A student approached me at my school about five months ago; I’ll call him “Mr. M.” He wanted me to teach him to play guitar.
Now, I’d never taught someone to play guitar before – not really. I mean, I’d had small groups of students in an after-school class for eight or nine weeks, meeting once every seven days, but that was the extent of my musical teaching experience. I put Mr. M off, telling him that it would have to be approved with his parents before I agreed to any such type of undertaking.
His mom contacted me later that day, indicating her excitement that I’d be teaching her son to play—if I were indeed willing.
I won’t lie; I felt a trifle overwhelmed at the prospect and sorely contemplated telling Mr. M that I was too busy to teach a private guitar lesson each week. Considering my then-current schedule, fitting a 30-45 minute session in each week was going to be a stretch; as Bilbo Baggins so eloquently put it, it would be “like butter scraped over too much bread.”
