Teaching in Someone Else’s Space

You may have a gig teaching in a school or an after school programme, where you’re actually in another teacher’s classroom.

Setting up a studio - what gear do you need?

Your instrument.  That’s pretty helpful (although there have been occasions when my flute has had a little unintentional holiday…).  Really, it depends on what you’re teaching, what style of music you teach, and your style of teaching.

Setting up a studio

Now it’s time to get going.  You need to decide where you’ll be teaching from.  You may have a space in your house, you may be able to use a space in a school or similar, or you may want to rent a studio.

Choosing repertoire

This post is about how to choose repertoire for your students (as opposed to how to teach it).

How to use a tutor book

Once you’ve decided on a book or books, you need to think carefully about how to make the best use of it.  Will you follow it slavishly, playing every single song and every single exercise?  Will you spend the entire lesson playing from the book?  Will you pick and choose – taking parts of the book to serve the point of the lesson?

What you do is up to you, but at the beginning of your teaching career I’d recommend following the book.  The author will be an experienced teacher/musician, and will have thought carefully about the order of progression.  The book will usually begin with how to produce a sound on the instrument and posture.  You don’t have to get through these pages in the first lesson.  With the flute, I don’t usually put the instrument together until at least the second lesson (maybe the third or fourth).  I need to be sure the student has got a good, consistent sound with just the headjoint, otherwise, the rest of their playing will sound awful.  During these first few lessons I spend the time in between trying to get a sound by talking about practising, where to store the flute, basic music theory (stave/crotchets etc), and how to NOT give your flute to your little sister to play.  Or if something goes wrong to bring the flute to me.  Dad is NOT allowed to touch it.

Sorry.  Rant over.[1]

I use the tutor book sparingly in the first 10 or so weeks of playing.  It’s more important to establish good habits in these weeks than it is to churn through pages of the book.  Once you get going with the book, it’s important to make sure the students understand each new concept.  In a group lesson I will use a whiteboard to explain things like time signatures and bars.  In a 1-1 lesson I write it directly in the students’ book.  Do be thorough and don’t accept sloppy playing. 

If a student doesn’t understand a concept, or can’t play the song independently, use the song as a “study”.  Take the trickiest part of the song and break it down to its core components.  Isolate rhythms or tricky fingerings.  I don’t recommend moving on in the book until the student can play the entire song independently.  In group lessons this is hard to find a balance.  I’ll discuss this in another post.

It can be fun to go over easy songs in the book.  Once in a while (e.g. at the beginning or end of a term) the class and I will play every song in the book until we can’t go any further.  This is great because it means we can see how far we’ve come (suddenly that “hard” song isn’t all that hard any more) and we can consolidate all the learning so far.

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[1] But seriously Dads, leave it alone.

Choosing a Tutor Book

Which tutor book you use for beginners depends on a few things.  If you are teaching through an established programme, the book may have been decided upon by someone else.  If you are teaching a particular method (e.g. Suzuki) then you will use the materials designed for that style.  However, if you are trying to decide on a tutor book for private students you may want to take the following into account.

What to Teach – Technique

Technique is an important factor of playing any instrument.  This should form a major part of your lesson.  Why? Because technique is the foundation on which we build our playing.  Because every piece we are going to play is going to contain technical elements and if you can isolate and perfect them, then playing the piece is going to be a million times easier.