Teaching vs. Performing

I recently attended a concert that was part of a concert series dedicated to a pianist/teacher who passed away a few years ago. Seeing and hearing his name reminded me of my interactions with him at a music festival early in college, where he was the coach for a piano quartet I was playing in for the week. I don't honestly remember much about his coaching or playing. I do remember that near the end of the week he asked me what my major was, and when I told him I was majoring in viola performance, he made a comment to the effect of "you could be a Suzuki teacher." While it is impossible to know exactly what he meant by that, I took it to mean he thought I wasn't good enough to be a performer and was hurt by his comment (If I want to give him the benefit of the doubt it could be he thought my personality was suited to teaching little kids, but I guess I'll never know).

I have thought a lot about this comment over the years and the problematic assumptions that this implies.
1. Being a teacher is a second choice career to performing.
2. You don't have to be a good player to teach.
3. Teaching isn't as important as being a good performer.

To attack some of the assumptions above: One: I know many musicians who always wanted to be Suzuki teachers and pursued that as a primary goal, others primarily pursued careers as teachers in the schools. I always knew I wanted to teach, but originally thought I would teach more as a supplement to performing rather than as my primary income, but have found that I absolutely love teaching.  I also prefer the relative stability of a teaching income, rather than waiting for the phone to ring for gigs. I have found the same to be true for many other teachers.

As for the second assumption that you don't have to be a good player to teach, while I would say that you don't need to be able to toss off Paganini caprices to teach beginners, you do need to be able to play some advanced repertoire with good technique (and I would say a good teacher should almost always have at least a Bachelor's degree in music). It is important in order to be able to demonstrate, and to have a plan in mind for helping your students progress to more advanced levels. Also, the skills of teaching, while they include skills of good performers, are unique to teaching. All good performers know how to hold the bow correctly and use vibrato, however, knowing how to do these things is very different from knowing how to teach a wiggly 7 year old to do the same things.

I think the last assumption, is probably the biggest problem in the music profession (and society in general). We tend to glorify those who can do something at the highest level (particularly the things we can watch),  and while that is understandable, we tend to forget the teachers and coaches that make these things possible. If you read bios of musicians in programs you often see teachers listed, however, these teachers are generally their college and grad school professors who they did not study with until they had already achieved a relatively high level of proficiency on their instrument. I personally think that musicians should all be required to list their first music teachers along with the impressive list of professors at good universities and conservatories. After all, no one gets into Juilliard (or even a decent university program) without years of lessons, and a high level of achievement mostly attained thanks to their first couple of teachers. The music profession really owes everything to the beginning private teachers and orchestra directors of the world, but we publicly acknowledge very few of them.

I am now primarily a teacher with 50+ private students and love teaching more than almost anything else I do, but I realized recently that I still subconsciously held some of these assumptions when I was considering my career and what I do. I do perform professionally, but not as much as many musicians I know, and my income comes primarily from teaching. I still occasionally find myself slightly embarrassed to admit that I am a "violin/viola teacher" and that I don't do a ton of freelancing (it's hard to play gigs and teach 50+ students). While I am working to find a better balance between teaching and performing (and everything else), I am also working on being proud of what I do and not apologizing for being "just" a teacher. My students play well and I think that what I do is meaningful to them and to the world.
And after all in what other job do you get to dress up as Mary Poppins and play the viola?