Long Term vs. Short-Term Thinking when Teaching

Quality over quantity. That’s my new mantra.

Ensure you have the capacity, resources, and time to dedicate the optimal attention you have to your students. The more attention, friendliness and connection you have with the student, the more likely they are to stay with whatever you are teaching them (e.g., piano) and develop a lifelong love for the subject (i.e., music). That’s what I think we need to be developing in young kids from the get-go – that long term trajectory for a passion.

When I was learning piano during high school with my music teacher, I was never super talented at it - didn’t have a musical ear, or didn’t learn how to play super complicated Beethoven pieces, but I knew that I loved piano and wanted to keep going. My teacher was a huge part of it, in the sense that she understood how I learnt, was friendly and warm during lessons, and gave me very good feedback which helped me to improve. Upon realising what a colossal impact the piano lessons I had with her had on me, I realised that I can be this person and role model for my young students, and try to encourage that long term passion, even if the student isn’t a prototype of Mozart. 

I believe that we should be long term oriented with what we do, so that we can put our students at the centre and help them achieve optimal outcomes. This can mean less profit, but certainly higher loyalty with clients. Best of all, having a long-term passion can be an incredibly powerful source of building self-confidence, a strong self esteem and a reason to wake up to life every single day.