Improving Teaching Away From Lessons

Lesson Delivery

In this lesson you'll learn how to be the most effective teacher you can be, without having to rely 100% on using your students to "practice on."

Jason Aaron Wood

Lesson instructor:

Professional guitarist, teacher & music education entrepreneur. Teaching since 2008.

Improving Teaching Away From Lessons

Improving the quality of your teaching is an ongoing pursuit, and there's always room for more.

I have been actively seeking ways to improve my effectiveness as a teacher since 2009, and I don't see that stopping at any point. The result has been a constant evolution of my teaching business and has resulted in satisfied students staying on for up to 8 years at a time, going from beginning guitarists to recording artists with several albums to their name.

In this lesson, I'm going to share all of the methods that lead to this kind of constant improvement; I have done and continue to do all of them.

Rehearse Your Approach to Different Topics

The first thing to do if you want to be as effective as possible as a teacher, is simply don't wing it. That will NEVER be as effective as a well-rehearsed plan of action.

Here's how I've always done it:

Talk to yourself or to an imaginary student.

Arrive at the wording you think works best.

Adopt this as your default approach whenever you teach this topic.

Keep repeating it over and over in a conversational tone — practice saying it smoothly until the delivery comes naturally every time.

Adapt it over time as needed based on students' reception and implementation.

Additional Recommendations

Here are some other approaches that will improve your teaching.

Practice teaching in the mirror.

Practice teaching on video. (AND Practice talking to the camera daily!)

Develop analogies you can use.

Determine useful leading questions to ask in the course of lessons.
This gives them a chance to participate in the thought process of the lesson, beyond just "here, play this."

Dictate ideas into your phone as they come to you (Notes app).

Keep a notebook of lesson ideas ("a" notebook eventually becomes DOZENS of notebooks.)

For each lesson, write a script, or at least key bullet points to stay on track

Strive to teach concepts in plain English wherever possible, especially at first. The less musical jargon, the better — that can always come later. Focus first on getting them to understand it easily and DO it on the instrument — and only then concern yourself with telling them what to call it.

Planning & Teaching Group Classes

Over a few years of teaching classes, I realized that the best way to get students engaged and learning is by setting the class up as a jam session, with specific criteria (both overall criteria, and possibly criteria for each specific student as well, as needed).

Prepare a backing beat, chord progression, or drone to play along to

Each student takes turns trading parts, cycling between them and you every few measures. Make sure they turn their guitar volume knob all the way down as soon as they're done every time so the other students don't have to compete with their random guitar noise; this is basic band room etiquette so they might as well learn it here with you.

Your role is both teacher and band director/conductor; as one student is finishing, make eye contact with the next student and even count them in (as you count the current student out) if needed

You can forego your turn most of the time, and let the students just take turns among themselves. You're really there to just provide (a) demonstration initially and then (b) guidance to steer what they're doing in the right direction. So only take as long a turn as they were taking.

If a student makes a mistake, make sure you let them know that's okay. And if it's a common mistake (or one that you already anticipated would happen), use that as an example of how this is a built-in difficulty and it trips a LOT of people up, and then tell them how to overcome it or bypass it. Then do another round of taking turns based on doing exactly that.

This is a very hands-on, "learning by doing" approach, and is extremely engaging, unlike the "lecture" style of teaching classes. Even when they're not playing, they're watching and listening, and also keeping time (loosely) awaiting their turn. Plus, by doing that, they're learning how to play with others.

Not every student will be at the same skill level, so tailor the challenge to each student's strengths and limitations. You do want to challenge them, but not so much that they embarrass themselves in front of everyone else. Set them up to succeed, but with a little stumble here and there; carefully select the particular stumble so they can learn from the real-life built-in challenges of what they are doing.

Also, not every student needs to be doing the same thing in the jam. If it's a soloing class in general, but one or more students needs work in their rhythm guitar skills or music theory (accompaniment), you can define an underlying chord progression for what some students will solo over, while those other students simultaneously work on various riffing skills. This is where your role is also that of a composer.

Supply each student with the same audio track(s) you used in the class (by email or a download link), and give them specific action steps for the week, with clearly defined criteria for what to look for, listen for, and be thinking about as they do.

By conducting your classes like this, your students are fully engaged, and will get much more out of their classes with you.

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Jason Aaron Wood

Lesson instructor:

Improving Teaching Away From Lessons

Rehearse Your Approach to Different Topics

Additional Recommendations

Planning & Teaching Group Classes

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