to help you become the best tutor possible
A challenge with group lessons is managing the progress of each individual student. A group doesn't learn and develop at one rate - each student is different. This can create problems when not dealt with properly.
In this guide, we will look at some best practices and strategies to manage student progress. You'll be able to take these strategies into your lessons and use them to get better results.
If you're looking for a way to become a better teacher, it's important to look critically at ourselves and how we teach. Being critical of ourselves helps us uncover any weak areas or better alternatives. A good way to do this is to look for areas where you're currently complacent.
Complacency is a hidden issue most guitar teachers experience without realizing it. As you build up your experience as a guitar teacher, you also build up a set of explanations, routines and teaching techniques that you can do automatically without any effort. This is a good thing because it allows you to give good quality lessons. You know what has worked well in the past and can repeat a lot of those things in your current lessons.
But experience also has a downside. The more experienced you are as a guitar teacher right now, the more you're at risk of complacency. Complacency is hard to deal with because most people will immediately deny they're complacent. It's a hidden thing that people don't want to believe is affecting them.
In this guide we'll look at why you're probably complacent in some areas of your teaching, how it affects your students and what to do to overcome it. This guide will show you how to find better ways of teaching that you never would have considered before.
In the book summary for Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, it's explained that quizzes and tests are powerful teaching tools and not just assessment tools.
Most teachers tend to think of quizzes as a way to test a student's understanding of a topic, when studies have found that the act of completing a quiz actually helps a student improve their understanding. Quizzing is an excellent ways to reinforce ideas and topics.
In this guide let's look at the different ways you can use quizzes with your students to give them a better learning experience in and outside of lessons.
If your student has incosistent practice habits or struggles to stay motivated to regularly practice, the "Don't Break the Chain Method" may help. This method is an extremely simple way for you as a guitar teacher to keep track of your student's practice habits as well as help reinforce regular practice.
It's important you understand how habits form and why they can fail. If you don't have this solid understanding, it makes your job harder when it comes to helping your students develop solid practice habits. Using trial and error to get students to practice isn't a good approach. In the guide TPS-06 you can learn how habits are formed, how the habit loop works and how to work on bad habits.
Before you try to use the "Don't Break the Chain Method", make sure you build a solid understanding of habits by reading through that guide.
If you're trying to plan a curriculum for your guitar students, it's tempting to just create a plan that covers all the topics you think the student should learn. While that approach will be fine for some students, it's not ideal.
Every student you teach will experience problems along the way - it's an essential part of the learning process. If your student isn't experiencing problems - they're not learning. So it's important to remember that dealing with problems is a crucial part of any curriculum you create.
It's common to think of solving problems as a short and temporary break in your usual lessons. For example if a student has trouble placing their fingers in the correct position in a chord, you need to deal with that problem before you 'get back to the real lesson stuff'. In this guide you will learn why that's the wrong approach in most situations and why we should treat problems in a very different way.
By the end of this guide you will know how to deal with problems from a learning point of view and treat them properly in your curriculum for your students. Don't treat problems as temporary obstacles - they're much more important than that.
There are many different ways you can plan out your lessons with your students. One possible path is to use a method called 'topic stacking'. When used properly it gives your student a path to follow that makes sense to them and feels relatively easy. It will also help the student see how every skill and topic they learn is interconnected which will help them develop as musicians.
If you're a new guitar teacher this method will make your job easier as you won't need to plan lessons out far in advance. You'll be able to take everything one lesson at a time which takes a lot of guesswork out of lesson planning. By the end of this guide you'll have a strong understanding of topic stacking and will be able to start using it straight away in your lessons.
If you're an experienced guitar teacher you probably already use some form of topic stacking in your lessons. By the end of this guide you'll be able to better control the direction of your lessons and will have some new ideas on how to approach lesson planning.
Topic stacking allows your student to see how different topics or skills are related to each other and it gives them the opportunity to practice making connections between various topics.
It becomes obvious why topic stacking is so important when it isn't used. When topics or skills are taught in isolation, the student builds up a fragmented picture in their head on guitar and music. This can lead to confusion and frustration as the student won't be able to 'connect the dots'. Topic stacking can help you keep your students motivated and avoid burning out.
Finding new songs for your students to learn is usually pretty simple, but sometimes it can be a complete pain. If a student listens to very different music than what you're familiar with, it can be tough to find relevant songs to teach. Worse is when the student doesn't listen to many bands or artists. Finding new bands that are likely to be relevant to the student is a time consuming and frustrating task.
In this guide you will see how to use different online resources to find new songs and bands for your students. These resources can help give you new ideas for future lessons and inspire your students.
Hook Theory is a great resource that allows your students to explore music theory in a very practical way. Find out in this guide how to use it in your lessons and how to get the most out of it.
Your student's progress ultimately depends on their practice habits. No matter how effective you are in lessons, if a student doesn't practice outside of lessons, their progress will be limited. Improving your students' practice habits will make your job significantly easier as a teacher.
In this guide you will learn how habits are formed and how to change them. Knowing the science behind habits makes it significantly easier to set good habits in your students and change bad habits. You will learn why it's so hard to remove bad habits, why you shouldn't try to and what to do instead.
Understanding how habits work will help you:
After reading this guide, check out TPS-05 to read about motivation as habits and motivation are closely linked together.
Your students' practice habits are the most important aspect of their development. Even if you give excellent quality lessons, if your student doesn't practice well outside of lessons, their development will suffer.
In this guide we will look at best practices when it comes to practicing guitar. Even if you feel like you understand how your students should practice guitar, it's a good idea to read through this guide as it will explain why certain practice habits affect memory recall. This guide will also clean up some common myths over how a student should practice.