Teaching Philosophy

Over the last eight years, I have taught piano students ranging from children to adults and from elementary to advanced levels. Across all, I find that students learn the most when they’re having fun; that is my core teaching belief. I approach each lesson with one goal in mind: that students are free to explore their curiosity and creativity. My teaching style is idealistic and I enjoy building relationships with my students. While instilling a sense of discipline and responsibility is equally important, my hope is for my students to be able to creatively express themselves through music. I would like to emulate my most inspirational teacher’s style of challenging my students to do their best and to succeed, whatever their personal measure of success may be.

I specialize in teaching young children and my belief is that I need to speak their “language of learning” in order to help them attain the utmost success. I also think the key to success is setting specific, measurable, attainable and relevant goals to each student’s personal needs. For some of my artistic and spontaneous students, I like to challenge them to perform in studio recitals as I understand that they respond well to positive feedback. For some of my more responsible and rule-governed students, I like to set concrete goals such as mastering certain technical requirements within an allotment of time. There are multiple ways of explaining concepts, and if some of my more analytical and theoretical students don’t retain or understand an idea after I explained it two times, I would try a different tactic. Often times, I find using analogies and concrete examples help with their learning. For all of my students, I like to pose questions that pique their curiosity and allow them to explore and investigate more information on their own. For example, if we were learning notes on the bass clef, rather than providing the well-known acronym (“All Cows Eat Grass”), I suggest they create their own or find a pattern.

I value structure in my lessons so a typical 30-minute lesson with me would encompass: technique, repertoire, sight-reading, and theory, though not necessarily in that order. I believe that these are the fundamental elements of an effective music lesson, so I strive to cover all these areas and measure progress and goals through monthly discussions with the parent. My area of expertise is teaching students to be exceptional sight readers, however young they may be. I enjoy teaching young children how to read music before they even begin school through gamification. While understanding that learning when they’re having fun is the most effective way to teaching young students a concept, I believe that learning to read music should be approached with a clear strategy and gradual progression of levels. For example, if a student loves toy cars, I would take advantage of this and create a game of toy cars matching music staff-lines. As he or she progresses, we could translate the staff-lines cars into sheet music by the piano. Each student learns differently, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all mold that could cater to everyone. I believe by building a good teacher-student relationship, I can utilize their interests and translate it into effective music teaching.

“What we learn with pleasure we never forget” — Alfred Mercier.

I am continuously learning to become a more effective music teacher and have gone through the Royal Conservatory of Music Certificate Program myself, having completed my ARCT almost a decade ago, and am currently in the midst of completing my “Teaching Piano Elementary” course. I hope that under my instruction, my students will gain functional skills to be a proficient musician so that they will be able to play for their own pleasure and explore music through their own creative lens.