Teaching Cello Lessons: Setting Up Cello Classes

For a teacher, it is all important to be able to handle the students and to impart knowledge. Doing this successfully makes you a good teacher. However, there are different ways to teach the cello to an advanced student that is bound to be different from your techniques for a beginner student. But before you even set out to teach as a private cello teacher, you need to put some rules in place and make some preparations. For generic information on the cello, you can find great articles at http://cellolessonssingapore.com/.

Teaching space

You can find some students who will open their homes to you for teaching them. But in general, such students would expect you to give them solo lessons. They would pay for your time, but are you going to build a proper business this way? It really depends on you how many students you want to have at one time. If you want to teach more than one student at a time and give group lessons, you will have to make arrangements for a teaching space. This probably means your home. Make sure that your roommates or family members don’t disturb you during the duration of the lesson. If you have children, make arrangements for their care and don’t allow them to disturb your classes.

Fee structure

You will need to do some research on this subject. Ask around and find out exactly how much other teachers charge for cello lessons. At the same time, find out how experienced these teachers are so you can understand what the appropriate fees for your own lessons should be. Since you are just starting out as a beginner teacher, you can offer discount rates for a certain period of time. If you are travelling to your students’ homes, include the travelling expenses in your fee structure. Be aware that overpricing or underpricing your services might lead to disastrous results in the long run.

Lesson preparation

One important thing that anyone giving cello music lessons must keep in mind is that you need to stay far ahead of the students. This means putting in preparation for the next lessons well in advance if you want to have some sort of structure to your teaching. You could even prepare a quarterly lesson structure to follow, though you have to keep in mind that as far as the cello is concerned, some students will be quick to learn while others will take their time. Your lessons will have to make allowances for that.

Basic rules

Freelance teachers often face problems with their students because of a laissez-faire attitude. One problem a teacher often faces is being late for lessons or being absent from lessons on a regular basis without informing you in advance. Another major problem faced is that students might not pay on time, or miss payments altogether. Then there are those students who don’t practice and then the entire class lags behind to accommodate them. To avoid all these problems, hand out some basic rules to students when they join. Gently remind them if they mess up, but don’t allow them to break the rules. If they would not do it in their workplace or school, they shouldn’t do so with you either!

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