Characteristics Of A Good Music TeacherAre you a general music teacher who teaches music at high school or primary level? If you are, this article will give you a few pointers or reminders about things that make for a better music teacher and also things that will help your students to learn more easily, and acquire musical skills while in your classroom. It goes without saying that your expression and skills as a teacher have the greatest impact on your students as individuals and how they will learn music during the time they spent with you. Here are some ideas towards helping you be as effective as you know you can be. First of all, keeping their attention. Do you use different tones of voice when you speak to your students? It has been shown that when teacher speak in a different - in other words first of all a high and then a low tone when speaking - students are able to follow classes much more easily. How about movement? Do you move around while teaching? Do you make gestures as you explain concepts? This again is something that helps to hold student’s attention. And what about interaction? Do you interact with your students or make them interact by requesting their input into lessons? Great teachers encourage student responses by asking open-ended questions. This forces the students to really think about things taught and engage in what they are learning. And what kind of physical environment do you create? A good environment for learning music is to have an open area usually with no chairs, or an open floor space where all of you can sit down. Great music teachers will sit down on the floor with the students keeping at the same eye level and maintaining eye contact with students. The best music teachers don’t actually talk “at” the students. They let the student actually make music. They spend a large amount of time encouraging the students to participate in some kind of music making. Bear in mind that there are a number of different ways in which students learn music. Some of them will learn well by notation – by actually studying visually - seeing notes and timing, etc. written down. Others of course learn better through hearing of music and imitating, while others learn best through some sort of movement associated with learning the music they hear. Don’t present lessons in ways that are strictly formal and narrow in concept - perhaps forcing the students to do just one particular type of activity like drumming or singing for the whole time period. Instead give many different activities that your students can participate in to make music. This might be humming, it might be body drumming, it might be singing or even perhaps laughing or dancing along with the music. If they can do it, let them do it. How about your general attitude? Do you have an open attitude to your students in order to create a positive atmosphere? Do your students feel that you are approachable? Do you smile at them? Do you express positive emotions like happiness or laughter while teaching? Students will surely respond to this positively or negatively depending on how you express yourself. Don’t forget to encourage your students, to show them what they have done correctly in order to encourage them to do even better! Remember to have some kind of formal closure of the class in which you show them what they have been learning. Perhaps you might have a grand finale performance to end a class, which also brings to a close all the different concepts they have participated in during the time of the class. The goal of most music classes is to have the students make as much music as possible for as great a time possible during the teaching period. |