If You're Going to Call Yourself a Voice Teacher, You Need to Take It Seriously

There's a prevalent mentality in the classical singing industry that teaching is a "lesser" career than performing. But, as any passionate teacher will tell you, that's not true at all.

I really despise the saying, “Those who can’t do, teach.”

First of all, it doesn’t even make sense. When it comes to imparting a skill, how can you teach someone how to do something, if you have no clue how to do it yourself?

Second, it’s an insult to skilled, knowledgeable teachers everywhere.

I feel like this should be obvious, and yet, there’s still this stigma around teaching, particularly in subjects or fields surrounded by glamor, mystique, and/or prestige.

I’ve seen folks with expertise and extensive education across many fields who are made to feel that teaching is some kind of “less than” career you settle for when your highest aspirations don’t work out. From academia to the performing arts, teaching is often viewed as something professionals do “on the side” or “as a day job” to support their “real” career in their field - whether that is writing, researching, performing, etc.

I think this is really sad, because I believe that teaching, in any field, is a noble calling. Especially in an age where reactivity and groupthink are at an all-time high, and critical thinking and thoughtful dialogue are at an all-time low, a teacher’s work is essential in helping students of all ages and disciplines engage with information and digest it such that they can arrive at their own, informed opinions about it. Whether in a classroom with young students, or a one-on-one setting with adults, a teacher’s guiding hand can help ensure not only that students learn the information and skills they need for their discipline, but also develop the self-knowledge that will set them up for success, no matter what they do in life.

I knew, very early on in my musical journey, that I wanted to be a teacher. Not a classroom teacher (I was never into the idea of teaching general music to a room full of second graders), but someone who helped others develop their voices and musical skills so that they could lead more fulfilling lives, have more confidence in themselves, and pursue their artistic passions.

I taught my first voice students while I was still in college, at the suggestion of my own teacher. While I knew my own vocal development still had a ways to go, I also knew that I only needed to be a few steps ahead of the people I wanted to help. While I was home from school during the summers, I taught several members of my mother’s church choir, who were mostly folks who had no or little prior singing experience, and just wanted to learn to use their voices better. I quickly discovered that I had a knack for communicating and explaining things in a way that people could understand, as well as for helping these singers choose pieces and songs that were a fit for their abilities and their musical preferences. I enjoyed it, because it felt creative in its own right. I knew, even then, that I wanted private teaching to be a central part of my career.

After college, I started building my own teaching studio, concurrent with my full-time job in music retail. Eventually, I had enough students that I could leave the retail job entirely and teach full-time. The studio became my main focus for a few years.

When I started to do more “real-world,” professional singing, I discovered that a lot of the working singers I interacted with had a very different view of teaching than I did. Rather than viewing it as its own calling requiring its own expertise, many seemed to view it as a “day job” that they did solely to make money, in hopes that they could leave it behind someday as their performing career took off.

I remember, in fact, meeting a fellow young singer in rehearsals for one of the earliest concert gigs I ever got (I’d been asked to be the soprano cover in a one-to-a-part performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion), and exchanging the pleasantries one does in this kind of professional situation, and the conversation went something like this:

“Hi, I’m Ellen. I’m a singer, and I also have my own teaching studio where I teach full-time.”

The other singer replied, rather condescendingly, with something like, “Nice to meet you - my name is X [I honestly don’t remember what her name was], and I’m first and foremost a professional singer. That’s the main thing that I do.”

First of all, cue the imposter syndrome. I was thrilled just to be at this gig, doing the professional concert singer thing for essentially the first time, and meeting new people in the industry. And here was a fellow singer who clearly thought my choice of artistic path was less prestigious or important than the performing path she had chosen. It made me feel like I was a nobody, and had no right to be there. (It also didn’t help that I hadn’t been to grad school yet, and this girl had.)

Second, I was kind of offended. I wasn’t teaching because I “wasn’t making it” as a performer (I was only just starting out as a performer, for heaven’s sake) - I was doing it because I loved it, I was good at it, and it was, after all, making me money.

I have seen this mentality play out again and again in the classical singing industry. Teaching is still often viewed as a side gig or day job (or “Muggle job,” as it’s sometimes referred to in these circles) to supplement one’s performing career, rather than something that singers are proud to do and pursue for its own sake.

I fully believe that you can balance a teaching career with a performing career. I don’t believe it’s always either/or. I also believe that singers can have different focuses in their career at different times. You might go through a season where performing is your main focus, and then another where that focus shifts to teaching (or any other artistic pursuit, for that matter).

But I also believe that, if you are going to call yourself a voice teacher, you need to take that title very seriously.

