However, the subject I am about to address has been on my mind for years. I have attempted to put into words my thoughts concerning poor music teachers before, but never finished the posts. I decided that the time has come for me to speak up though, and address these concerns.
Let me first say that while I have been teaching music lessons for seven years, I am by no means an expert on the matter. I do not claim to know everything there is to know about teaching music. But if I have learned anything in my seven years of teaching, it has been that there are horrible teachers out there who ought not be teaching at all.
I grew up being taught piano by my mother. I can tell you all that there are many things for which I am thankful to my mother for, but one of the biggest things is that she taught me all she knew about piano. My mother took lessons for only a few years herself as a teenager, but was primarily self-taught; especially in the area of playing by ear.
My mother has a strong gift of teaching in general. She taught many piano students when I was younger. I struggled very much as a child and teenager with understanding music theory. Being taught theory out of a book just didn't work for me. When I arrived at college, I could sight-read nearly any piece of piano music, but I didn't know my chords, how to play by ear or how to improvise. Those three things were what I had to learn at college. And I worked hard to learn them.
Since I worked my whole childhood to become proficient at sight-reading, and my whole college life learning to be proficient in improvisation and theory, it truly bothers me to see music teachers in life who are barely proficient at all, attempting to teach children.
When I was living in Maryland, I was offered an accompanying job for a public elementary school, accompanying their Christmas and spring programs. I was just fine with doing this. After the Christmas program, one of the music teachers in the school asked me if I would consider accompanying her private student voice recital the following week. I agreed and we exchanged numbers.
The thing that bothered me most was not that she gave me to the music for her students the night of the recital (though that was EXTREMELY unprofessional). No, the thing that bothered me most was realizing that her voice recital was actually her voice students combined with her piano students. This allowed me to see her teaching method in action and it absolutely appalled me. Each child had to be told where to place their hands before beginning, and many of those were told to start in the completely wrong place! As a result, you can imagine that the songs were all unrecognizable.
I was expecting that the vocal solos would be somewhat challenging, based on the fact that this teacher admitted to me that she was unable to accompany them herself due to a lack of ability. However, most of the music I was given looked like this:
(free music from online)
I left that recital grieved in my spirit, even though I had made money. Those poor students!
In that woman's partial defense, she was an amazing, operatic singer. She had a beautiful voice! But simply because one can sing well does NOT follow that they ought to teach- voice OR piano!
I know how to sing fairly well. I can sight-sing, and sing any part. But I will not open up a voice studio because my heart wouldn't be in teaching voice. I wouldn't be able to help students to have the amazing overtones they could have, because I struggle finding my own! I have come to realize that my musical abilities stop somewhere.
My sincere and humble advice to all music teachers is to PLEASE examine your musical desire. If it isn't voice, PLEASE don't teach voice. If it isn't piano, PLEASE don't teach piano. I have seen all too many teachers who obviously are teaching whatever they can in order to make another $20/lesson. So if they sort of know how to play the piano, they try teaching it.
I saw this happening so much in both Maryland and California.
Why am I so passionate about this?
I have had many students come to me from other teachers. In order to understand where the student is coming from, I ask questions about their understanding of theory, sight-reading, and musicality in general. VERY few of them know much of anything, sadly.
Recently, I had two young girls begin taking lessons with me regularly. I came to find out that their previous teacher would teach them one song at a time out of the Alfred 1a book. They would continue on that song for one month, until they could play it from memory. I know that they do not exaggerate this because the teacher wrote the dates at the top of each song. Not only that, but this teacher wrote in every note of each song.
They have been in the same Alfred book for 2 years.
On our first lesson, I simply said that they were never going to see the notes written in again. And today (6 weeks later), I had a lesson with both girls. They are both in three books each now, with 1-2 songs in each book. I was so proud of them today! They each passed the song that I gave them last week to practice, and I had them sight-read their new songs for the first time. They weren't perfect, but very close! The older of the two girls knows her C and G scales, and has memorized her chords in both keys.
I say again, I am learning myself! I haven't arrived. I don't know everything there is to know about teaching music. But I am constantly working to get better. Refreshing my memory of chords and scales on Chord Dr (a program created by my piano teacher from college) and reading Friedrich Wieck's Piano and Song keeps me on the right track pedagogically. Constantly sight-reading through Haydn, Beethoven and Bach (not to mention playing for church) keeps me sharp in my proficiency.
If you teach music, I beg of you, keep yourself sharp! Practice! Read! Learn!
If you are thinking of teaching an instrument that you couldn't sit down and play at an instant's notice, please re-consider. If you aren't proficient, it is unlikely that your students ever will be.
Don't be a bad music teacher.
Parents who are paying good money for your child to learn, do your research before signing on with a teacher. Have you ever heard the teacher play proficiently? Is your child progressing?
As always, if you have any thoughts to share about this, please comment below!
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