My Experience as a Teacher, & A Message to ALL Teachers

So I guess this is kind of a recap of my teaching experience, like the first two months of me as a guitar teacher. 

And what I've come to learn as a guitar teacher is that kids are really, really cool and they are way smarter than we give them credit for. And I say that because my first ever student is eight years old, which is already a little younger than the average guitar student I learned at age ten after like two years of piano or something, and he's had no experience with any other instrument. 

So jumping straight into guitar at age eight with a full-sized guitar like this one, actually almost exactly like this one, it's it's no small feat. Let's put it that way. And so I figured I'd start teaching him pretty slowly, like, you know, just giving him, like, the basics of what all these things are. And considering that he's not starting with an acoustic, he's starting with an electric, which is already very different from my own education because I started with -- I started with this guitar. 

It's a -- what is it? A Lucero LC-100 CE/N and I don't even remember for how much my dad got this. Dad, how much did you get this guitar for? 

No idea. 

Somewhere around $100, I'm sure, because it wasn't even on the shelf at Guitar Center. It was just like hanging around, if I remember right, and I got a strap for it.

I remember the employee asking me if I knew what the band was that made this graphic, and I'm like, no idea, it just looks cool. That's the only reason I got it. It just looked cool. 

And so my education was mostly on this thing and I didn't get an electric, which was this thing, this is my first electric guitar, and I didn't get it until like, uh, 2017. I think it was like two, three years after I started playing guitar. So I had an acoustic for like a fair long while. 

So teaching a kid straight into electric, I thought was going to be a little challenging because I remembered how much, you know, calluses hurt for me for a while, and steel strings are way harder to play. Like I teach him the, you know, the most basic exercise at first, you know, just -- (plays). And then next week you go -- (plays). And, you know, there's just a bunch of, like, single string exercises, too, that you teach them. 

And I was really surprised by how quickly he was actually learning, because it's been my perception that a lot of kids just aren't interested in focusing as much on things nowadays, because they don't really have -- like, they don't feel the need to like something very much anymore, which feels a bit weird to say because like, who am I to say stuff, right? I'm only like 18.

So to say that, like all kids these days seems a bit presumptuous of me, but it's sort of -- I don't know quite how to put it. It just it feels really good when the kid really wants to learn what you teach them, because first of all, they validates you as a human being. It validates your general teaching skills, and it tells you that your teaching him at a rate that is acceptable for his brain to catch up with. So every piece of information that you're giving him, he's catching onto, and he will remember that. 

I remember when I first taught him "Smoke on the Water." And, you know, it's nothing crazy. It's just, you know, 035 on the two middle strings. But I remember, like, when I first showed it to him, he was blown away because he's like, oh my gosh, this is so hard. And then like that, like two or three days later, his mom sends me a message on Facebook and she's like, oh my gosh, Daniel, look, he's already got it down. 

And I'm like, dude, what? Because like, he's progresses really, really quickly because he actually bothers to practice. And I was always told as a little kid to stop messing around and actually play the stuff that I was assigned, and that killed my passion for the instrument a little bit, mostly because it seemed like piano again, where it was just a chore and a mess to figure out. 

Like, it just felt like a school subject, you know, just regurgitate the information and put no real effort into it. Just do it for the grade, right? And it's really important to stress to your student that you can move at your own pace and for however long you mess around with. It would be nice if you spent that a comparable amount of time practicing the actual stuff. 

Because I told his mom, like, listen, I don't discourage messing around because like here he is figuring out what stuff sounds like, and he's just like -- (plays) -- and he's just like, oh, Daniel, doesn't that sound great? And I'm like, yeah, it does. And then I play it in like my own way, which would be like -- (plays) -- or like, I don't know, just something like I just expand upon it at power chords and stuff. Or he would just be like messing around and just go like -- (plays) not quite like that, but you get the idea. 

