a little intimidated

[pianodeanne]

Hello to all!  I am starting to teach again after about 8 years, and am glad I found this site!  So far, it seems very helpful.  But I feel so intimidated by some of your messages.  I did not finish college, but I did study music education.  I took piano lessons from the time I was 5 until I was 19 years old.  Then I was the pianist and organist at my hometown church for 10 years.  I also accompanied many area High School plays, as well as taught.   I then worked as a clerk at a hospital, then quit that so I could be home with the kids, and have recently started teaching again.  We live in a very small country town, and everyone seems grateful to have me announce that I am teaching, and I currently have started with 6 new students, and another to start in 2 weeks.  

I feel that I was before, and will be again, a good piano teacher, even though I do not have a degree.  I went through 7 different teachers, and have learned very well and will always remember and admire them.  I hold in my heart alot of memories, good and bad, and I want to share my talent with other people.  

Any advice on my newest endeavor would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Deanne

[kateb]

Bringing music lessons to a small town where students otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to learn with a private teacher is truly a gift! And you'll do fine. Just make sure to practice yourself! And if there is a college teacher in a nearby town from whom you can take lessons, your instruction chops will come back quicker. Two good books: How to Teach Piano Successfully by James Bastien and 20 Lessons in Keyboard Choreography by Seymour Bernstien will help too. If you start with one of them, start with the James Bastien book.

[djar]

Your little country town is indeed lucky to have you, and the fact that you have come to this piano forum searching for ideas and excellence tells me that you will do just fine!

[pianodeanne]

Thanks to both of you!  Since I last wrote, I have picked up a few more students, and now I have 14!  The parents seem very pleased so far, and I am very happy, and glad that I made the decision to quit the hospital and stay home with the kids to teach.  Music has always been where my heart is, and I have talked about doing this for quite a while now, and here I am!  

Now, can I ramble a little bit?  haha!

One other thing I do want to ask you now is, what are your personal opinions about the different methods of teaching beginners?  I found a website that compares different methods.  I just wonder what all of you use?  My daughter has been taking (with another teacher - she won't sit for me) lessons with the Alfred Basic Piano Library, and is doing great.  But I know that the Alfred stresses position playing.  (Whatever happened to the old but true methods that I grew up with?)  I mean, you have your Alfred and Bastien's Tecnique books, the Alfred and Bastien's lesson books, etc.   I don't remember using all these books for just one level.  I have been experimenting with different methods with my students.  I started them out with the Alfred, until I realised what it was doing.   The kids don't know what they are doing if they get out of the 5-finger position approach they (and Bastien) use.  Also, the Alfred and Bastien books may be all right for very young kids, they seem to be too "babyfied" for ages 10+.  I have been looking for something that is just in between; not too babyfied, yet not too boring at the same time.  In the time of Britney Spears and all the pop music, shouldn't there be something to appeal to the kids, instead of "See What I Can Play??  --This Is Middle C!"

Edna Mae Burnham is pretty good for little ones, too, if you like to think of the middle of the staff as a "play yard", and she teaches about middle C clear up to the middle of the book!  Seems like a waste of money if I were a parent.  

I will continue to use Dozen a Day, which I grew up with. And I teach scales and will arpeggios, when they progress a little more.  But, what I am looking for is the ULTIMATE and thorough piano teaching method.  

OK I'm done.  .............Any ideas?  Oh, and thank you again, for all your wonderful advice!  It is so neat to have a place to go and not feel ashamed to ask!  I love this website!!

[Mandy]

Hi,

I have just completed a B.Mus degree in Canada where I focused on Piano Performance and Pedagogy, with a bunch of music ed. courses.  I'm going to be heading to Arizona State university in the fall to do a masters in performance and ped.  I have a very useful book called: the well tempered keyboard teacher, by uszler, gordon and smith.  It has tons of info about teaching all levels, evaluates methods, talks about technique, setting up studios, extra materials and software.  It has been a great resource.  It was a bit pricey, but well worth it.  I've gone back to it countless times for advice and information in my own studio, studies and prep for my masters.

