TEACHER RANT: What Makes a Great Teacher

Again, this is Robert Estrin, livingpianos.com with an interesting question. What makes a great teacher? Great teachers are so rare in public school. I mean, I could count on the fingers of one hand the truly great teachers I had throughout all the years of schooling. And here's a good example for you. Oftentimes in a class at a certain point in the year, the teacher would say, "Class, now I'm assigning a paper, and you must do a paper, and it's got to be this length, and you have to have a bibliography of the works that you reference for this paper." And of course, everybody in the class breaks out into a cold sweat. Why? Because nobody ever actually showed us how to write a paper. They say, "Oh, make an outline," as if that's helpful, which it never seemed to be, and you wouldn't even know how to make an outline.

So, nobody ever showed us how, the actual nuts and bolts of how to approach such a thing and said, "Just do it." And that was the way it was so much of the time with homework. "Read the book," they would say. And the books sometimes, people who wrote the books weren't great teachers either, oftentimes. I encounter this so much of the time with theory books, by the way, which can be so confusing that it goes right over students' heads. If you already understand the theory, you can kind of grasp what they're going for, but in the most convoluted, complex ways that don't help at all.

Well, it was 11th grade and I'll never forget Mr. Gray. I have made reference to this man and he changed my life because he actually showed us how to craft an English composition, and to this day, I am thankful for what he showed us. And I use this in my writing. I write lots of articles and it's the way of organizing, and yes, there's a methodology which I could go into in another video if any of you are interested. It's a little off-topic from music, but not really because in this world, we all have to express ourselves in print even if it's just emails to people. You want to be concise. You want to be digestible and memorable, and organization is a part of that. Well, this is true for all teaching.

So, what is the most essential element to teaching, to really being able to convey ideas? The best way is to break things down to their component parts in a logical fashion. If you've ever had a great math teacher, you know what I'm talking about. Because when you have a math teacher who is not great, you just feel completely overwhelmed and it makes you feel stupid because you go, "Why can't I get this?" And you're looking at some mathematical equation that you can't begin to solve because nobody's giving you the tools. But if you have a great math teacher that shows you the methodology step by step of what to do, it's enlightening. Not only that, it makes doing your homework fun because you understand what you're doing. You're not just trying to grope in the dark and hope you stumble upon answers. You know exactly what to do step by step.

And that is what you look for in a teacher. And that's what you look for in any teacher in any subject. Music theory, I made reference to earlier, music theory is one of those subjects that I'm not going to mention which schools, I went to several different schools and I don't want to trash this school, but the school was guilty of constantly being above the students' comprehension. And part of it was that teachers would write books that would be used in the class and they would want to appear smarter than the students. And what's the best way to do that? Have a lot of jargon in there that's just not quite digestible so you seem smarter than your students and the students are looking to you for guidance. Help, throw me a life raft.

If you've ever felt that way with a teacher, it's not you. It's them. They are not giving you the tools you need. A great teacher makes you empowered to solve problems, whether it's how to play the piano, how to do math, how to figure out theory. In theory, for example, completely solidifying the basics, just like in math, instead of moving on before you quite get something. It's a same thing with reading music, studying pieces of music. You must have a complete grasp what you're doing, and it is so satisfying when you're anchored that way intellectually because then you can build from there. And each concept builds on the previous.

Of course, it's obvious with math how it works that way. Music is no different. And in fact, most subjects need to be addressed this way so that you can build logically from a solid foundation of understanding and have the tools and the steps needed for your daily work. And that's how you know you have a great teacher in whatever subject it is. And when you have one, you feel so grateful. It opens your mind because it's not just the little tidbits you get at those lessons. It's what you get, not only throughout the week, but in the months, and yes, the years to follow like the lessons I learned from Mr. Gray in 11th grade. I hope this is helpful for you. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. Lots of videos in the works and my Patreon viewers get special content not available anywhere else that you may enjoy as well. Thanks again, all you subscribers. You're on YouTube and on livingpianos.com. We'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/teacher-rant-what-makes-a-great-teacher/

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