You have three glorious months of summer ahead to prepare for the new season! Classical Singer will be publishing all three months for the first time this year. We figured it was time—that these are the months you actually have time to read and prepare for the coming season. We hope you have great plans for yourself; we know we have some great issues planned for you!
The Peak Performance Forum is growing so quickly we have opened a second forum! You are welcome to join at any time if you’re interested in setting weekly goals, doing some introspection and working on your career. Our textbook is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron—a 12-week, revolving self-directed workshop designed to make some real magic happen in your life and career. When you join, you’ll begin receiving an e-mail every Sunday morning reminding you of your week’s assignments and to check-in at the forum with your goals and progress. This is a great way to keep yourself moving forward toward your goals. Having other people aware of your goals helps make you accountable. We’ll keep the forums to a manageable size so you don’t become nameless…even though you’ll be using a name of your choosing so you’ll be able to be completely open. If you’d like to join, just go to the Peak Performance forum and request access. It can be found on the Internet at www.classicalsinger.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi?action= intro&category=64
The term “abuse” is used very freely in our society, yet a generation ago, it was scarcely whispered. You do have to be careful when you use the word “abuse.” We are trying to use it carefully here and hope you will too.
When CS introduced the Teacher Abuse Survey via the Classical Singer e-mail community, the response was immediate and immense. We’d expected just enough information to present an article on the topic but it was clear that the problem was much more widespread than we had originally thought. We were also reprimanded by some people knowledgeable in writing surveys because we had included sympathetic words that lead to “leading questions.” We’ve removed that sympathetic voice from the questions although we still want singers who are facing abuse to know that they are not alone. We’ll continue to pursue this topic until it’s clearly understood.
As a result of that initial survey, we determined that the survey needed to be widened to include the regular readers of the magazine. The survey is included in this issue. If you’ve had wonderful teachers, as is the case for most singers, we hope you’ll fill out this survey to keep the scales balanced. Those of you who have not been so fortunate, we hope you’ll tell your stories on the surveys—online or on paper—so we can help bring problems to light. We’re not out to do an exposé on any teacher but rather to help singers recognize abuse for what it is and to empower them to take appropriate action. This is particularly true for young singers who may think of teachers as they do doctors; they trust whatever is done as being for their own good. That’s why it’s important to define the parameters of a “normal” lesson. Just taking the survey should begin that process.
I’d also suggest that anyone wanting to do more research on abuse simply begin by doing a search on the Internet. Look up various combinations of these keywords: “abuse,” “emotional,” “physical,” “teacher,” and “sexual.” All of the questions on the survey came from various websites. In some cases, I took the questions from situations that we at the CS offices have been made aware of. This is not a scientific study; it’s simply at attempt to gather information and to make singers and teachers aware of what’s going on. Teachers may become more aware of why some students are coming to them so emotionally damaged. We’d really appreciate it if those of you who are able to take the survey would in fact take the survey online rather than on paper. The online version can be found at: www.classicalsinger.com/survey/surveytime.cgi
–CJ Williamson
