All About Choosing Piano Schools And Teachers

[haystack]

Any good piano teacher for 4 year old kid? I am looking for a private teacher. I stay at CCK.

[Cannotsaydie]

Hi,


I’m looking for a piano teacher for my child age 11. At Punggol area. Anyone can recommend a good teacher? Got rather bad experience with some of the teachers. Hoping to get her a good one. Appreciate your help.

[CHC123]

I am looking for an experienced piano teacher to teach my 9 yrs old grade 2 and 6 yrs old beginner daughter at braddell area. Preferable weekends time slot. Thanks.

[kathyh]

hi

I am new here. I would like to know more about NAFA piano course for kids, any mummies or daddies here can share your precious experience with me? thanks a lot

[sleepy]

kathyh:

hi

I am new here. I would like to know more about NAFA piano course for kids, any mummies or daddies here can share your precious experience with me? thanks a lot

Threads on nafa piano fyi
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5493&hilit=+nafa
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6604&hilit=nafa

[phankao]

sacredmusicals:

I don't like to generalize, but most traveling piano teachers are very average or simply sucks. Same goes for most music schools' teachers. Exception maybe new graduates who need to make ends meet.


Speaking from personal experience as a student last time.

Your generalization is not entirely incorrect. Although I do personally know two \"traveling\" piano teachers who are very dedicated and good as reaches. Rare, but they are willing to travel as their homes are not so conducive for using as teaching areas. Their SCHEDULES Are rather full, so not easy to engage them either.

[jce]

MOST teachers who travel aren’t good and have less experience (the ones traveling are younger, fresh grads). Think about it, those who are good, generally will have a high demand, so you want to learn, then come. Why does the teacher need to waste time traveling when that time can be used to teach and earn more? Of course, there are exceptions. Just like, not all teachers who teach from home are good teachers. As I have mentioned before, need to give a chance and have an open mind. Fresh grad doesn’t equal not good, given some time, they can excel too. So give some time to the teacher before making a decision to change. There are exceptions too… and those are the ones where immediately you know, cannot make it.

[Dreamaurora]

I would like the present the flip side of the coins; I apologize in advance if I anger anyone here.


Just like teachers who travel are generally not good, the same is true for the parents or students that ask teachers to travel. I used to travel to student place for around half a year and quickly realized it is not a viable environment to teach. Students get distracted easily and parents were generally not so interested in the children.

I have since fully switched to full private and i can’t be happier. By forcing students to travel, this effectively eliminates the not serious ones. Also because the students have to sacrifice their times to come for lesson, they will work harder to ensure they get the most from the lessons. It is also easier to organize extra activities such as group lessons or duets with a proper home studio.

I have to admit it is considerably harder to get more students as a non traveling teacher, especially that I am considered still relatively new to the field. But hey, quality over quantity.

[sleepy]

From parents’ perspective, ideally prefer teacher to come to student’s house.


It’s rather disruptive to child’s busy schedule if need to travel to & fro. Say for example lesson on afternoon 3pm, need to start preparing at 2:15pm, leave the house latest by 2:30pm depending how far is teacher’s house or music school, sometimes need to leave house even earlier if congested carpark. Don’t want to be late since every minute counts in piano lesson.

Lesson ends at 3:45pm. By the time reach home, assuming 4:15pm. Again, child needs time to settle down, change clothes, dilly dally almost 5pm then can really sit down to start doing school work. Between 2:15pm to 5pm, it’s 2 hours & 45 minutes in total although actual lesson time is merely 45 minutes.

That extra 2 hours child could have finish up school work earlier & rest or read books.

Having said that, I believe parents are still willing to travel to teacher’s house if convinced of higher teaching quality & if within reasonable travelling distance.

[peanut_butter]

Many of my home-tuition parents are involved in their children’s practices.


I may not be a world class teacher. But I am not those inferior ones either. It also takes a lot of teaching 'intuition' to do the job besides the qualifications and experiences. I do lots of traveling (50%) because I am not established yet. I charge more than the schools around my studio. I do quarterly class-hour to weed out the bad students. I also turned down parents who ask for discounts.

The down side is that I ended up home-tutoring in the ‘rich’ areas. When they change their school schedule next year, we will run into some schedule problems. And yes, organising extra activities is a serious problem and doing a duet is a fantasy.