Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum I am a bad teacher today!

Yes Morodiene - we have trial lessons (up to 4). I put my thoughts forward after the second one.

These kids are good sometimes, but driving me crazy sometimes too. Yes, I did meet with them at the interview and they are adorable!!

So, it is okay to feel these while teaching, but I guess it is unprofessional to let it out right? Should I keep it inside even I feel it? If yes, how do you do it? Can you teach me?

Thanks!

We've had this discussion in this forum before. Some feel it's a "teachers' forum" and thus teachers can come here and vent all they want. It's like what happens in the teachers' lounge at school. But then others objected to the fact that the venting is taking place in a public place (the Internet) where everybody can lurk around and read up on the gossip.

I am not venting. I am having a situation that I cannot solve, I am asking help from other teachers or parents. If people want to gossip (maybe someone like you? I do not know) then I have no control of this and I do not want to control this either.
Now, may I ask in a polite way, if you cannot help, please step away so that other who desire to help can help.
Thanks!!

Yes.

I have made some suggestions along these lines from time to time, but they have not been well received, so I have backed off.

Yes Tim. You were suggesting that my heritage contribute to my problem, which I cannot alter my heritage. So, whatever you suggested is not helpful, I am glad that you backed off. For this, I thank you!

I thought Tim had other suggestions, unrelated to heritage.

As I recall it, the heritage question came up as *wondering* if it were an issue, linked to culture and language. There are many different cultures represented in the US, and that means there is a potential for cultures to clash. Or sometimes language can be a barrier. It was quickly established that heritage, culture, and language were not issues in this case, and Tim offered suggestions unrelated to heritage.

Ez, you are raising interesting pedagogical questions, and they are equally life questions. How does one deal with frustrations? How does one avoid impatience? How does one practice kindness?

No. I used to teach RET at one of my previous jobs, and it was effective for some people in learning to react but not overreact. I could possibly suggest some reading material if you were interested.

I have also occasionally expressed the opinion that people tend to give away the power to control themselves, letting others force reactions rather than owning the responsibility internally. There are sometimes ways to avoid this as well.

The resistance to those ideas here has been fairly strong, and I've been reluctant to proceed further.

A mentor teacher of mine once told me that a good way to stay patient with students is to let your mind wander a bit when you feel your blood starting to boil. She told me she thinks of her grocery list.

Tim, is this RET (Rational Emotive Therapy)? Is the Wikipedia page a reasonable introduction? I would be interested if you have suggestions for reading.

Or you can silently count to ten. Or thirty.

Impatience is counterproductive only if you let it be counterproductive, by lashing out at students or by thinking "OMG, I'm horrible!" You can always channel impatience toward something positive and beneficial.

I word about "meeting students".

One of the thing I most liked about the show "House" was his line - they all lie.

If we throw out "lie", which is a bit harsh, and simply say that people change, then I think we can assume that what student A, B or C says when starting lessons is often or usually very misleading in the long run.

I've said it before: I get some of the worst students you can imagine as recommendations from great students, and the opposite is often true. So even word of mouth does not necessarily tell me anything.

But beyond that, I swear some students, especially parents, will simply tell me anything I want to hear in the beginning, then a few months later I find out that I am in a bad situation that did not start out that way.

In short: we really don't know much in the beginning.

Meetings and trial lessons ARE helpful for me, because I can head of disastrous situations. But they are only a little helpful, because so much can change.

In her opening post, EZ wrote that she was worried about being a bad teacher, because she had negative feelings. Nobody is talking about venting here, OR criticizing those feelings. I wrote that it is ok to have negative feelings, and you are not unprofessional when you feel negative things while teaching.

My first degree is in teaching and my first professional work was as a teacher in a problem school.

Welcome to my world! One of my best students right now is a referral of a referral, and both of the referring students aren't so great. Many years ago, I've also taught a superior student, whose mother--bless her heart!--kept on referring me these clients who, unfortunately, were really bad. But I couldn't say no, or else it would make her look bad.

Your mentor has a lot of gems, doesn't she? LOL, I love it!

Yes, that's it. The wiki is pretty good. I have to say I've been out of the counseling field for a long time now and none of my knowledge would be fresh. I retrained as an engineer halfway through graduate school. (I was working at a mental hospital making $14,000 and would soon graduate and make $19,000. Instead I got an engineering degree and started at $31,000, which wasn't bad in 1990. But it wasn't the money as much as being drawn to a more technical type of creativity.)

I used RET therapeutically in drug treatment programs and there was no doubt it worked, at least for some. Whether it really worked for the reasons claimed or for some other underlying principle was never clear; we who used it had not drunk the koolaid but did see the usefulness. It is not necessary to be a true believer to make parts of it work.

Thank you for all your feedback so far....

I was rethinking about what I wrote here...



I agree that I was not nice, I do feel sorry that I was not nice, but I feel that I have to be like that to take control...

I remember AZN taught me to be "menace" in this thread



I practice that to my angry students and I do not see improvement of their behaviors. Now the mom is saying that I am not treating her kids nice.

This angry student thread is the same family as this thread here. Apparently yes, I receive a lot of stressful moment from them, I cannot enjoy teaching piano lessons anymore when I teach them.

Imagine this situation:

Teacher: [In a calm voice] Sorry, that note is wrong
Student: [Whine] What note is that (they are very depended to me, overall)
Teacher: Sorry, you need to figure out yourself, yes, you know the note
Student: [In angry voice] Yes, I am right it is D!! (Then play D extremely loud on piano)
Teacher: [raising my voice] No, it is not D, look again!
Student [even more angry] Yes, is D, is D, is D DDDDD! (then play D on piano extremely loud repeated ten times)
Teacher: [Now I am angry and I need to step up to discipline them] I close the piano lid and tell them they cannot do that to piano. Yes, I am mean when I discipline them, but if I am not doing this, then they will not afraid of me and there is no way I can control the situation! There is a Chinese proverb: "They will climb up onto my head!"

Mom says I am mean and not nice according to this situation. She said yes I can be strict, but I cannot be mean. She thinks that I lost my temper when I am trying to discipline the kids. Yes, I am raising my voice, but I really do not think I am losing my temper.

Looks like mom and I have different standard....

In fact, I did try
First resource: being firm
Second resource: keep silence
Last resource: being menace

All useless...