What Makes a Great Intermediate Piano Teacher?
I was honored when Ben Kapilow invited me on his podcast called All Keyed Up. Ben asks the most insightful and thought-provoking questions! I hope you will listen to the episode, as well as many others on the podcast - he has had some fantastic guests.
I wanted to flesh out here my answer to one of the questions he asked, because I realized I had never actually stopped to really consider it:
What makes a great teacher of intermediate students?
We all can probably agree on many qualities that make a great music teacher in general, whether in lessons with a beginner or an advanced student. But what qualities are needed to be a truly great teacher of intermediate-level students? Here are some of my thoughts:
Competency
Teachers teaching the intermediate level must play at an advanced level. I know this probably goes without saying, but I’ll come right out and say it anyway. As teachers, we must always be ahead of our students.
Enthusiastic and Inspiring
Teachers must be able to inspire students and pass on enthusiasm for repertoire at this level. While elementary pieces often have descriptive titles and are written to be immediately engaging, intermediate students play sonatinas and minuets and many other historical (and therefore less culturally relevant) works.
We must love the repertoire we teach, or at the very least, be able to “sell” it to our students, even if it is simpler than our advanced repertoire. So, before assigning a piece, great intermediate teachers ask
what makes this individual piece special? Appealing? Beautiful? Charming? Exciting?
More coaching, less teaching
Great teachers of intermediate students approach their relationship with the student more like that of a coach than a teacher.
While beginning students need us to show and tell everything because they have never encountered each new concept, intermediate students need less telling and more leading. They already know so much.
We as teachers serve them best when we lead them to discover what each piece holds and make connections to concepts they already know and musical experiences they have already had.
Practice skills
Great teachers teach their intermediate students how to practice. Students at this level should be growing in independence, gradually becoming more and more autonomous in their study. I try to include practice techniques in each of my YouTube videos, and there are many more resources for teachers and students on effective practice techniques.
Check out Elvina Pearce’s book The Success Factor: Making Practice Perfect
Ability to distill
Lastly, but most importantly, great teachers of the intermediate level know how to distill advanced musical and technical concepts to the student and explain them in a way that is age-appropriate and experience-appropriate for the individual student.
Many teachers understand performance practice or harmonic analysis but do not know how to lead an adolescent or recreational adult student to the same understanding.
Alternatively, teachers sometimes wrongly assume that students are incapable of understanding intricacies such as sonata-allegro form or basic Baroque ornamentation.
While it takes care and experience, learning to communicate in an individually appropriate way is what will ultimately help our students learn and understand their music in a manner that will allow them to perform expressively and take ownership of their music-making pursuits.
INtermediate repertoire selection
I haven’t mentioned anything here about repertoire selection; we covered that in several other parts of the interview. Excellent and appropriate repertoire choices are important across the board for all levels of students, and if you have been following me at all, you probably already know this is a regular soapbox for me. But it is true - teachers at the intermediate level do need to take special care in the repertoire that they offer or assign to their students.
Teachers - what have I missed? Are there other qualities that fundamentally make a great teacher of intermediate students? Leave a comment below with your thoughts! And don’t forget to go listen to the podcast!
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