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What fluff. "Our guy" was easy to understand from his first post. "It will serve him well" ... what fluff !

I think I agree with you here. I see such incredible incompetence daily. My wife is not a musician, but music teachers come to HER to ask her what they should use to teach their beginner students.

I see people who know nothing, charging money, and they do tremendous damage. I wish the OP best of luck. He may may end up being a really fine teacher. I think we should give him more support and less flack.

It is, and it has been taken so. But no one ever said, 'you're an amateur!'.

The original intent, from what I understand, was to respect the fact that there are professionals out there, and understand that a person starting from scratch is not a 'professional.'

Anyone taking this as a personal insult needs to ask themselves why they feel so defensive.

To the OP: have you had a sufficient discussion of your original question?

Yep, I sure have. I've still been lurking around to read the banter. This is a great community. I plan to lurk much in the future.


:lurks:

I didn't say I was offended or anyone was, but I was pointing out that the word "amateur" has negative connotations in the professional community. Therefore, am "amateur teacher" is taken with a lot of baggage just because of that word.

I have been encouraging of the OP and simply pointed out to him not to use that terminology with regards to himself because of the connotations that were obviously unintentional on his part.

Yes, Morodiene, I understand that and I was agreeing with you.

You sure you didn't say that just because it was me who has said the other thing?

Anyway....do you want to say you don't think it would have been a problem for him to have kept thinking of it and expressing it as he had put it? (I don't mean just here, I mean out there.)

You make it appear that you don't think that would have been a problem for him.
If so, you are wrong.

If not, then you were wrong about my post.

Thank you very much.


GaryD: I'm not sure you knew fully what you were agreeing with.
Maybe take another look.

Mark,

I looked late at night and made a quick comment. It was careless and not thought out. I think I was more thinking out loud than directly responding to any one person. The OP seemed like a passionate person and might become a far better teacher than many I have seen.

But as always we don't really know anything important, and it's so easy to jump to conclusions.

Since everyone has to start teaching at some point, it's really a hard call to attempt to define exactly when the right time is. It is inevitable that *all* of us will make serious blunders in the beginning, no matter how much preparation we have, so I'm frankly not entirely sure how I feel about this whole topic.

On one one hand I shudder when I think of what I was like as a beginning teacher.

On the other hand, I believe I needed every experience I went through to have reached where I am right now. (Other people may not respect where I am right now, for all I know...)

If I sound like I am on the fence, I am. I know there are horrendous teachers out there, and I fear most of them are already as good as they will ever be. Perhaps that is what disturbs *me* the most. But those horrible teachers don't come places like here, asking questions and making a big effort to find their weaknesses and become better.

Or at least it appears so to me...

The prime issue wasn't what you talked about, but his use of the word "amateur," regarding both how it sounds (to a lot of people, although obviously not to everyone, as we're seeing here) and his conceptualization of what he's doing.

That was the only thing that I meant in my post that Landorrano replied to, and (presumably, if he understood my post correctly) what he was talking about (and which he was wrong about) and which you thought you were agreeing with.

Thanks for your clarifying post.

Hahah, clear as mud!

I appreciated just that he said he hadn't necessarily known exactly what he was agreeing with.

Oh, what the heck. I might as well spill the beans while we're at it. There is a divide between the educational people and the performance people. While it needn't be true, sometimes it is. To me, performance is the basis, then pedagogy. Now, I have dedicated my life to good teaching, and I believe I have been successful in that endeavor, but, nonetheless, I stress performance.

In regard to the comment that all novice teachers use method books, I beg to differ. It may be wise to start beginners in a good method book, particularly if they are very young. But my students did quite well with pieces that I composed for them, and with books similar to Suzanne Guy's Expressive Etudes, which start at a very elementary level.

Further, I tended to piece together material from various method books that had the types of pieces I wanted for my student.

My comments are based on what I can gather from the OP. There is some good advise here, plus, there is a wealth of information at this persons fingertips that many teachers don't have when starting. There's a lot here to start with. We all dread the beginning teacher who has little idea of what they are doing. That's awful. transfer students say it all.