Everybody knows I’m a big advocate for continuous training and development.
There is no substitute for continuous re-education, re-evaluation, and training… not even decades of experience.
As a matter of fact: while experience counts, it is not what you have done in the past that defines your value and worth, but the quality of who you strive and aim to be today.
A guitar student doesn’t necessarily need or even want the most experienced guitar instructor or the one who has been teaching the most years.
Very often a student would benefit more not from studying with the teacher with the longest track record, but from the teacher who is the most eager to keep learning about teaching.
You want the teacher who believes he can still improve his teaching approach, his teaching plan, his communication skills, his delivery, and so on.
The downside that very often comes with a high level of long experience, is “inflexibility”
I strongly believe that the danger of falling into the trap of “becoming inflexible” or in other words “stuck in your ways”, is avoided through continuous study in your chosen field.
When you keep learning and reading about the art of teaching, which keeps you exposed to new ideas, new schools of thought, and new teaching techniques, it diminishes the likelihood you will get inflexible in your teaching approach.
That is probably one of THE top reasons why my students tend to do better than students of most any other guitar teacher out there:
… I prob spent more time learning and studying about teaching, psychology, pedagogy, NLP, and communication than 90% of all guitar teachers in LA.
I have included a list here of some of the books I think every guitar teacher should study to become the best they can be.
I believe we all owe it to our students to help them get the maximum out of their lesson money, out of their time, and out of their talent.
The better the guitar teacher, the better his students do, the more fun they have learning, the more joy they experience playing music, the happier the teacher is in return.
It’s a wonderful cycle.
make that under the top LINK “Teachers”,
that the “click here” link on the Vreny Van Elslande drop-down menu link/page Teacher Bio, links to a new page called “Reputation As a Master Guitar Coach” (which is just a work title for now. I still have to write content for that new page)
I want to make this Reputation As a Master Guitar Coach the page where I talk about the study of psychology, NLP, my teaching style, techniques used, books read, etc…