Why A Lot Of Guitar Teachers Struggle To Help Their Students Fix Their Musical Problems

By solving the problems of your guitar students, you help them gain confidence and motivation to improve. This ultimately inspires them to become better players. Without being able to do this, your students are more likely to make slow progress or even quit.

Many guitar teachers have a hard time solving the problems of their students. This happens for 3 main reasons. Here are these reasons (plus how you can avoid them to help your students):

Reason 1: They Focus On The Symptoms Rather Than The Root Causes

It’s common for many guitar teachers to focus on a student’s symptoms rather than eliminating the root causes to their problems. This occurs frequently when they only deal with the surface problems their students talk about. For instance: when a guitar student has problems improvising creatively, teachers commonly give them more licks or scales to learn instead of helping them develop skills that improve their improvising ability (like aural skills, music theory or fretboard visualization).

Reason 2: They Don’t Train Their Students Enough

Your guitar students make the most progress in their playing in between lessons (NOT during them). Most teachers simply tell their students what to do and send them home. They don’t make sure the students do things correctly right in the lesson. This causes students to practice things incorrectly at home (or to not practice at all).

Avoid this by showing your students how to practice during their lesson AND watching them practice it. When you see how they practice it, you have the opportunity to correct any mistakes or bad habits in their playing. This gives them the ability to practice correctly at home and make much faster progress.

Reason 3: They Aren’t Able To Recognize The Type Of Student They Are Working With

Students who are tough minded are able to take positive pressure from you as a teacher and work on fixing issues on their own (even when the practice is boring). Students who have a weaker mindset need to boosts in their confidence every time they succeed. Guitar teachers who can’t recognize which student they are working with usually end up pushing a weaker minded student too hard or a strong-minded student not hard enough. Either way, the student doesn’t progress as much as they should be. Make sure to be aware of which type of student you are teaching at all times.

Learn more info about helping your students fix their musical problems by studying this guitar teacher training column.