Some of the more important skills required include;
- Self-motivation
- Communication
- Commitment
- Team Work
- Creativity
- Flexibility and Adaptability
- PATIENCE!
Self-motivation is absolutely essential when it comes to this line of work. From my experience, having had 30+ students every week, you must motivate yourself! This involves ensuring that you have planned ahead and organised each individuals lesson to their needs. Everyone is different, everyone enjoys different music, everyone learns at a different rate so learn to be open minded and organised. This ties in nicely with the need for good communication skills. In order to achieve the best results for yourself and your students, being able to relay information in as simple-a-fashion as manageable makes life easier for everyone.
I believe music is supposed to be a fun experience for all that participate in it and so being creative certainly does help. What works for one person may not work for another, or they may struggle with things that others find relatively straight forward i.e rhythm, scales. Sometimes these things can be very boring of even stressful for you and the student so trying to find a more enjoyable way to put them in to practise always comes in handy. Being able to judge material suited to each individual is a key skill in its self too! Make sure that difficulties are not occurring because the material you have selected is way above the individuals capabilities...it can be very off-putting for them. Also ensure that they are not too easy otherwise there is no learning of new skills or development of the skills already in place.
As an instructor it is highly likely you will be expected to cover more than one school in the area so flexibility and adaptability will be needed. I personally find it takes me a little while to adapt to new surroundings at first but remember it can be intimidating for students to meet a new teacher too. This is where team work really helps out. A strong teacher-student bond can be a help on the road to success. One way in which I achieved this is by giving students options. As I said earlier, everyone is different and they all have varied tastes in music. People change too and so can their taste in music so always keep the options open. To ensure students were progressing at a suitable rate I had materials which they MUST complete whether they liked it or not but to keep the balance I made sure to ask students what they would like to be learning. This is where I had to go away and learn songs by bands I've never heard of in order to show them. It's a good way of creating a bond, it keeps it fun, it's encouraging for the students, but most of all you as the instructor will learn something too. Never expect something from the student that you wouldn't expect from yourself. Commit yourself to helping others...it's your job!
The most important thing in this line of work though has to be patience...in abundance! Imagine dealing with a 6 year old that can barely sit in a seat for 5 minutes? Or a 60 year old guy that takes about half an hour to even register that he's in a guitar lesson? Some days it can make you laugh, a lot of the time it can really start to get up your nose! In order for all the other key skills listed above to work successfully you must (and I can't stress this enough) have a load of patience. Especially if you're already having a bad day!
Well I hope this has been helpful and if anyone thinks I've missed anything essential please feel free to leave comments. Remember this is based on MY experiences, other peoples do vary!
Everybody's different.
KEEP IT FUN!!!
Bob
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