This is neither here, nor there, but I have been struggling to find a job. Literally hundreds of resumes sent out, awesome cover letters written...apparently nobody wants to hire a 59 year old. I've applied to 15 jobs at UMass Amherst, 7 at Hampshire College, 3 at Mount Holyoke College, as well as a myriad of smattering other jobs at the other colleges and community schools. Nobody is hiring. I suspect I knew this would happen in 2009 when our son was born and we decided to split responsibilities...me to stay home and raise him and my partner to get a decent job with health care. It made sense then because as a musician and music teacher, I could stay home and teach at night. This was a sort of "between" time, when people my age and up had more cash and were more motivated. Times have changed.
You can't blame it all on the pandemic.
There's infinitely more flexibility now due to the fact that most people have access to the internet and can take remote lessons. The challenge is that the generations (mine and before) that grew up with a healthy appreciation for learning to play a musical instrument are in the same boat as me, meaning, they are not able to hire a private teacher. Many of them are attempting to go their own way by using YouTube videos and apps. I don't know how successful that is for them. I do get a few that cross over from apps once they realize that feedback and motivation are critical aspects of private lessons that they can't get with an app or a video.
I'm lucky I suppose, that I can offer a wide variety of musical instruments, styles, and have experience teaching all age groups. But finding students is much harder now than it has ever been.
In years past, I found most of my students by word of mouth. The fact that everybody is either online now, or has hunkered down offline and out of the community (many of my former 70+ students fit this description), renders word of mouth that much more difficult. Other sources of students such as Craigslist (which has moved to a paid model) are dead-ends now. Facebook/Social media was a decentralized source of eager students 10 years ago, but that also has changed as more and more people migrate to platforms like TikTok, SnapChat, Telegram, Discord, Pinterest, Instagram and many others, splintering what was a fat pipeline into thousands of tiny pipettes if at all.
What's a musician to do? Schools are not hiring. In fact, my son's school music teacher left in August for whatever reason to find more permanent work in Chicopee where music teachers double as substitute teachers and staff now. Less music, more PPE. The Pandemic has rendered live music a dead end as well. Concerts, gigs and other live music events was once a pure source of eager students. But the fact that there are few live music events any more, makes this an impossible source. How do I know this? One of the most prolific musician/teachers I know recently organized an online "concert" and posted it to his Facebook page. It was a good event, very positive. But just how many people watched it? How many students were motivated by it to sign up for lessons? I would be surprised if it were more than 1 or 2.
So where does this put the rest of us? Looking for outside work. And coming up short.
Happy New Year!