You’d think this would be a natural thing for classical singers to do, given the reverence that many have for their own teachers and the technique they’ve learned. You’d also think that they’d look upon their negative experiences with teachers, too, as examples of what they don’t want to do.

Generally, though, I have not found this to be the case. Teaching – especially teaching young or inexperienced students who aren’t necessarily “serious” about singing – is still viewed as something “less than” when compared with a prestigious performing career, and as a result, many singers view it as a temporary phase of life that they do not wish to develop further. They don’t actually enjoy it or view it as a calling in its own right.

This is really bad, in my opinion.

Now, don’t get me wrong – if you don’t enjoy teaching, that’s fine. If you have no aspirations to be a “career” voice teacher, there’s nothing wrong with that. Teaching is not for everyone, and there are many, many ways to have a career as an artist that don’t require you to teach.

But if you are going to do it, you need to take it seriously. And if you don’t want to take it seriously, then you have no business being a voice teacher.

I mean that.

Voice teaching – like all other kinds of teaching – is its own area of expertise that requires ongoing education and professional development in order to do well. Not all singers are, by default, good at teaching, just because they know how to sing. Knowing how to sing is important, but teaching someone else how to sing is its own skill, requiring a host of sub-skills that you don’t necessarily learn in traditional conservatory training.

You have to know how to approach things in a myriad of ways, because every voice and body and brain that you work with as a teacher is different. You have to listen and watch closely, and constantly think of creative ways to apply what you know to the person that’s in front of you, in a way that is going to help them achieve their stated goals or arrive at a desired result. You have to put your own ego aside, and acknowledge that the technique that works for you may not be what’s best for them.

You have to be willing to explore new things in your own voice, too – especially if you’re working with students who are singing non-classical genres. If your students want to learn to belt, or mix, or create any kind of tonal outcome that isn’t typically aligned with traditional classical singing, then you need to get familiar with how those sounds work in your own instrument, and develop ways of thinking and talking about them so that you can elicit the same outcomes in your students.

You have to spend time researching and learning the stuff you don’t know, and diving into those issues that come up in your singers’ instruments that you’ve never dealt with personally or have never even seen before. You have to be able to engage thoughtfully, curiously, and creatively with what you know about the human voice, and how you might extrapolate that to solve whatever issue is in front of you.

You have to be willing to wrestle with and question all the things you’ve learned as a singer and all the stuff you’ve been told, and decide for yourself what you believe about singing and what it means to be a teacher. It requires you to develop your own philosophy and approach to the human voice, that you revisit and refine again and again.

And you have to remember, always, that you are dealing with people. We like to say that we work with voices, or bodies, or instruments – but really, what we are working with is people, actual humans with experiences and feelings. One’s voice is not just in the larynx or the breath – it’s a total expression of oneself. Good voice teachers, I think, are constantly aware of how vulnerable the act of singing is, and should be striving to create spaces where students can feel comfortable expressing something so personal.

This list does not even begin to cover the business and interpersonal skills you need to maintain a thriving and organized studio without burning out. Voice teachers need to do their own work around their boundaries and energy levels, and stepping out of their comfort zones to learn new, non-musical skills that will help them excel.

Teaching is its own creative endeavor and its own expression of one’s artistry. It is its own art form, and should be treated as such. If you’re not interested in cultivating this art form, then please leave this career to those of us who are.

Why? Because voice students, no matter how old or experienced they are, no matter what kind of music they want to sing and why, deserve teachers who are experts at what they do. They deserve to work with someone who will do everything that is reasonably in their power and within their scope of service to help them achieve the result they want. They deserve to study with someone who is passionate about this work.

So, fellow singers – especially those of you who are just starting out in the industry and deciding how you want your careers to look – if teaching isn’t for you, there’s no shame in that. You don’t have to teach as part of your career if you don’t want to.

But if it’s something that you do feel called or drawn to, I’d encourage you to invest the time, money, and energy necessary to become really, really good at it.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t think that pursuing a career as a teacher is mutually exclusive to being a performer. You don’t have to give up your aspirations to be a professional singer in order to be a teacher. You can both “do,” and teach, if that’s what you want – and don’t let anyone ever try to convince you otherwise.

And if you are a singer who is looking for an experienced, passionate teacher, I’d love to talk with you. I work with adult students, both pro-level and avocational, who aspire to be confident, awesome singers — whatever that means to them. Whether you’re looking for technical training, musical coaching, repertoire advice, or performance preparation, we can chat for a bit to see if we’re a fit to work together. You can learn more at https://www.ellenallenvoicestudio.com/voice-lessons.