{"id":1165,"date":"2013-01-27T23:17:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-28T04:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/guitar-instruction-video.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/27\/the-ideal-studen\/"},"modified":"2013-01-27T23:17:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-28T04:17:00","slug":"the-ideal-studen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/guitar-instruction-video.com\/blog\/the-ideal-studen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ideal Student"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I enjoy keeping in touch with other teachers, both in my personal\u00a0relationships and through forums. One topic that often comes up among music\u00a0teachers is \u201cthe ideal student.\u201d I never contribute to these conversations in\u00a0any expected way, mostly because I feel that all<\/i> of my students are ideal students!<\/p>\n

Of course, I know that the accepted definition of a good\u00a0student is one who is punctual, learns quickly, practices diligently, is\u00a0enthusiastic and ambitious and who attends lessons regularly and is prompt with\u00a0payment. Those are great qualities in a student – they make my job easy and fun\u00a0and I definitely appreciate them – but I don\u2019t feel that a student has to\u00a0exhibit any specific qualities from the start of the relationship in order for\u00a0both of us to enjoy a satisfying experience. I have grown the most as a teacher\u00a0and a person by working through situations that are challenging or\u00a0uncomfortable. Can you imagine the thrill I feel when a student who has been\u00a0through four, five or more teachers is able to break through to a level of\u00a0playing they have sought for years? It is exhilarating to be able to facilitate\u00a0that leap for someone who has persisted so diligently in their quest and I am deeply\u00a0grateful that they didn\u2019t give up on their goals before reaching my studio!<\/p>\n

I start with the basic premise that if someone enrolls in\u00a0lessons, they want to learn to play guitar and that no one intentionally limits\u00a0his or her ability to do so. My job is to assist my students in reaching their\u00a0goals and that means helping them to develop effective approaches to learning, successful\u00a0practice habits, positive responses to the process, concentration, confidence,\u00a0creativity, coordination, manual strength and dexterity, listening skills,\u00a0pitch sense, rhythmic sense and more. In other words, I see a teacher as being\u00a0far more than someone who organizes and disseminates information – I see her\u00a0also as someone who, by listening and attending to the whole student, is able\u00a0to assist, support and fully participate in the process of learning.<\/p>\n

As for those \u201cideal qualities,\u201d I find that by resisting the\u00a0temptation to hold them as expectations or requirements, I am able to enjoy\u00a0their emergence as a natural part of the process\u00a0of learning how to learn. The rewards are rich: I have the opportunity to\u00a0practice patience, commitment and creativity and the student learns to make\u00a0music! That is a beautiful and gratifying experience that I wouldn\u2019t trade for\u00a0all the ready-made \u201cideal students\u201d in the world.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I enjoy keeping in touch with other teachers, both in my personal\u00a0relationships and through forums. One topic that often comes up among music\u00a0teachers is \u201cthe ideal student.\u201d I never contribute to these conversations in\u00a0any expected way, mostly because I feel that all of my students are ideal students! Of course, I know that the accepted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1165","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-default","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitar-instruction-video.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitar-instruction-video.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitar-instruction-video.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitar-instruction-video.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitar-instruction-video.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/guitar-instruction-video.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitar-instruction-video.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitar-instruction-video.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitar-instruction-video.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}