If you’ve decided that piano lessons might benefit you or your child, you’ve probably found an abundance of music teachers in Toronto. With the vast numbers of individuals claiming to have incredible music expertise, how can you pick apart the few who are truly the best? While characteristics such as experience and achievements or awards are important, they’re not everything.
A few qualities that truly indicate a good music or piano teacher include:
1. The ability to balance professionalism with friendliness and personal investment in a student’s success. Teaching music is a professional vocation, even as a side job, and it should be treated as such. By keeping with aspects of professionalism, the instructor respects their student and themselves.
2. The possession of interpersonal skills, communicative success, and confidence, which are all necessary qualities in order to connect with students and self-advertise piano lessons in a huge area like Toronto.
3. Fun! You want your teacher to not only teach you, but to encourage you to have fun with your lessons. Piano lessons shouldn’t be a chore, they should be something that you enjoy doing.
4. Properly emphasizing the fundamentals in order to build a student’s foundation for future success. A good teacher will understand that teaching lessons which may seem tedious or more boring will eventually lead the student towards greater abilities.
5. The ability to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of students while creating an obtainable and reasonable plan to improve the weaker areas. Like the fundamentals, focusing on areas of difficulty may not be fun, but a good teacher will understand that it is necessary.
If you’ve been scratching your head while reading this article because it seems that these traits simply don’t match up with your instructor’s teaching style, take a step back and ask yourself if you are truly getting all you can from your lessons. Don’t be afraid to make inquiries to interview new teachers—you’ll truly see the differences between quality instruction and poor teaching after you make the switch.