I’m not convinced you can teach anybody anything. You can show them what you know and how you do it but when all is said and done, one teaches oneself. You can say you taught someone saxophone or violin but really, they have to do the work of teaching themselves in order to get it. You can say you taught them how to tie their shoelaces or how to swim but…..The song writing students had an assignment last week, to write a review for the film about Nina Simone, What Happened Miss Simone? My favourite student’s response stemmed from their opening line, “I had never heard Nina Simone’s music before watching this documentary. Within the first minute of the documentary I followed her on Spotify and downloaded 4 of her albums.” Felt very good reading that and at first I wanted to take credit, contrary to what I just wrote, I was ready to believe I taught them about Nina Simone just because I issued the assignment. It’s that easy to fool yourself.