Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum How did my thread get closed, I wasn't done updating lol

Did you not have a response to me saying I would teach your students because you wouldn't mind? Instead you just somehow think I'm just throwing an attack on you and saying you teach bad? Crazy.

People like me who just teach classical right? How in the world did you come up with that assumption? I'm starting to have more issues with a few of you teachers more than anyone or anything else. I think I've spent more time trying to explain and defend and clearly spell things out, but no matter what I come out as a "classical only, control freak". I think my time explaining my situation is up.

Either English isn't your first language or you just have a hard time expressing yourself in the written form.

If that isn't you saying that "I teach bad" then I don't know what is. And what exactly are you basing that opinion on?

Actually let's hear your method on improvising or better yet just post something up.

Let's try this with the full paragraph.
You think people don't get upset when someone else teaches their student. You think I teach classical only (I like that one, that was pretty random). No body was asking how you teach as that isn't what is in question. But...if you don't care if someone teaches your student, then any hobo could start teaching them for free and making a mess of things. You're not really teaching them at that point, you're really un-doing other peoples mistakes.
As much as I'd love to continue guessing where methods on improve and me teaching classical only have anything to do with what the topic or sub topic is about, zzzzzzzzzzzzz

First off, you have no "ownership" of that student. They could go to 10 different teachers if they wanted to. Would it benefit them? Maybe, maybe not.

Do you have a right to get angry? Sure. But that isn't going to stop them, so what's the point.
You would have been better off explaining that to the parent rather than coming here.

As for improvising, if you "insist" on teaching your student "your" method only, then I want to hear it. Cause I could probably find 10 different or better ways to go about it.

It's not what you teach that is the problem, it's your attitude of "my way or the highway".

And no really, I'd like to hear some improv from you.

"I teach bad"??? Hmm, interesting English!!!

Hey I was paraphrasing his sentence...and we all know how "good" the Aussies use English!! G'day mate, another shrimp on the barbie?! aussie aussie aussie!! oy oy oy ! Blimey bird go eat some Vegemite!

Why do I get the sense that this thread is heading for a locking, just like the last one. Well, perhaps it's because a search for understanding seems to be getting lost again amidst a jockeying for position on the rankings of 'who can zing the other better.'

"Blimey bird"???? Hmm, maybe it's been a while since you visited Australia..... And btw, the term 'shrimp' is never used in Australia, that was a special translation so that Americans could understand what Paul Hogan was eating.... And Australians use conjunctions when using the imperative (instead of "go eat" an Australian would say "go and eat").

But you're right, sporting chants are the foundation of understanding the literacy of a nation, aren't they!

Never set foot in Australia in my life, but lived with, traveled and befriended enough of them mates to barely understand them. Throw in a kiwi or 2, they're like a separate breed. Rooming with a Brit, Aussie , Canadian and Saffie at once just about killed my English!! haha

Done. Are you sure they'll breed?

Wizard,

We've finally made you feel what I have felt. The mere suggestion that "maybe" you were a bad teacher and that I should teach your students made you start going off about how you wouldn't want me as a teacher, how we should have a game of who improvises better, how you could find 10 ways to do something better than me. I don't think I ever directly said I was better or worse than anyone. But I'm glad you came back with something, showing that "maybe" you wouldn't want me to teach your students because you already feel you could do things 10 times better than me.

That's how I feel about some random teacher teaching my kid a free lesson because they think that I'm a bad teacher and they could do better. I'm not really saying YOU are a bad teacher, but you haven't really understood how I felt until you started coming back at me with all your comments. I feel (just as you feel) that I can teach my students well enough that they don't need some other teacher to come in.

You're completely defeating the purpose of this forum if you think I should just talk to the parent instead of coming on here first. Isn't think a place for teachers to talk about issues, ideas etc... with other teachers? I'm not just going to talk to my client about this kind of issue without thinking about it and discussing it with other teachers who could at least understand where I'm coming from.

If you're ever in my area, give one my students a lesson any time you want. If you tell them something I would adamantly disagree with, I'm comfortable that I can show them why. I don't teach anything that I cannot justify- why would I present it as a sole acceptable truth if I could not even convince anyone of it? Conversely, if you teach them something different that benefits them, great. The primary goal of my teaching is to prepare my students to think for themselves and not to need to follow orders blindly. The input of others could only serve to help.

What "random teacher" said you're a bad teacher and they could do better? You're defending yourself against allegations that nobody has made. This is simply paranoia. The more you vent this type of puzzling insecurity without so much as a hint of prompting or evidence, the more it will cause people to wonder if you have something to be rightly insecure about. If deep down inside you are secure in your abilities, get on with things and stop "defending" yourself against accusations that nobody ever made. As a professional teacher, I would be very uncomfortable with exposing such a complex of insecurity on a public forum. You really don't want any of your clients to stumble across these kinds of posts, believe me...

