate more income to be able to live decently, some others have preferred to leave to other countries in search of a better life. I decided to stay for several reasons that I will not list in this post, but 2 of my brothers did leave, and one of them settled in Peru. Of course, coming from a family of musicians, he strived to find something that was related to that area; although it was tough, he did finaly found a proyect that needed someone with is kind of expertise.
At the beggining, he asked me to teach online; I didn't accepted then because I don't like to teach, and I'm kind of a technology dummy and I didn't owned a smartphone (I still don't have a smartphone) nor even knew how to make a meeting online. He didn't insist though and I thought that's that. In january of this year as you know, I wanted to leave my old job so I was looking for something to do to because I didn't had another source of income. So he offered me one more time the job as a teacher, and even gave me all the tools to transform my mom's phone into a webcam and how to use Google Meet. I accepted mostly because of the payment, I could make in 1 class 12,28USD while in my old job I made 16USD a month, quite a difference, right?
So, on june 9th we had our first class, and I didn't knew what to expect. I mean, I hadn't teach in more than 10 years, and even though some times I had to go to other municipalities to support the work over there and give some gidelines, it wasn't my responsability to teach those kids every week until who knows when. But, ever here we say necesity has a dogs face (a bit lost in traslation but whatever) ao, I had to do my best in order to get my reward.
For those who don't know, Oboe is one of the most difficult instruments to learn how to play, ever! It requires a special attention from the teacher to the student in terms of the breathing, the fingering and the mouth. For this, the teacher, in this case, me, has to correct on the go, meaning that as he play's I have to move the fingers to the correct position, have to show him the correct way for him to breathe and to send the air through the reed, and how to put the reed in his mouth. Online I can't do that, so a challenging instrument to teach with a even more challenging method to do so, and not just because it's online, because we don't even live in the same country! But to my surprise, the kid has a certain ability for the instrument and progress has been good regardless of how far we are and how I am teaching him.
We are finishing our thirth month and we lost a week because his reed broke so we had to wait for his parents to get him a new one, and in that time he could not study and we were belated, but we are already finishing the key of C major and on Monday we have our first exam, God willing.
Today he even showed me oh so proudly his first sheet music from the child orchestra! So cute, he even put the names of the notes on top of each one LOL
Well, maybe it's not my calling, and yes, my main motivation is the money, but so far so good, it has been a wounderful and fun experience and quite challenging for me and of course for him. I'd like to see where this goes from here.
I'll alse leave you with a short clip of me playing, many years ago, just for you to make and idea of how hard the Oboe really is!
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Aunque no sea tu vocación que bueno que estés disfrutando la experiencia. Debe ser difícil enseñar a tocar un instrumento en línea. Yo no sé tocar nada, pero mi hijo por bastantes años estuvo tocando violín en el colegio, hasta que un día dijo que ya no quería más. Luego tocó mandolina por un tiempo.