Piano Teaching Tips

I've been teaching piano now for maybe five or six years, it's hard to remember when I actually started.  I suppose I could ask my first student who I still teach exactly how longs it's been.  There have been a lot of students sitting on my piano bench as we have poured through their lesson books and learned new songs week after week.  What a fun ride it has been watching each student grow and develop as a musician.  It's really quite an amazing thing to have a new student come to you knowing nothing about music and then by the end of the year they are reading notes and playing songs.  Some children thrive and others just kind of struggle.  You can tell which ones love it and which ones don't.  There are a few things that I have learned over the years while teaching piano that I'd love to share with my students and their parents:

1.  Students really progress if they practice consistently during the week.  It's amazing how quickly a student learns to play if they practice.  There is absolutely no improvement if there is no practicing.
2.  I know when my students don't practice, I really do.  They're not fooling me when they can't play the song we worked on the week before and it sounds exactly as it did when we were learning it during our lesson time.

3.  It's always a great idea to wash your dirty hands before you come to lessons.  You just got home from school and we don't need to put your school germs all over the beautiful, white piano keys.
4.  Maybe you should wash your feet too....when you take your sandals off and leave them by my door, your feet STINK!  I love you, my piano students, just not your smelly feet.
5.  Bring your piano books to lessons, especially the right ones.  You know, the ones that have the songs in them that you have been working on.  It's a good idea to bring your practice sheets too that we fill out every week.

6.  Be on time.  You have a thirty minute time slot....I don't give you extra lesson time if you're late, you just have a shorter lesson.  Sorry.

7.  Please don't quit piano lessons to take cheerleading.  You CAN do both!
8.  I love overachievers!  Students that memorize songs or learn new songs without being assigned are awesome.  I am especially impressed by cool and unusual tricks!

9. Piano students never cease to amaze me at recitals.  They are brave and amazing.  They announce their songs with such confidence and then proceed to play and wow the audience.  I am always so proud of their performances.

9. Serving brownies at the recital celebration is a really bad idea. The kids (and parents) drop crumbs everywhere, they get ground into the carpet, and then Charlie spends the entire evening sniffing and licking the floor in hopes of snatching up some brownie tidbits.