The Music Teacher's Creed
By John Jacobson
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| Copyright 2011 Starbound Studios |
Music is our tongue for truth, A door to the inner Light that Guides our souls. It is behind us, before us, within us. It is our work, our health, our essential. Music is the tool we use to help others feel that there is something Greater around them and in them. It helps us discover a heart that can love, a mind that can reason, a sympathy that understands.
Hence, I will be honest in my teaching so others can trust me. I will be strong. I will be brave. I will be a friend to the friendly and the friendless. I will eat well, sleep well and laugh easily. I will lift others up. I will look and listen for things around me that merit praise. I will look and listen for hidden beauties in my students and my peers. I will toss harmony onto the world. I will live. I will give. I will be, music.
I will use music to help others to hear as well as to listen, and to listen and to undertand. I will use music to help others to feel as well as touch, to laugh more, cry more, share more, see more,
not just to exist but to live... more.
I will use music to help others to be true and to see merit in the cause. I will keep my standards high but my eyes closed to the small faults of those around me. I will be an "instrument of peace" and joy and light, and I will help others find genuine joy in each and every day and peace with the impossible.
I will cultivate courage, hope, truth, honesty, kindness, strength, perseverance, compassion, gentleness, discipline, dedication, pride humility, wisdom and most of all love. I will use music to teach that making a living is not nearly so rewarding as making a life. I will use music to help others to look up instead of down. I will use music to encourage a yearning for elegance rather than luxury, refinement rather than fashion, wealth rather than riches, giving rather than taking, life rather than resignation.
I will teach them joy. I will teach them hope. I will teach them to be great. I will use beautiful music to make all ever more beautiful, And I will teach all with whom I come in contact, to let their very life be music.
Copyright 2006 Hal Leonard Corporation
As published in the August/September 2006 edition of Music Express