In my own studio, I use the hal leonard method.  My kids love it, especially all of the extra materials that go along with it.  It gets quite costly, there are about 10 books per level, I suggested the parents buy the lesson, and theory books....I have the rest and we just work out mine.  It's a middle-c approach, which I have found that 2 of my kids tend to read the finger numbers and follow the patterns rather than actually learning the notes.  However, with an extra little practice, I soon weened them off this habit.  

Are you doing group lessons in your studio?  I don't have much experience in that, but from the research I have done, it is very popular now and the kids seem to benefit from it....you can also get a lot done with theory and musical concepts by setting up groups that are the same level.

Hope this helps!

[pianowelsh]

Hiya - Hey I know what you mean about some of the posts..... 'i am not worthy!!'  I am still studying B.Mus and am heavily involved in church music too. I have done some private teaching with opposite ends of the scale 8 and 80 yrs old at beginner level. That was fun and provided much amusement as about every second week the 80 yr old would forget their music glasses and there was no way she could read anything without them. So we had to be flexible and we would play tunes from mem and use them as aural exercises and we would listen to music and discuss it and in simple ways take the pieces apart and look at how they were constructed what made them good pieces and play bits of them etc - admittedly her piano playing moved on very slowly (she also did pottery and painting and and and - so very little practise!) BUT she had fun and gradually amassed quite a substancial knowledge about piano playing and music. MY ONLY advice knowing only full well how many books there are out there, how many teaching approaches there are and how many vastly different students there are out there is HAVE FUN. Let the student know that you are there for them in order them to get the most out of music. The vast majority will never even become super proficient let alone concert artists. Make sure you enjoy the experience and that they are clear in their educational goals - Learning needs to be fun and music needs to always be an activity they enjoy. Music is not about passing exams and winning prizes and it can be hard for the teacher to remember this when your being paid to provide a service. Exams are not the only measure of success! All the very best in your endevours!! may you be blessed with lots of really great personalities in your new practise!

[ChristmasCarol]

You have a great attitude.  One piece of advice I have for you is that the more I teach the more I learn.    Be aware of what's happening as best you can.  There will be different types of students.  Not every student will learn in the same way.  So it is best to see what they respond to and go with that.  The feeling of being slightly uneasy with your teaching abilities is a sacred one in my opinion.  I hope you never lose it.  It's what makes you reach out and learn.  It's what can help make you a very very good teacher.  One teacher I had who had his Ph.d. from Julliard was my very worst piano teacher.   Had I believed his narrow view of my playing I would not be a pianist today.  He was so stuck in his little "you-have-tos", that he did not realize my talent.  A later teacher I had who was a brilliant pianist with all the degrees and performance yada yadas had a way of teaching that opened me up seemingly overnight.  I teach the way he taught me and am having fabulous results.  I do not have a college degree.  It is not the measure of a good teacher.  I agree with the great educator John Holt, who later in life put no degrees on his book covers, because he says everything he learned of great value he learned after he stopped going to school.   Your students will show you how well you're doing.  Even three months from now, you''ll be pleased with what you are getting from them I'm sure.  Don't forget to enjoy it.  Oh, and some of them will frustrate the living hell out of you... par for the course.  It's not you... It's just life.

[jacobspauly]

I recently moved to a small town(actually a small island!) and have a similar experience. I minored in music and studied pirvately with numerous teachers and am a math teacher in the schools now and people were really excited when I talked about teaching music on the side because there really aren't many other teachers around.

The best book I've read is "The Well-Tempered Keyboard Teacher", I highly recommend it. I had the same reservations about Alfred and Bastien and the transfer students that I get that used those methods have a horrible time when asked to play outside of their "position". I use the Faber series because it is a good mix in between Alfred and say a Clark or Pace or something more difficult. I'm really happy with it.