help with teaching a peer

[Audrey]

Hello all. Well, I have a question about teaching. I am a sophomore in high school and do pretty well in music and with the saxophone, now one of my friends wishes me to teach them the tenor sax. I'd love to help- I wasn to become a music teacher- but do you have any tips for me to use while helping a friend/peer with out sounding condesending? Thanks. Oh, by the way, she's a clarinet player, if that helps with andy suggestions.
Audrey[/quote]

[otomah]

For what its worth - how you tell someone something is much more important than what you tell them.

When you notice your friend making an error in style, tell her how you were able to correct it when you made it, rather than just telling her it is wrong.

Point her to the resouces that have helped you - articles here perhaps.

Rather than telling her how to do something - use words like "try this and see how it works for you..."

Lots of encouragement from you will be a big help. Celebrate her successes.

tom

[MattC]

I've found it very effective to offer a compliment just before criticizing. This doesn't have to be cheesy either. When she plays something for you there is bound to be something good going on, at least for her level. What many teachers do is only focus on the negative and, in your position, you are correct in assumeing that it can come off condecending. So, for example say she's making good progress on her tone and she plays an etude for you but she keeps screwing up the rythm in one spot due to a different/difficult fingering. Instead of just saying "that's still not right lets do it again", you might try saying, "Hey that sounded good, your tone is starting to come along nicely and for the most part your rythm was good. I do notice that you're having dificult with this one spot so lets isolate that and see what we can do about cleaning it up."

As Ms. Poppins once said, a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.