Dark Dragon, that's exactly what a forum should be for, imo. Precisely what a forum should be all about.

Wizard of Oz, hahaha, OK, well if you think that Kiwis and Australians are the same 'separate' breed then you quite clearly don't know all that much about Trans-Tasman relations, hahahaha!!! And that must have been one big room you were all living in (brit, aussie, kiwi, saffie, canadian)!!!

In such a situation the only answer is to earn trust. If you rubbish what the other teacher (and previous authority) said, you also thrust a knife into their reasons to trust authority in general- which includes yours. To exercise authority in such a situation is actually to undermine yourself- unless you can prove yourself to be worthy of exercising authority.

Simply saying "you will obey me now" cannot help in these situations. Such an approach is probably what leads to those kinds of school classroom teachers we all remember who students obeyed but despised. The more you rely on pure authority over earned respect, the more authority you need to exercise to get your own way. And the more you continue to fuel that distaste for authority- requiring even more authority to be utilised to retain order etc. It soon spirals hopelessly out of control.

Nyiregyhazi, I agree with all you have written in response to my post above..... Unless the teacher finds a way to establish trust with the student the situation does spiral out of control, and it becomes an untenable relationship.

I've had a situation where I took a student from my mum - a student I had known (via my mum's teaching studio) for some number of years. The parent was excited about making the transition - there are some aspects of teaching I've specialised in, and the student was transferring specifically to take advantage of these specialisations - my mum was thrilled, the parent was thrilled, I was thrilled, but it turned out the student wasn't so thrilled. For whatever reason this student simply would not do at home the things that we had worked on in the lesson, and before a ten week term was up it was clear that the transition had been a disaster - the parent and I would talk about strategies we each could use, but nothing worked.

It turned out that the student's high school music teacher was making suggestions completely contrary to the teaching I was giving in the private lesson, and the student was afraid that the end of year mark would be bad if my teaching was taken into account, so instead followed the dodgy advice being given by a classroom teacher who had no piano teaching experience at all. We struggled on all year, but it was the WORST teaching experience of my life.

The final mark this student achieved was OK, but not in the league that all my previous students had achieved in the same field of endeavour. So not only was it a horrible experience, but the student ended up with a worse result than the parent (and student for that matter!) had expected when signing up for the tuition with me, and the student was miserable turning up to lessons knowing they were going to ignore my input.

Lose/Lose.

I would suggest that any teacher finding themselves in a situation where another teacher's contradictory advice is being followed to the detriment of the student's progress to simply talk to the parent and say, it's not working. Maybe there will be a solution, but I think by the time it's reached this stage the relationship will almost always be irreparable.

What you decided to feel. It's your choice, you know. You have no control over the reactions and opinions of other people, but you do control how you respond.

Sorry to diverge from the topic, but that's a point that needs to be made from time to time.

Interesting. I wouldn't deny anything you say there. However, it seems that the issue here was the fact it was clearly bad advice. I'm not saying I could magically have pulled a rabbit out of a hat there. However, if I had that specific problem I would go especially out of my to show why I was telling them to do certain things and do everything I could to force them to take notice through power of argument and demonstration. I've often had students who simply don't want to change fingers on repeated notes or see why there's a point. Fortunately this is an aspect of my technique which is no disgrace, so I'll play a rapid-fire C major scale in which every note is repeated in triplets or semiquavers- and then show them what happens if I attempt the same with one single finger instead of by cycling through them. I feel that this type of demonstration earns a substantial amount more respect than any amount of imposed authority could achieve. If someone else had said repeated notes work better with one finger, I think they'd be questioning that advice pretty quickly. You can't always win, but my means of trying to do so would always be to attempt to engage the student's thoughts.

Incidentally, I'm certainly not opposed to the idea that persistent outside advice could be harmful. Clearly that can happen. The issue for me is whether the teacher objects on the grounds of someone else getting involved (no matter what the results are) or whether they object based on negative impact. Floods of poor advice would trouble me- not the notion alternate ideas coming into the equation. Clearly, what you describe there is not merely a jealous or insecure reaction.

In the case of a high school student might I suggest that the student should also have a chance to talk to the private teacher about the situation. Music is full of politics, negotiations and ego, and an experienced musician might help a young lady or gentleman learn to wend their way sweetly through the minefield.

If you didn't know, Kiwi is slang for someone from New Zealand. and I know much them Kiwis and Aussies love each other, just mix up their country of origin and see what happens! hahah

Wizard, it was a joke. A play on words. A deliberate misunderstanding. A kiwi in this case is not a fruit. This is a kiwi. Note the concentrated gaze, which explains the superb sight reading abilities common to musicians from Down Under.