TPS-02 Reading Body Language

About this guide

An overlooked area some guitar teachers neglect is body language. Understanding how to read a student's body language can tell you a lot about what the student is thinking and feeling. An effective teacher can take body language cues and use them to improve the quality of the lesson.

By the end of this guide you will be able to accurately identify body language cues and use them to improve your lessons.

Why Body Language is Important to Understand

Your student may be bored or doesn't like what you're teaching but won't say anything because they're too polite. In this scenario if you don't pick up on the fact the student isn't happy then it can lead to problems. Although a student may not say something if they're bored/tired/uninterested/etc their body language won't lie. Our bodies give signals to our true thoughts and many of the signals we can't control.

Once you learn how to identify these signals, you can figure out if the student is bored or unhappy in anyway and adjust your lesson. Quite often a student won't tell you if they don't want to learn this topic or they don't see the point in the exercises. Their body language will tell you. As soon as you pick up on these signals you can correct course. Then you can start looking for signals that the student is happy and engaged in the material. These little signals can have a dramatic impact on the quality of your lessons.