Hi, I’m Krystle Giddey. I’m a freelancing teacher in Zürich, Switzerland. Welcome to my blog! I’ll post many things on here, including information about studio events, playing advice, photos of my recent adventures in the mountains, and more. But first, I wanted to introduce myself.
It’s no secret that social media brings about the impression that everyone is perfect. The Instagram Influencers have the perfect bodies, relationships, and travel plans. The virtuosic performers are all over YouTube with their technically flawless renditions of famous pieces. You can find the artistic types re-inventing every single social media platform and the authors working on dozens of inspiring and beautiful projects on private blogs and websites.
I’m sure you have felt the same pressure that I do to show off a perfect lifestyle online. But, as a teacher I think it is seriously important to acknowledge the fact that I am a human being. That I make mistakes. That I am not perfect. And it isn’t just important to acknowledge it, it’s important to embrace that fact.
As a private flute teacher, my competitive industry encourages me to show off an idealized standard of perfection. We music teachers should be flawless performers and that should influence every other aspect of our work. I mean, isn’t perfect playing the foundation of good teaching?
Yeah, no, I’ll take a hard pass on that idea.
This is who I am:
I am a successful musician, with a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in flute performance. I am a versatile teacher with years of experience teaching music, English, and university level courses. I am an open-minded, compassionate educator who strives to help my students find the best in themselves.
I am a human being. I sometimes struggle with performance anxiety. The day to day grind of working multiple jobs and traveling around the country for work can impact the quality and consistency of my private practice. It isn’t always easy to find the right balance in my life between work, music, health, and social time.
These two sides to my life do not compete, they are two parts of the whole me. My struggles with performance anxiety help me to understand, empathize, and relate to my students. Having to manage day to day concerns about finances, work, and life balance helps me to assign realistic goals for my students. Learning how to balance the different elements of my life enables me to infuse my music with life experiences and emotions that I have acquired.
I am not a perfect musician or person. I make mistakes. But the important thing is that I welcome those mistakes because they are an opportunity to grow. I encourage my students to do the same. Every mistake is a window into yourself, it opens up an awareness into what you are doing.
The best person to teach about something is the person who has experienced it. So rather than try to hide the things that I consider to be personal failings (for example my performance anxiety) I have worked hard to embrace them and be open about them with my family, friends, and students. As a teacher I take the experiences that I have had, good and bad, and find the best, most effective way to communicate those experiences with each of my students so that they too can learn from them and, if all goes well, avoid the downfalls and negativity that I had to go through to get to the other side.
That’s what this blog is going to be about. I am going to give an honest reflection of what I am working on now. Some posts will be positive, some might seem negative, but all of them will be the honest truth and they will all hopefully contain something to help you, the reader, get through a problem that you are having too.
Because in my opinion honest discussion and an open mind are at the heart of effective and compassionate teaching and even though it is a bit scary and intimidating, I am here to start that discussion. One post at a time.
~Krystle Giddey