Although I have a stronger say in parental involvement when my relationships with my students are direct, this often results in a compromised (not to any dislike, though) control of the environment. In particular, one studio I teach at always generously suggests the parents/other legal guardians (I will refer to them as parents for the duration) accompanying their children to join them in the classroom for the first lesson. Here are a few ways to address the presence of other authoritative figures in your classroom:

The room is yours:
Well, not precisely. But at least in the aspect of who is in control, you as the teacher are. Remember that you are the one teaching the children, and not the parents. Always keep your student’s focus on you, and not divided between yourself and the other figures, as they, to the largest extent, should really only be there to observe actively.

You’re the expert:
Yes, even if you were to assume the parents of a particular student to be full-time performing musicians, they are in fact coming to you for their child’s musical lessons. As such they need to remember that you are the teacher, and not them. Remember not to be intimidated and worry that you may be teaching or addressing the wrong item.

Communicate with the parents:
For various issues, you may have parents in the classroom for the first lesson. In my personal experience this ranges from catching a glimpse of what a piano lesson is like, to what appeared to be a comprehensive assessment of my teaching capacity (or maybe I was being paranoid). Regardless, it is still a necessity for you as a teacher to actively communicate with a student’s parents under the assumption that they have little to no idea what you had just taught. Even if we were to assume that they did in fact know what you were addressing, communication should be present nonetheless.

Earlier we discussed what we called The Sound Effects Child. Today we’re going to discuss the next level of severity, The Clown Child.

This type of child, regardless of how well they may perform themselves behind their instrument, will undoubtedly clown around when the teacher’s eyes are not on him. Whether this is a child crying for attention, or an extremely short attention span, this undoubtedly leaves, as a consequence, the other child equally distracted. There’s nothing like the sound of broken glass to clash with the piece’s pianissimo.

Although this type of child may seem to be more problematic than The Sound Effects Child, likewise they merely need a source of material that will keep them focused and away from the attention span of the child you are trying to teach. Unfortunately, you may have to up the quality of material for these children, as simple material like a couple of toys in hand may not actually suffice. If you can set a goal for them that will require them some time to complete, yet will remain interesting along the way, you’ll more than likely have your moments of silence to really enjoy that pianissimo.

To be continued…

Considering the average child per household is estimated to be above 2, it’s quite probable that you’ll end up teaching both siblings of a family, if you haven’t already encountered several of these situations. Although it is a reality that siblings will sometimes choose to learn different instruments of their own choice (for various reasons), more often than not they end up on the same instrument, and thus for convenience and perhaps out of a financial benefit, both students end up studying under the same teacher.

While sometime I maintain the luxury of teaching from home, and thus the capacity to place two or more children in different rooms, at times I also teach in a relatively small studio room, where claustrophobic individuals would more than likely stop breathing. While this is never a problem for disciplined children, who always get’s those? Definitely not I. Thus, while attending to the lessons of one individual, the distractions from the other child are always inevitable. What varies from children to children is the extent of that distraction, and the ways to deal with them. Here are a few types of distractive children I’ve discovered:

The Sound Effects Child
Although not directly interfering with the lesson, this child occasionally snickers or laughs when their sibling makes mistakes, are scolded for not completing homework, or reminded in the business of trimming their fingernails. Although not apparently disruptive, the child learning often or not becomes more distracted than in appearance given obvious sibling conflicts that are already in place. Who else to know your buttons but your (evil) twin sibling, right?

These children aren’t really out to make trouble. They just need something to keep them focused while their sibling is attending to their lesson. Often or not this is a good time to get them to be writing scales or doing their theory. If you have a relatively younger child, let them bring some sort of mild entertainment that you coincidentally will want to be able to rid them of once their lesson begins.

To be continued…

Hopefully you are enjoying the New Years, and your Friday off as a start of the weekend before you’ll be launching back into your regular schedule, esp. for those children and not-so-young children of ours who have been on their winter break from school. Remember to go enjoy time with family, friends and loved ones while we mark the beginning of a new decade, and 10 years since we were afraid of some Y2K bug.

Although I have been actively teaching piano (and sometimes drums and guitar), only has experience taught me to reflect on all that occurs while I am teaching, and the consequences of when a good job is done, and the consequences when a bad job is done.

This isn’t to say that all good jobs have happy endings, and all bad jobs have sad endings. Teaching is a two-way street. If despite encouragement to practice to succeed, and yet the student refuses to, then the consequences remain poor in favour of the student, despite good actions on the part of the teacher.

Here I will discuss the everyday joys and troubles of teaching music, and being a music teacher.

PS. I would also like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas for 2009. Here’s to family, community, love, joy, peace, and our students and children practicing piano in the New Year.