Dave Wirth
Over the past month, I have noticed a diminished capacity to remain energetic in each lesson for each person. My heart began to sink at this realization. As a result, I took a closer look at the way I structured my lessons and found that changing my approach will benefit everyone. There are now be three main sections to each lesson. Since I was going to send this out to my regular students, I thought I may as well publish it. It will give you an idea of how I operate if you want to take lessons with me.
The Warm Up
All teachers must learn to maintain and manage dozens of professional relationships, one after another or in a big classroom, to be successful in their work. Each student is different, and if they plan upon reaching any number of them, both student and teacher must be on the same page. The Warm Up is intended to do this.
The Warm Up is conducted with as little chatter and with as much music as possible. This helps both of us center our attention on guitar, and not on anything else. The way I plan upon accomplishing this is to steer us to either play a song, play a rhythm, play something that you have totally mastered, or jam. Furthermore, this allows you to really allow a concept or song “get into” you. Mastery of concepts is far more dependent upon playing than it is practicing. The Warm Up allows you to play and just enjoy it. I believe it is critical and besides it just feels good to play music. After I feel we are centered and on the same page, it's time to review.
The Review
After we settle into the space, it's time to review the stuff we went over the previous week and collaborate on the process of mastery of this material. This is the best time to straiten out technical or musical issues about guitar, collaboratively.
I'm very serious about the word “collaboration.” I'm now convinced this is the best way to work through technical problems. It gets both of us involved in resolving issues that keep you from playing guitar. In short, two minds are better than one. I plan upon using both of our brains to make guitar easier for you.
The New Stuff
After settled and reviewed, it is time for the new stuff. If you are wondering why I wait until later in the lesson, this is why:
There have been times that I jumped directly into a new idea or concept, right from the start of a lesson. This not only disregarded what the student was working on previously, but it was a wasted energy when both of us were not settled into the lesson. It also did them a disservice because it didn't help them own the previous material, at all. I believe this to be a terrible waste of energy and an egregious waste of time. We both need to settle into our professional relationship and time together before anything can be accomplished, and we both need to collaborate on solving problems as well.
In Conclusion
Doing both The Warm Up and Review lays the foundation. It acts as a launch pad to learn new stuff and soak in what I have to show you, aka The New Stuff. This is all meant to help anyone get to the point with playing guitar, and help anyone continually build a far better ability. Once again, this is how I teach guitar.
