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Welcome to the forum, Mechinese,

I like your sentence: ...."But to teach someone is to stimulate their mind and perspective to see everything musically."

Yes, there is something happening during piano lessons! It's the inner experience! (Not just the turning of pages in a method.)

Betty

I have to get my 2-cents in before reading all the posts...

Yeah!! You want to teach piano! I hope you fully enjoy it!

I would second the book "The Well-Tempered Keyboard Teacher". It will give you a great oversight into beginners through pre-college.

I would also HIGHLY RECOMMEND you find and join a local music teachers association. You can find one near you via website www.mtna.org. This was one of the first things I did and I have never regretted it. I have learned, borrowed, begged, and stolen (not really, they offered) ideas from the teachers in my local group. The support you gain from teachers you have been there, done that is tremendous. If your group turns out to be not so fabulous, come join mine. You don't have to be a career teacher to join, you have to be willing to continue to learn and to strive for excellence in what you teach.
I can't remember if you are student age or not, but if you are, you can get a student rate to join.

I could go on and on about things I didn't do and now do and wish I did earlier, but I won't. If you want me to, let me know.

Of course, some are hopeless too... Dont waste your energy on them, just be patient -quote from Xill

Well, that can open a whole new can of worms.

Yes, there are going to be some students that you are not successful with. It may be either you, them, both, parents, etc. But I'd like to make two points: 1) You never know how that student will be affected by you time sharing the love of music with them, although seemingly discouraging. 2) You, the teacher, can always learn from the experience.

What an astute observation! I would suggest you look into getting your Master's in piano performance/pedagogy. ASU School of Music (Arizona) has a phenomenal program - I'm doing my doctorate here now. Once you get through THIS program, you'll know so much more about teaching piano/music specifically than if you go get an education degree because it is not targeted to piano at all. PM me and I'll give you more info so we don't cramp th space at the forum with it. :p :p

Hello, Alan. I am an Alan to and also an "ear player", though I have had 5 years of college level study.

Your question of how to judge if a new student will be a success is interesting. MOST of my students in the past have been self motivated and WANTED to learn to play. A far lesser percentage have been "encouraged" by well meaning parents to kake lessons and a small handful have been referred for piano lessons by well meaning therapists or school teachers as a way to help a child with ADD or other learning issue. Good kids, all, to be sure. Needless to say, the students that were internally motivated tended to stick with it and I've taken my share with me from elementary school to college. That is REALLY rewarding! I like to get a sense of WHY the student is taking lessons. If the answer is, "my MOM wants me to", the warning flags go up just a bit and the same for when a parent tells me it is for therapy for the child. My policy has always been not to drop a student but if he/she isn't making progress or is not really interested, I tried to talk to the parents and explain that perhaps another area might be more rewarding.
I explain that piano lessons are just one of many options for their children. If it works out and the child "clicks", that's great. But some children are good at boy scouts, baseball, soccer and the like and it is MY job to see if piano is a good fit. If not, it's the parent's job to keep trying to find a match.

I have to go back and see if I can find your post again because you made another point that I wanted to discuss but anyway, hope this is helpful.

Alan RI AL

Good for you in your teaching endevours. I've been teaching for almost a year so I'm still new to this. I like all the ideas for books on piano pedagogy...I think I'll go find one and buy it.

One thing to remember is never let the parents of your students make you feel less of yourself if they notice that their child may not be understanding something. That has happened to me a few times.

Be CONSISTENT!! It will eat you if you don't. Parents will refer you to others that they know who they probably talk to and will talk about the lessons. If you do one thing to show favor it can come back to haunt you.

I have learned that parents are not always crazy about a teacher with ten degrees, they want their kids to enjoy themselves, but also learning. Just because maybe one of your students may not play perfect rythm or counting at a recital or messes up, doesn't mean you aren't a good teacher.

Children also never feel less of themselves when they make mistakes. They do not listen to you play beautifully and feel that they can not meet up to you, infact they will ask you how to play what you play so they can do it.

You can't spend the whole lesson at the piano. Play games with music theory...I do matching with note cards of the staff and notes of the clefts.

When the kids get frustrated in something, take a break and let them practice songs they know they can play, or add a different book with songs they can play. When they feel it's too easy, they will tell you. Doing this gives you the ability to work on other things, like posture, fingering, rythem, and learning to play legato and very staccato.

