Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Does a teacher have the right to criticize another teacher?

Err... I remember you posting about this girl. Not to go off on a tangent, but... is it possible that her possibly highly critical, not knowing when to keep her mouth shut, ex-piano-teaching grandmother might have something to do with her hating lessons?

With the description you gave, I can picture the grandmother being highly critical of the girl's playing... and pretty much killing any joy that she'd have.

Anyway - sorry to hear all this happened. Poor 15 year old! It might be a good time to explain to her that some people are not very nice, and often when we encounter these people, their comments have much more to do with THEM then US, even if they happen to be aiming at us

Good luck with it...

Thanks for all the comments.

The 15 year old is doing fine I think. I called her last night (Sunday, but who cares? ;)) and she sounded... rather fine. She did tell me that she wasn't well after the recital, but she changed her mind over the next day to something like this: "Instead of crying I decided to be stubborn, do better and carry my books with me at all times. If someone pulls something like this to me I'll hand over the books and call them on stage to perform it 'better'"! YAY for her!

And, of course, I believe that the granddaughter (2 "d"s?) is having troubles because of the granny. So I think that on Thursday (the time of HER lessons) it's time for a lengthy chat with parents and child... Oh boy this is going to be nice... brrrr...

In either way, if the comment was coming at me, for allowing the 15 year old to play and not give a perfrect performance, I can handle it perfectly! Only it didn't seem this way. (I'll check for her brain condition, while discussing thing btw...)

Again thank you for the comments! (It was my first recital as a teacher by the way).

Jeff: The granny's family is NOT like that! They are quite nice, and encouraging to the child. They are not mean by any chance and the rest of their children have turned up ok (I think).

"Jeff: The granny's family is NOT like that! They are quite nice, and encouraging to the child. They are not mean by any chance and the rest of their children have turned up ok (I think)."

And there goes our chance for the coolest recital ever, where we get to see someone's tongue pulled out for talking during the performance.

Personally I'd keep the "brain condition" thing out of it, best not to cloud the central issue, which is, that for whatever reason, her behaviour was unacceptable. If the family wants to offer up a medical condition as an explanation, fine. But even if that is the case, I don't think it's appropriate for her to behave in that manner during a kids recital.

After recently having an experience at a recital where some parents where behaving in a very "clueless" fashion and frankly ruining things for most of the other folks (and performers), I'm all for teachers being very explicit about the "rules for conduct" during these events. And to also be explicit about the fact that the parents are responsible for any guest also following these rules.