How to Teach Piano: Qualifications
How to Teach Piano – Tips
The piano teacher should be patient, kind, cheerful and enthusiastic. She (or he) should analyze each pupil and teach according to his needs. Please the pupil and he will be apt to please you. Say to him, “If I allow you to study this piece that you like so much, will you learn this other one to please your mother?”
A teacher builds character. She should be qualified to show pupils that the laws of music like the laws of mathematics require obedience. Pupils should be made to understand that they are not required to obey the teacher as a person, but the universal laws of music, which the teacher herself must follow.
The right answer (harmony) can never be attained unless these laws are obeyed.
While teaching at New York University, I said to Clara Sanford, the assistant to Dr. Hollis Dann, “I wish I could appear as calm and serene as the rest of the faculty. I seem to throw my whole self into my work. I am not always well poised.”
How to Teach Piano – Enthusiasm
Her reply encouraged me. “Don’t ever lose your enthusiasm. That is a very important quality in teaching.”
On a television program Jascha Heifetz was asked by a college student what he considered the most important qualities that make for success. Mr. Heifetz replied, “Self respect, integrity, and enthusiasm.”
Sometimes a teacher is pleasant and has considerable poise. These are certainly admirable qualities; however, if the instruction lacks vitality, students may not be awakened to the necessity for diligent work and may possibly fail their tests. Mabel Thomson wrote about how to teach piano:
The faculty of teaching is as rare and as individual as the faculty of acting or of singing. It is the highest art, and demands the same qualities of character as those demanded by all art—sincerity, endurance, moral and physical courage, devotion, and self-abnegation of a high order.
This is a very high goal. Besides the above-mentioned qualities, the teacher herself must be a good “learner.” “He only fails who fails to learn.” It is obvious that one can only help others to learn in the proportion that he himself is teachable. Here are other examples of how to teach piano.
One summer I had a demonstration class of eight pupils whose responsiveness endeared them to me so much that I felt like “adopting” them. The experience assured me that I was in the right profession.
How to Teach Piano: Passion
Lose yourself in your work. So engrossed do I become in preparing lessons at my desk that I place a magazine (The Reader’s Digest, as a rule) in the middle of the floor to remind me of other things that must be done.
Always prepare for the day’s work. Have music, pencils, chairs—everything you may need—ready at hand and thus avoid interruptions.
Do you ever ask yourself do I really know how to teach piano? Self doubt?
Do not be like the teacher who crocheted while she taught. Teaching needs concentration on the part of the teacher as well as the pupil.
Do you waken in the night with ideas that will solve problems for your pupils? I do. I write them on a scratch pad while I have the inspiration—and then go back to sleep
Overworked teachers are not good teachers. Limit the size of your class. Never be casual about your instruction; everything in connection with the lesson is important.
Can a teacher give lessons to a member of her own family? Yes and no. I took my first organ lessons from my sister, but her four-year-old daughter walked a mile across town to take piano lessons with me, her Aunt Julia. So these are some of the qualifications that you need if you want to know how to teach piano really well.