I know very little about the
trumpet, so I was quite nervous before I started my five-minute lesson. In fact, even if I had been teaching an
instrument I know how to play I probably would have been nervous. I’ve really only taught a handful of
“first” lessons before.
I made the decision to show the
student how to hold the instrument right at the beginning of the lesson. I thought that it made sense to do this
because since the student is there for a trumpet lesson, then that’s what he
would want to do right away. I
suppose everything went according to how I expected it to go, so any bad part
of the lesson was because of my poor plan.
One little thing I wish I had done
was not ask what the student’s name was when I walked in. Clearly it’s a private lesson and I
would have known what his name was.
Another thing I wished I had touched on was posture. A few other people did this, and I realize it's very important. This seems like something that should
be taught when teaching how to hold the instrument. I also could have done a better job of laying out the
expectations of the lesson. I’m
sure I also could have made better eye contact. This is constant struggle of mine not just in teaching, but
in life in general.
I’m sure there were many other
things I did wrong, and if I think of them later I’ll add to this post.
You have a lot of great points Jacob, many that I also felt about my own performance. Since we both did Trumpet as well, I was also feeling like I wish I had mentioned good posture - that is really important. I also feel like I laid out expectations a little bit, but I could have been more concrete in what exactly I was doing to reach them.
ReplyDeleteI went in with the approach that this was a private lesson, but I feel like later in the class it turned out to be more of a prep lesson for band class in general. If it was more of a prep lesson I would have just gotten straight to learning the instrument instead of getting to know the student (because of time constraint).