I admit it. I'm a non-techy Millennial. I love the opportunities that technology provides, but have no clue how it works and don't really care care as long as it does. Being an online teacher the last few months has helped me learn some things I didn't anticipate.
1) Being the teacher means you need to know how to troubleshoot random tech problems. Yikes. I can normally figure it out decently on my end...and won't try to do fancy things that I don't understand how to, but it's also my job to help figure out what is going on on the student's end and help them fix it. It's getting easier the more problems I encounter, but I didn't plan to be a tech instructor when signed up to teach music online.
2) You always can see a video of yourself when you are teaching. That can be distracting if you let it, but it doesn't have to be. A benefit of being able to see yourself, is that you become much more aware of what your face is doing when a student is playing or talking to you, and that can help as you can consciously tell yourself to look pleasant or interested. Of course you are, but sometimes it doesn't register on your face. A downfall is that you have to be aware of your lighting. This is something I never cared about before, but it matters. If you randomly decide to open some curtains right before your online class starts, you may find yourself spending the next hour wondering why you're teaching when you appear so pale that it looks like you should be in a hospital, not an online classroom and wondering if it's scaring the kids to have a ghost teaching them.
Yes, there are some new challenges, but I honestly love teaching online. It allows me to meet and work with people I never would have otherwise, and it allows me to work from home with whatever schedule I want.
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