My first Post (Some Stuff About Me)

My name is Jacob Bartfield, and music has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember.  It started when I was about three of four.  Although it would be a couple years before I started to learn how to play an instrument for real, I had a blue plastic toy guitar and a yellow plastic toy microphone that I would use to pretend I was Paul Simon.  One of my earliest memories was “playing” guitar while watching a tape of Simon and Garfunkel’s 1981 Concert in Central Park.

            I went through my childhood never seriously considering the future, but when I was in tenth grade I was suddenly introduced to a whole new type of pressure.  Where did I want to go to college, and what did I want my career to be?  It took me a surprisingly small amount of time to figure it out.  As soon as I considered my options, it was obvious to me that I wanted to go to music school and be a musician.  I went to Berklee, graduated as a bass performance major, and I have been playing bass professionally ever since.

            To be honest, teaching music wasn’t something I had really considered till very recently.  I’ve taught some bass lessons.  I had a regular student in Boston for a while and a regular student in LA for a while.  In between these I’ve taught some people that didn’t stick with it beyond the first one or two lessons.  I also started teaching my first cello student a few months ago.  In the past couple weeks I’ve been helping the strings teacher in the school where I’m interning teach a little bit.  Yesterday I had my second day as a substitute teacher, and for a few minutes I had to teach an introductory lesson in division to third graders.  These few lessons have been the extent of my teaching experience up until now.

            I’m saying this because early in my graduate educational schooling, I’m noticing some level of reluctance and insecurity in the few things I’ve written so far.  I hear or read other people in class uses phrases like “as teachers we should…” where as I would say “when I become a teacher I would....”.  I’m just trying to be honest with myself and use language I feel comfortable with.  I hope to become a teacher, but I can’t consider myself one just yet.
           Despite my lack of experience, I think I can be a good teacher because I’ll be teaching about something that I love.  In the future, if I’m honest with my students by letting them really see my excitement for music, then hopefully they will become excited too.  I also think I can be a good teacher by just making sure I come across as the person that my friends and family know.  I think being likeable will go a long way.

Here's my website:

jacobbartfield.com