Each student provides a unique opportunity to learn together. I try to find what the singer can do already and build from there. A singer, like an oboist, has to learn to produce a tone—some singers can do it by instinct, and some cannot. Fortunately, there are innate behaviors that are common to most: the startle breath, the um-hum of agreement, laughing, uh-oh, and yawning. Some of those we use and some we identify to avoid. Some of these approaches I learned from Todd Duncan and others from speech pathologists. The three basic properties of the vocal instrument (breathing, phonation, and resonance) are so intertwined that it is artificial to separate them, and yet I do, depending on the circumstance at hand. You can’t twiddle all the knobs at once!

Todd Duncan awakened in me a genuine curiosity about how the voice worked and thus began many years of attending the Symposium on the Professional Voice, taking courses in hearing and speech, building a large library, and attending workshops and NATS Conferences. There are times when I look at all there is to know about the voice and I still feel like a rookie. I believe it is imperative to be a life-long learner and to use the best evidence and science-based pedagogy as I currently understand it. I do use imagery, because the brain directs the action, but I always want to have a scientific, principle underlying the descriptions. If the approach works, I always explain why and answer questions, going as deeply as the student’s curiosity leads.

If I were a perfect teacher, I would never ask a student to do what they cannot do, but so wisely choose the vocalises and repertoire that their horizons would be widened. Needless to say, that is not the case and there are many times when I must back up a step or take a lateral step and find a new way to explain. One must be both a badger and a fox: the badger keeps burrowing no matter what; the fox leaps sideways if a shallow dig does not yield fruit. The art is in knowing which to do. There comes a point in a lesson when it is counterproductive to keep pursuing a particular skill; far better to come back to it at a future lesson and best to suggest that before the student becomes frustrated and tense. I try to choose repertoire that I think the student will enjoy and that will advance vocal skills. If the student objects to my choice, we find another song together. There needs to be pleasure in singing! Richard Miller said, “Truly controlled singing feels uncontrolled.”

I have always tried to go the extra mile for a student, offering additional time when warranted. Often the student stays in touch for many years and that is very gratifying. Sometimes the student that one carried over the finish line disappears and is never heard from again, but I recognize that they are under no obligation to express their thanks. As I neared retirement, I made a pact with myself that if I were ever unwilling to go the extra mile for a student, I would quit immediately. Fortunately, that has yet to happen and I continue to maintain a small private studio.

I suppose every teacher has a mental repository of students that one wishes to have served better, or that one failed to reach. I reflect on them and try to think how I could have done better, in order to meet those challenges when encountered again. I think of missed teaching opportunities and try to be more aware for the next one. A student honors you with the privilege of entrusting their voice to you. It’s a wondrous responsibility not to be taken lightly, but with knowledge and compassion of the human condition shared by both the teacher and student. I sometimes think that we are in the business of teaching old tricks to new dogs, or as a food writer more elegantly put it, “putting old wine in new bottles.”