I’ll never get a good job as a choir teacher because I can’t accompany.
I’ve been teaching for 10 years, have a bachelors in general/choral music education, and have plenty of experience teaching choirs, solo voice, etc. The job I’m at now I’m finding will just never have a good music program, choir especially, mostly at the fault of the district for how they structure the schedule and almost encourage students to only take two years of a music elective, so any growth is pretty much impossible because I’ll never get students in the class long enough to actually grow. I’m trying to find another job where I can get back into teaching choirs again, but it seems like the only schools I’ll actually get hired for are ones with a terrible music program or one I’d have to build out of nothing with students who have zero experience. I know I can teach choir well and I know I’m a good enough teacher to teach at a good school with a good choir program, but the fact that my piano skills aren’t proficient enough for me to accompany is going to make it impossible. The schools I’ve gotten interviews for have mentioned that they’d like me to accompany the in the classroom, and I’ll likely be expected to prove I can if I move forward to teach a demo lesson. I wish I was better at piano myself, I definitely haven’t practiced enough to be good but I’m struggling to balance my schedule as it is let alone set aside time to become an accompanist. It sucks knowing that there are jobs I could likely do great at but won’t get purely because I’m not piano proficient. It’s my fault, I understand that, but it sucks knowing that I can do literally everything else- I can plunk multiple parts, lead warm ups, play chord progressions for pop songs fine, but I’ll likely never be good enough to accompany unless I pour all of my time into practicing.