He just fools around and he's like, you know, when the first time you play a guitar, you're really intrigued by how you can just slide -- (slide) -- up and down the strings, and with good reason. That's a very cool thing to do. And so, you know, even in lessons, I let him fool around as long as he got around to actually playing the stuff, which he did.

So not that this video is like a guidebook or a manual on how to teach, but it's more so just a -- just keep in mind that if your student wants to fool around, just give him -- cut him a kind of a bit of slack. Because first of all, if he's young, he's just a kid, and even if he isn't, he's going to want to display to you as his teacher his levels of creativity. And that happens all the time. Like the last video I did, I was talking about how he showed me how he cut a bunch of hiss on his Stratocaster, and it sounded very much like the wah pedal tone on "Money for Nothing." 

And maybe I'm not that familiar with the song because I haven't listened to it that much, but it really sounded like that to me, and I was blown away by how he figured out how to easily replicate such a sound without the need for that pedal. You know, because I have a wah pedal and I emulated it in front of him and he's like, and he understood it and stuff. But I liked his sound more, to be honest. 

So it's always really fascinating when the student like goes above and beyond what you actually ask him to do. And it's important that like if there are any teachers watching, it's important to remember that you have to give your student an opportunity to do that.

For example, there's a song that I learned on guitar that's kind of like my first real song, right? And it's like -- (plays beginner Malaguena) -- and I remember only making one mistake for my entire recital back when I first performed that for all the parents, and I just made more mistakes now playing it, but I actually still have the video of me playing it when I was like, like, what was it, ten years old at that point? Yeah, it was like ten years old. I have it up on my YouTube channel, actually. I ripped it off the old DVD copy that I have of the actual recital, and it's it's really fascinating because I told him to just practice just on loop. 

And he actually goes a little farther and gets to this part, and I had to teach him the ending part, which is -- (plays) -- you know, but he really took the initiative. And I want to say that part of that is because I allowed him to mess around a little bit, because there's a funny rule from a modern day philosopher -- if you know, you know -- don't bother kids when they're skateboarding. And it's kind of cheesy to apply it to this scenario, I know, but I like to think of teaching an instrument or teaching anything really as something similar to that. 

You don't want to quell a kid's desire to fool around and have fun, because first of all, he'll start hating the thing. He'll start hating you, and he won't want to be with you and do the thing anymore. But if you allow him to mess around and see what he come up with and you encourage that mentality, he winds up expanding in his creativity to an exceptional degree. 

I can say this out of my own lack of experience, actually, not from my actual experience, because I didn't exactly -- I was not ever really put in a situation to expand upon my creativity because I didn't know I had any, and I didn't know that I had any until I got an electric guitar. Because when I first got my electric guitar, when I first got my electric guitar, I thought, now I can actually be creative because this is a creative person's instrument. It's got my teacher's strings, the steel strings, they hurt. That must mean it's worth something, right? It means you actually have to put effort into what you're playing. That's how I thought. 

And it's really interesting to teach someone starting out with an instrument that I perceived as a beginner to be so professional, right? But I think because of him starting out on the more creative instrument, it has expanded his creativity and his method of thinking. Like, right now we're learning "Iron Man," and it's really funny because he is stumbling on the exact same things that I stumbled on when I was first learning that song, that basically being the.

He's stumbling on that sliding part because he's currently kind of rolling his fingers when he slides, and he's not keeping them together. When he slides, he's kind of spreading them out, and he's sliding farther than one fret on one finger as opposed to another. And so it sounds pretty off right now, but he'll get there, you know. And so, you know, it just sounds like. Kind of what it sounds like for beginners, you know, and that's perfectly okay because this is going to take a while. 

But as soon as he gets over that, the entire song kind of gets easier, at least up until the solo. But I'm not worrying about that right now because this is how I learned it too, you know, like and then I figured out that like, oh my gosh. Like they play just a single note when Ozzy sings and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. I could actually practice and stuff like -- (plays) -- it made me feel like an absolute king to be able to play this song all the way through -- finally. 

