Deanna, a different sort of suggestion, and one that might prove too
difficult, but which may help you keep teaching while also reducing -
though not eliminating - the stress on your voice: consider changing your
method of teaching. I suspect you may be the kind of teacher who teaches a
lot through demonstration. I think what you need to do is some major
thinking on how you might change this approach to your teaching.
My current teacher uses demonstration very little, at least with her more
advanced students. This doesn't mean she doesn't use her voice - she does
indeed make comments throughout the lessons (otherwise we wouldn't be
learning) - but she is also a big believer in helping students teach
themselves, so often her comments are phrased as questions to get us to
to recognize and verbalize what it is we have done to "get something
right" - or to recognize and point out to her when we feel we've done
something wrong. She will then elaborate on the "why" of what we have
observed.
Anyway, I've found her approach has worked marvels for me - but then, I
was already fairly well along in my studies when I started with her.
Which leads to another possibility: I don't know the demographics of your
students - how many are beginners, how many are "nearly there", etc. But
you may want to start trying to shift the balance more towards the more
polished students, who will require less explanation, and less
demonstration, and instead will rely on your ear and expertise mainly to
help them overcome the last few remaining problems, or to simply refine
what's almost "ready for prime time".
As I said, these suggestions won't completely eliminate the problem for
you - but they may help, at least, alleviate it somewhat.
Karen Mercedes
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
________________________________
I want to know God's thoughts...
the rest are details.
- Albert Einstein
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