Perhaps the folk music comes first and the teaching second. Most people know or fear they won't be able to make a living from music, and teaching is an almost guaranteed steady job with a certain amount of free time to pursue what you really love.

Natalie MacMaster, despite her success, continued to go to university until she could get a teacher's licence, and good Cape Breton girl that she is, I'm sure in the back of her mind was a worry that she'd need a job of that sort some day. Young women in Nova Scotia, at least, have been urged to 'get a teacher's licence', if it was at all possible, for about a century. It was, until pretty recently, considered the essential back-up, the 'break in emergency' fire-axe behind glass, to be used in case of sickly husband, widowhood, or spinsterhood.