Members Christopher Kai Posted September 30, 2008 Members Posted September 30, 2008 The place I teach at is looking at doing group lessons and they've asked me to lead them. AAAAAAAAGH! Here are my initial questions. - How long do group lessons go on?- What is a good group size?- How much are the lessons?- Is there any group guitar curriculum you recommend?- How does teaching differ from private to group? TIA!
Members gennation Posted September 30, 2008 Members Posted September 30, 2008 I did this for about a year an a half a few years ago. An hour to an hour and a half is good. 4-5 students works very nice at first. Ay more and you might want an assistant to help. Lessons would cost one person the usual fee that they would pay taking private lessons, so at 4 students it would be 4 times the rate of one student. Here's my experienced advice... If you're players are disparate in their abilities, the best thing you can do here is try to avoid teaching things that some people can't do. IOW, you can teach theory, guitar luithery, forms, methods, etc...etc...these are all things that could be taught from an "understanding" point of view, and if somebody doesn't get it they just need a bit more info to understand it. But if you are teaching techniques to these disparate players you may have have issues teaching someone who can hardly play a C chord how to sweep pick, and you might bore the player who can sweep by showing how to play a C chord for the first time. These are just my observations, but from experience. The class I taught was primarily a theory class, but of course it included examples. Some players I had to do private lessons with due to their playing ability but they all did fine together as a class when it came to understanding theory. Since all the people in the class were guitarists (with the exception of one mandolin player) I also took a class day here and there to work on some specific exercises and techniques, but I pretty much had to work with one, then move to the next, then to the next, etc...since they where all at different levels. It worked occasionally but would be difficult to do every week. I think you'd lose people quickly. I see this same idea used at different seminars I go to also, where they presenter brings material and almost lectures, then you take the material and lecture home and work it. This way he can move through the material and it's up to you/me to absorb it and use it. So the more you can take the physical side of things out of the curriculum the more success you might have. Hope that made sense.
Members UnderTheGroove Posted October 1, 2008 Members Posted October 1, 2008 My thoughts are pretty similar to what gennation said. 60 to 90 minutes is a good amount of time for a group class. The one exception would be that usually students will pay less for group lessons than they would for individual lessons. That is the incentive for them to take a class. The instructor pay should be quite a bit higher than the pay for a one-on-one lesson. One tip is to give side challenges to any player who are more advanced so you can assist anyone who is struggling to keep up. For example: if you are learning to play a major scale pattern, ask the advanced player(s) to try and play it using thirds while you help other students.
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