Jasmine_27 -> RE: startin to teach. (Dec. 19 2007 9:04:35)
|
Here in Tokyo, teachers can charge up the wazoo, but I pay about $45.00 per lesson and consider that fair for a beginner. However, Tokyo is one of the most expensive cities to live in and minimum wage is about $9.00 an hour. When setting prices, I'd first consider what I have to offer rather than what the market will bear. Unless I had extensive teaching experience (and possibly professional training and credentials), I might initially charge near the bottom of the scale or offer a sliding scale based on the student's income. After all, we're not all IT programmers and union-scale tradesmen, and students who have true desire and limited income are just as deserving of proper training as the more well-heeled among us. From the student's perspective, for me the main determinant when choosing a teacher is not primarily the price. Though price is a factor, it's not always indicative of the teacher's ability, and that is my main concern. I've unfortunately endured my share of incompetent and uncaring teachers who were just in it for the bucks, and it was a waste of time and effort to study with them, as they had no clue how to help me improve. So my main criteria is not how well THEY can play, but how well they can teach ME to play, assuming I practice correctly and diligently every day. I've finally been lucky enough to find a teacher who is worth his weight in gold. He's patient, intelligent, talented and extremely good at analyzing how to improve my playing, and just as important, he's teaching me to develop the same skills myself. If you'd like the low-down on teaching philosophy and approach, you may be interested in checking out Jamie Andreas' Guitar Principles. He has a real commitment to seeing his students improve and has some innovative teaching techniques and approaches to offer both teachers and students. I found his website when I "fired" my cello teacher and it really opened my eyes to a new approach to learning how to play. My current teacher uses some of these techniques, too, and it really works in combination with other methods. (This is not a crass commercial plug, by the way. I'm just passing on information I've benefitted from as a beginning flamenco guitar students). Cheers!
|
|
|
|