A Teacher Lineage - Creating a Lineage Chart

Create a useful chart to help understand your teaching or teacher's lineage

In this new video, Prof. Fitzpatrick shows you how to create a "lineage" chart to help you understand where your teacher's (or your) teaching style comes from.

Released on March 11, 2026

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DISCLAIMER: The views and the opinions expressed in this video are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Virtual Sheet Music and its employees.

Video Transcription

So, a former student recently showed my delay teacher lineage video to her class, and they loved it.

Then, using the information in the video, she drew a chart on the board that showed her own teacher lineage.

Seeing this, the class thought it would add a lot if an idea like that could somehow be shared as well.

Well a few days later, the former student told me what had been said and I thought it was a good idea. But the difficulty was in how to implement it.

That's when I decided to just put a model in this video.

So start by putting your name at the top, of course.

And underneath, draw an arrow or simply a line leading to the name of your teacher.

Then at your next lesson, ask your teacher who they studied with, that is, if they haven't told you already. And place that name where it makes sense to you. Oh yes, if you've had more than one teacher, organize the arrows and place their names in a way that makes sense to you.

Now be a detective and find out who they studied with by using whatever tools you have available.

You know, these days the internet makes this kind of research much easier than it was before.

So as you go deeper and find out who those teachers were, what begins to appear is not just a bunch of names.

It's a chart that can lead you to understanding where some of the ideas you used to play in practice came from.

As we all know, there's nothing new under the sun.

So with that in mind, please feel free to share what you discover after watching these videos in the comments below.

So Chloe, thank you for letting me know about your class viewing the video and the idea they got when they saw your lineage on the board.

All of this reminded me about why I decided to create this series in the first place.

That, looking back, can be the best way to move forward.
Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com
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