What Makes a Good Music Teacher?

Your child’s music education is important to you. You want to know that your investment is worth it. But what makes a good music teacher?

Guess no more. If your teacher has these qualities, you’re in good hands.
 

1. Is flexible with their teaching style. A good teacher should be able to utilize the strengths and interests of your budding musician to help them achieve their goals. Rigidity, whether it manifests as selecting all the students songs, or constant drilling, has no place in a successful music lesson. Of course students need to know the basics. But what makes a good music teacher is not being a dictator of their musical expression. We don’t want to kill a young musician’s passion before it’s even taken root. Also we know now, more than ever, that there are many different types of brains and learning styles. A good teacher tries their best to connect with a students unique way of learning and processing information. They fit their teaching method to their student, not the other way around.
2. They communicate with you about your students progress. They try their best to educate you on what your student is learning, or if it’s too difficult to explain quickly between lessons, give the parent other ways of gauging student progress like videos, lesson recordings, detailed notes or parent/teacher conferences.
3. They push their students (just enough). A good teacher challenges a student to teach his or her potential, and holds them accountable for working towards their goals. We’re not here to create stress, but a little bit of challenge helps our students grow and thrive.
4. They give you resources to have successful practice sessions at home. Whether it’s recorded warmups to sing along with, pictures of hand positions, or blogs about selecting the right piano, the best teachers help you to be successful both inside and OUTSIDE the music studio.
5. They keep up with their own education. Music styles are always changing and so is the pedagogical philosophy of teaching and of teaching music. It is the teachers ethical responsibility to make sure that they are bringing their students the most up to date knowledge about music. comfortable with the new technology needed to teach the modern student (like zoom camera setup) and that they have diversified their educational skill portfolios to reach a wide variety of student musicians.
6. They are welcoming. This should go without saying, but…they don’t selectively avoid teaching a certain group of people, such as those with special needs. Teachers with a true respect for and love of music desire to help all students reach their potential and foster a love of music.