My gosh, I love teaching. If you ever want someone to talk to PM me!!!!

I just wanted to give you well wishes as well! I'm in my 15th year of teaching and the most important thing I've learned is that you have to keep things fun for your students.

Expose them to all types of music and really let them steer their own musical path. Their happiness and love for particular styles of music always trumps my personal agenda.

Marianne,
I teach 15 to 20 private student a week, have for years, after gaining a master's degree in Education and teaching public school music for twenty years. I do feel that one needs some background other than just playing with one teacher who may or may not have been good! It takes more than just interest and you will have much to learn. The books mentioned above will certainly help. Teaching is a different skill than performing and takes great patience and knowledge.

But on the issue of what method books to use, I have used them all and found many lacking. What I use now and LOVE is the Faber and Faber, "Piano Adventures", starting with 7 or 8 year olds. They have all the books Wade mentioned above but unless you are going to teach hour long lessons, using too many books, Lesson, Theory, Technic, Activities, etc. you will never get them all in, in a half hour to 45 minute lesson. A young child can't handle too many books and besides, that would be a huge cost to the parent. I use only the Lesson Book plus the Performance Book for each level. The lessons include technique and theory and the Performance books are coordinated to give lovely additional pieces which reinforce the lessons. If you teach well you will be augmenting those with some exercises of your own devising for technique and always speaking of the theory behind each piece as you go.

I personally feel that 4 years old is way too soon to start unless you have an exceptional child (and of course every parent will tell you his/her child IS exceptional! You can do some readiness that young with concepts such as high and low, fast and slow, loud and soft that young but I feel they need to have reading rather under their belts. To teach music symbols on top of their study of letters and numbers is too much abstract thinking for a 4 or 5 or even some 6 year olds.

This is my first posting, just joined yesterday, and I apologize for the wordiness. Best wishes in your studies.

Hi All --

Another resource that you should definitely check out is Randall and Nancy Faber's website: www.pianoteaching.com . It has a teacher's guide to the Piano Adventures Primer that is fantastic and the videos that accompany each piece have tons of great ideas. Even if you don't end up using the Faber books with your students, there is much to be learned on their site. Check it out!

After posting yesterday, I had another idea for a resource that I highly recommend. Frederick Harris just published their new Celebration Series PERSPECTIVES -- a set of Repertoire, Etudes, and Student Workbooks spanning all periods, in 11 levels. The Handbook for Teachers that accompanies the series is FANTASTIC -- every piece in the repertoire and etude books is included, with practical and immediately useful information for how to teach each piece. There are also suggestions for student practice at home and optional creative activities that build on concepts from the pieces. I would buy the Handbook for Teachers first, then as you have students in each level, you can buy the repertoire and etude books. Even experienced teachers will glean a lot from this book!

Best wishes for your teaching!

Minaku: It's wonderful to find someone who uses Music Tree. It was when my students started asking, 'What position do I put my hand in' that I began to use it.

My students became better readers when they used Music Tree. I also found that I myself became much more adept at transposing non-C instruments' parts at the keyboard.

I eventually stopped using MT, because I felt that Book One greatly lost the momentum that Time to Begin had. I used Faber now, but I cross all the 'position' #&%*@ out (is that "word" allowed? )

There are lots of wonderful posts here on a topic I find so fascinating! I'd just like to add, that whatever method you use, be sure to analyze it's strengths and weaknesses. No method can be all things at all times. (So long as your students like the book, and you enjoy teaching from it - it's highly likely it's a good choice!) Multi-key methods (based on "positions" such as C, F, G, etc) will benefit from sight-reading practice that requires students to get OUT of positions so that they don't think "the fifth finger is G" all the time. Intervallic approaches benefit from flashcard drills, as students get so proficient at reading intervals, they're not as sharp at quickly identifying note names. These are just examples - the big picture is . . . watch for weaknesses that might arise in your students study and don't rely solely on a method book. There are many wonderful methods on the market, but not one that is perfect for every student!

