Becoming a teacher

Teacher's Lounge
#1

I’ve played for quite a long time, but I’ve never taught anyone how to play. I’ve thought about it off and on for a long time, but never felt a real desire. That’s been changing over the last couple of years or so.

Just kind of an idea percolating in the background, y’know?

I see an opportunity to help the youth bands at my church. I don’t see an issue with finding a student or two.

My concern is answering the question of teaching. “Where do I start?”

What are some recommendations on how to begin and how to structure lessons?

#2

Hi @Ruefus,

I’m not the most experienced, I’ve only started teaching guitar in the last year. In my case, I had several people on this forum enquire privately if I offered lessons. I decided to teach a few lessons/consultations and I enjoyed it a lot. I decided to announce publically on the forum that I was (am) available.

My situation is probably a little unique, but I would recommend that you take start small and see if you actually enjoy doing it. Then, if you do, announce your availability through the channels available to you. People need to know you’re available.

If there are notice boards at your church group, you could go the traditional route of posting a flier with some tear-away phone numbers. You could also post fliers on public notice boards in music shops, etc. Some people have told me that they have left a small stack of business cards with a desk at a music store, and students have been referred to them that way.

I’ve also been told by a friend that a students of his found him because his card was used as a bookmark in a guitar/music book in a public library. He swears he didn’t put it there himself, but if it can work, why not try it?

If your church has social media like FaceBook, you could post to the page that you’re available and leave contact details. If there are any other local community pages, you could post there too. Whatever it takes to get the word out.

As for lesson plans etc, that’s really dependent on the level of the student.

Best of luck with it!

1 Like
#3

Hello. You could start by doing a diagnosis, or just observing the bands or players and see where they could improve. Another way could be to ask them what they’d like to learn (Allen and Sites, 2012).

When you have an idea, you could first determine what skills do they need, and based on those skills, derive theoretical knowledge (Allen and Sites, 2012). That last part is useful for avoiding filling them with a lot of knowledge that doesn’t translate directly into skill learning (Allen and Sites, 2012), but in my opinion, it might be useful, but perhaps not as much in some cases.

When you have the content, you could design a learning/teaching strategy. For example, there are learning techniques that could be part of such strategy, like emphasizing speed for tremolo development (like Troy’s work, 2021, or other motor learning studies in different skills, such as Frazier, 2002) chaining techniques for motor learning (see Lilly, 2020 and Ash and Holding, 1990), memory palace for learning sheet music or a melody (see Beyond Practicing and Become a Superlearner courses), speed based simplification for gradually speeding up (see Magill and Anderson, 2020) if the physical mechanics allow it, so as to avoid things like fast string hopping, etc.

References
Allen, M., & Sites, R. (2012). Leaving ADDIE for SAM: An agile model for developing the best learning experiences . Estados Unidos de Norteamérica: Association for Talent Development.

Ash, D. W., & Holding, D. H. (1990). Backward versus forward chaining in the acquisition of a keyboard skill. Human Factors , 32(2), 139-146.

Frazier, T. M. C. (2002). The effect of instructional and practice sets: Emphasizing speed vs. accuracy in learning the overhand lacrosse throw* (Publication No. 3044915). [Doctoral dissertation, University of Virginia]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global

Lilly, K. (2020). Chaining Techniques: A Systematic Literature Review and Best Practice Recommendations [Master’s Thesis, St. Cloud State University]. The Repository @ St. Cloud State. https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=cpcf_etds

Magill R., & Anderson D. (2020). Motor learning and control: Concepts and applications (International students edition). McGraw Hill. VitalSource Bookshelf Online

Troy Grady. (2021, mayo 11). Instant picking speed! 210bpm on the second try. What does a “good” first attempt look like? [Video]. YouTube. Instant Picking Speed! 210bpm on the second try. What does a "good" first attempt look like? - YouTube

#4

I have been teaching for about 20 years now - here are some points for consideration:

Most of the students you will ultimately get will come as referrals, so just getting started when no one knows who you are can be pretty difficult (I think it was much easier when I started than it is now). I personally got my foot in the door as a guitar salesman at a music store - I’d end up either demo’ing a guitar someone was interested in purchasing, or just noodling when on break, and customers started asking if I taught, so I gave it a shot. Then I started advertising online (it was much less saturated at the time), and soon enough I had more inquiries than I could even handle.

Having some sort of pool of potential customers that are already exposed to you is a good start… for me, that was working at a music store, for you it may be the church. Or perhaps you have either friends, or friends with children, who would be interested in lessons. Take the time to consider all the possible avenues already open to you - you’ll have more success with that than business cards/flyers/web advertisement. I’m not saying those methods don’t work, but they don’t work well when you aren’t established at all.

If you are looking to turn this into a career, younger students are considerably more valuable than older students. Adults have loads of responsibilities that will take precedence over lessons if it comes down to it, whereas you could start with an 8 year old student and teach them for a decade, or even longer, pretty easily. Teaching an adult at an advanced level can certainly be a lot of fun, but financially it’s a no-brainer that kids are the better choice.

As for the actual teaching part, this is a whole art unto itself - you will need to find your way. I will say that one early mistake I made was assuming my students (who were initially all adults) were like me: utterly obsessive about guitar. lol I felt I needed to give them a ridiculous amount of material to work on each week, because that was what I wanted when I was a student. Very few students can actually handle that, however.

Final point - a fellow teacher I once worked with was fond of this quote from US president Teddy Roosevelt: “no one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”. This sounds pretty cheesy, however there is truth to it. I’ll let you ponder that, and see how it applies to teaching.

Good luck!

2 Likes
#5

I taught guitar at Schmitt Music and at my apartment, and I found teaching to be very tedious.