Just Started Teaching

[GuitarZan33]

I just started teaching but i don't know how to teach those kids who are just so bad that you feel like they are UNTEACHABLE!

[H flat]

...you won't have a job thinking like that for much longer.

Seriously bro, every kid's got potential: your job is to MOTIVATE through teaching and eventually lead him/her to TALENT. You can't just teach them their favorite riffs and call it learning. They'll have motivation to play along with a CD but little more. They won't be true musicians.


Music is a language, we all know. You're a foreign language teacher. Like a German or French teacher, you have to actually have experience and be willing to go all out to be respected. You have to teach them theory (grammar, reading, and writing) and open them up to new music (listening). Like a good language teacher, you have to have them do homework each week. My old teach had a deal: I'd get a half-hour lesson for free each week if I came back the next able to play something more fast/clean or solo better over a progression then he could. Needless to say, I'd be getting 4-5 free lessons a month.

Give them incentives. Throw them parties.

Imagine it's their first day in a German class. They can't say anything properly (intonation, note choice, fretting and picking technique). Then they'll start putting together fragmented sentences from dictionaries (reading from tabs). Eventually YOU'LL show them thier mistakes (correct their grammar) and teach them the proper way.

It all comes down to motivation. If you don't wanna be teaching kids how to apply musicianship to the bass, they sure as hell won't wanna play.

[Soulfly666]

...you won't have a job thinking like that for much longer.

Seriously bro, every kid's got potential: your job is to MOTIVATE through teaching and eventually lead him/her to TALENT. You can't just teach them their favorite riffs and call it learning. They'll have motivation to play along with a CD but little more. They won't be true musicians.


Music is a language, we all know. You're a foreign language teacher. Like a German or French teacher, you have to actually have experience and be willing to go all out to be respected. You have to teach them theory (grammar, reading, and writing) and open them up to new music (listening). Like a good language teacher, you have to have them do homework each week. My old teach had a deal: I'd get a half-hour lesson for free each week if I came back the next able to play something more fast/clean or solo better over a progression then he could. Needless to say, I'd be getting 4-5 free lessons a month.

Give them incentives. Throw them parties.

Imagine it's their first day in a German class. They can't say anything properly (intonation, note choice, fretting and picking technique). Then they'll start putting together fragmented sentences from dictionaries (reading from tabs). Eventually YOU'LL show them thier mistakes (correct their grammar) and teach them the proper way.

It all comes down to motivation. If you don't wanna be teaching kids how to apply musicianship to the bass, they sure as hell won't wanna play.

That's a some good advice. :)