Wednesday 17 February 2016

Life Lessons That I Learned From Being A Piano Teacher


I was a piano teacher for three years while I was in university. I had enough knowledge of playing piano so my own piano teacher hired me to work as a piano teacher in his piano teaching business, as he often did with other students. It was amazing for me to teach piano because I never really thought of myself becoming a piano teacher. I learned how to play the piano just for fun so it was awesome to actually see something come out of that education, all of those years of piano lessons. It was also amazing for me to teach piano because I learned a lot. Sometimes teaching was a breeze and other times it was more difficult depending on the students. Now that I am no longer teaching piano, I thought that I'd make a list of the life lessons that I learned from teaching piano.

1) Everyone is different in personality and the way that they learn: It is important to remember this and understand it. Understand different personality types and learning types. Get to know them or at least be accepting of them. You never know who you might meet in the world. Be prepared to do things a little differently when meeting various people in order to get to know them or at least have a nice conversation with them.

2) Put yourself in other people's shoes: This is connected to the lesson about how everyone is different. When speaking to someone and teaching someone, put yourself in their shoes. They might not understand what you're saying or teaching so accept and understand this. Once you do this, you can figure out a different approach to the subject.

3) Be open to learning new things: Some people might think that a teacher knows everything about what they teach but the truth is that they do not. They simply know a lot about it, so much that they are able to teach it. There is so much information about everything in the world that it would be hard to actually learn everything about a subject. So, even teachers still need to learn more about what they're teaching, as well as about how to teach. Students ask questions and sometimes we don't have the answers so that can be a great excuse to continue learning. Everyone should continue learning new things, whether or not you're a teacher.

4) Be enthusiastic about what you love: Whatever it is that you love, whether it be a hobby or a job, be enthusiastic about it! Show people that you love it! If you show enthusiasm for whatever it is that you love, then other people might be interested in it too.

5) Some people learn things just for fun: Even though I always learned piano just for fun, I had to remind myself that others do too, especially kids. As a piano teacher, I felt that my students needed to learn everything right now and that they needed to do it correctly in order to move on. It frustrated me when students didn't remember things that I had told them several times before or when they kept making the same mistakes over and over again. I had to realize that most of them will never become piano teachers or concert pianists. In fact, some students might not even continue piano lessons after one or several years. This doesn't mean that they don't want to learn, however, so we must let them and help them. In life, we have to accept that some people just like learning for fun and they might ask us questions about some of our hobbies or jobs and we should feed their curiosity because it is still important to learn, even if it's just for curiosity's sake.

We learn from all sorts of experiences and I definitely learned from my experience as a piano teacher!

Cheers,
Kay

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments are moderated.