And so I guess the point of the story right now is basically to encourage your students creative abilities, even if they don't seem like creative ideas at all, because believe me, they won't at first because it'll just sound like he's fooling around. But that's a good thing. And you want to encourage that because otherwise he will lose passion in the instrument. 

And personally, I cannot afford to see that happen because in my experience, music is everything. Music has been everything. It's literally been a key part of my life ever since I was a very, very small child. I used to grow up listening to these classical music CDs that had kind of a story or a plot or characters put around the songs, and like the kids inside of them, will meet the composers. I don't exactly remember what the names of the series is, but I'll probably find it afterwards in editing and I'll just link it in the description of the video. But they were really, really cool because it gave me this sense of humanity placed inside the music and living through the music and experiencing the music. There was a Mozart CD that we had where it's like the most crackhead voyage journey possible, but having humans move through the music and move along in the story, with the music basically supporting everything. It was so surreal to me that I knew that music had to be -- music basically had to be here for a reason, you know? 

I mean, Little Einsteins taught me that -- like, it's probably the most intelligent kids show I've ever seen because of the music -- and you never want to discourage the creativity of a student or anybody really, for pretty much any type of creative hobby, because you don't want all of that potential to bring joy and happiness to humanity in whatever form that takes to go away. You cannot let that happen. 

So encourage him messing around. Of course, encourage him to do his homework. Just encourage him to do his homework for the same amount of time that he messes around. Because apparently my student fools around for like half an hour a day and then winds up practicing for 45 minutes. And that's awesome because he paces it from messing around and practicing, messing around and practicing. And his mom tells me about everything and I'm like, wonderful. Perfect. Make sure he stays that way, because that's kind of how it's supposed to be. 

And because of that, your student will grow really quickly and like it might not be quickly on like the grand scale of things, but it will surprise you how much they grow and how much they will respect you. Like, I cannot believe that this kid runs up to me after I drive to his house to teach him, and he gives me a water bottle before I even get out of the car. And then I get another one for my drive home. And the family is super great with me, and I have the absolute best time teaching. 

Like right now there is no -- there's no greater joy in my life right now then teaching guitar because seeing someone get through a rough spot, playing guitar and actually progressing and thanking you for it is the most emotionally rewarding thing I think I could ever experience, and even more so than somebody like covering one of my songs, because I've got a bunch of songs and I love to teach people that, but it's the experience of instilling the student with enough joy in the task itself and allowing them to. Just mess around and have fun with it. 

That, I think is probably the most undervalued thing in teaching these days. Just anything. I know a kid that emails me sometimes just to say that his guitar teacher was really bad. Because it was apparent that the teacher didn't even have enough passion in the instrument itself, much less teaching that instrument. And that really saddened me. And I've known people that have had bad teachers, had good teachers. Good teachers are typically the ones that promote the act of, shall we say, fooling around and allowing their student to get a feel for the instrument in their own right. And that way the student actually gets a much firmer grasp of the concept of actually playing. 

And I guess if there's one takeaway from any of this, it's as a message to all teachers. Though I am quite young and not exactly in the greatest position to say this, I want to say that just show your student that you care about the thing and help them care about it, too -- that's pretty badly saying it. 

I guess through your own actions, your own subtext, your own methods of teaching. I guess if there's one thing that's really important, just give the student a reason to care because if they don't care, they're not going to do it. So just give them a reason to care. And by golly, they will. And it will be the most rewarding thing to see them play the song that you have spent a long time learning with them and teaching them. And when they actually succeed, and they thank you for all the time that you put into helping them out, that will truly be the greatest moment of your life. And you're going to want that all the time. 

I've already had it to a small extent and I can't get enough of it. I want to teach more. I want to teach everybody. I love teaching now, and I'm. Very glad that I'm in the position to be able to share this with everyone, because if anybody is thinking about teaching, I say do it, and do it well, for nobody else's sake except your student. I mean, yeah, sure, for yourself, I guess, but teach well for the student. 

Right. Guess that's it.