OK, I can see the original post is old and, perhaps, the person who started is not even here any more. However, for that person and everyone else, there's a great book on piano pedagogy: The Well Tempered Keyboard Teacher, by Marienne Uszler, Stewart Gordon, and Scott McBride-Smith. It's insanely expensive, but very good for teachers who are just starting out, or getting ready to do so. I found it to be just barely OK, but that's because of my very extensive teaching and performing experience. For the teaching "freshmen" (and women!) it would be an invaluable resource!

If you get Border's membership, card, or whatever they call it, you can get it with coupons they send and save a lot! I got mine for $60, and the median price in all places on the internet or regular shops is about $100!

I just found this website for piano pedagogy, it has some interesting things on there...hopefully it's helpful information...

http://www.serve.com/marbeth/pedagogy.html

There are some good ideas there, but I find it a bit of an "information overload".

By this, I mean that I can follow everything because I already know it, but I do see some mistakes that need to be corrected:
There is a line right below it. This is not a true mistake. It's a typo. The site needs to be proofed.

Another:
Here the flat was not removed from the diminished triad right above.

And this is bad advice:
While it is true that Beethoven uses many B and E sharps, a much larger problem is why he uses F double sharp (as in measure 34), and from experience I can tell you that learning something famous in a key one half step away from the original is a bad idea unless you are positive that you have a wall that will ALWAYS prevent you from getting to the original key and composition.

As I said, there are some good ideas here, but if this site is truly useful, people visiting it will not only use the tips but also mention mistakes that need to be corrected!

Oh, I didn't read that part. They had a part on the different age levels of the kids and stuff that I thought was pretty interesting...but I'm only going into my 2nd year of teaching so I'm still learning.

that's interesting Gary. A pedagogy book teaching prolatio imperfectum? gee--do they get to the Guidonian hand also (actually that's not so bad, especially for transposition of the hexachord)? solfeg is great. --I haven't seen any one mention Kodaly?

I read this thread with great interest. I will be a new teacher, soon.

I've taught voice, choral conducting, but only my son, at the piano. (he was playing mov. 3 of the Beethoven, Op 14 (moonlight) at age 10.
He'd take lesson from a beginning teacher, then I'd listen and show, reinforce ideas, how to play, at home.

New to piano teaching at age 60, am I too old?

I'm trying to absorb everything that's being said for the beginning teacher.

As a coach, I think I'm pretty good. But good musicanship, performer doesn't equate to a good teacher. I need all the help I can get. Everyone with all the experience, please keep posting ideas--for the young teacher as well as the older, beginning teacher.

There does seem to be an overload of books out there for the beginning student. For the advanced, you might as well throw away Hanon, if you want to get anywhere, and even Czerny.

As the person who began this thread is young, she has much ahead of her. For me, I have much behind me, to give away--such as learning of Rachmaninoff from Gina Bachauer (a student of his).

I play, I know music. I try to make the piano sing as well as be an orchestra, especially if I'm doing something like the Rach. 3rd. But how do I convey what I know to the beginning student? I think I helped my son. I always never said, "no." but would mitigate that with "almost, try it like this." then show him.

--regarding technique, hand positions? I didn't even know there is a teaching method of finger hand position--I guess that shows how lacking my experience is.

To me, a simple melody, whether it be in c or pentatonic--just play, I'll help & we'll figure out what to do to make it right. --my son never knew he was learning theory as well as learning to compose on his own.

But I'll have students soon. So, I need like the young lady who started this, all the pedagogical information I can get. Or is there a way to get advanced students and be more of a coach, vs. teacher?

I think I have lots to share, after 56 yrs of music. Even flat-fingered technique, when, where and why, as well as arched. So please, all keep posting.

I'm trying to learn, so I can give away.

Bob

Hi Marianne, good thing that another music teacher will be added to our list. I recommend these sites not only to you but for other your music teachers out there who are searching for some <a href=http://www.musicteachershelper.com/blog/>music teaching resources</a>.

I also am a new piano teacher...just started this year. My teacher recommended a really great book-How to Teach piano Successfully by Jane Bastien. I got my copy off of amazon, but they have it other places to. It is a very practical book...setting up studio, tips for first lessons, etc. It even has a chart comparing all the different method books. It helped me a lot.

i would recommend sitting in with your own teacher while she/he teaches other students and see how she/he does it. i know that helped me a lot when i first started