Guitar Lessons Tulsa | Being a Planner
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
So today I’m going to be talking about the topic of planning your guitar lessons, and the reasons that I love and thoroughly enjoy teaching guitar lessons Tulsa at Curtis Music Academy and also planning the guitar lessons before I ever get to the academy. So the reason I love planning my guitar lessons Tulsa, at Curtis Academy is just because personally I always enjoyed planning. I see it as kind of a game, a problem that I can solve. When I’m giving or have a student at Curse Music Academy, I get to ask that student questions. You know, they have goals. The student also has a desires, needs, areas of improvement that they want to improve in. They have dreams, they have aspirations, they have, you know, vision for themselves a lot of times as a, as a young, beginner.
And so I, I see it as a privilege to acquire a student and to be able to take them from where they are to where they want to be. And so, when I am giving guitar lessons Tulsa, before I ever give the guitar lesson, I first have to plan it. And so that pre planning process for me looks like me assessing where I think they are based on the information that I am given of that student. And so with that student, I will learn basic information about the student before I ever get to actually meet them. And so the information that I will typically be given upon receiving a student is their first name, their age, and their skill level. And that’s about it. That’s about all the information that I have at my disposal when I first acquire a new student and before they have their first dollar lesson with me.
And so from there I kind of January, I kind of formulate a, just a 30 minute plan to figure out more of their goals, to more accurately figure out what they want to accomplish. Also, one of my questions, which is kind of funny question, is, you know, what’s their favorite snack? I’m a big, I’m a big, I’m kinda big on just like having fun and enjoying and making the student laugh a little bit. And so whenever they hear that question, you know, in the lesson, Hey, what’s your favorite snack? They kind of chuck a little, a little bit and they smile and they laugh and it, it’s great. And I each time I love doing that for the student because it just makes them view this, these guitar lessons Tulsa as fun automatically.
And so, so I’ve told you, you know, I get three basically three details about the student, which is their name, their age, and where their skill level is at. So with that information, I will formulate a 30 minute plan for the first lesson of where they were. I think that lesson will go, what I need to know, what I want to know. Also, you know what I want them to do. So an objective by the end of the lesson and then I go about how I break down that lesson to them, in that lesson. Lastly, I will cover most of the basics just to kind of get a feel for what, you know, what solid, what isn’t solid in there knowledge.
And so when I’m planning my lesson, I will open up my Trello board, which is where I store all of my students’ names, ages and start date as well as how long their lesson is and that it’s at Curtis Academy. And so that’s a start. That’s kind of how I initially start the planning process with them. So I have their in basic information, I go to my Trello board, I plug in when they’re scheduled to have a lesson with me for a dollar. And then I will have a general, a general plan, which is just outlines what they’re, what the objective of the lesson is and then the plan for that lesson. So a, typically I will just have three steps to this point, which is, first it’s, it’s categorized under lesson and then I will have, one, two, three under that title lesson.
And these are three points that I will hit and they’re detailed instruction and it’s going to be detailed explanation as well. And the method that I use for these one two and three steps is the edge method. The edge method is taken from boy scouts and it stands for explain, demonstrate, guide and enable. I’m going to say it one more time. Explain, demonstrate, guide and enable. And so this method is really helpful because it hits all of the learner, all of the ways that we learn, you know, auditory, it hits the tactile and it also hits The v a visual learner as well. And so these three steps, I’ll just fill them in with three questions that I have for them. One question would be, you know, where do you want your guitar skills to be a year from now?
My second question would be who are your top three musical influences and why is that reason? And my third question would be, what is your all time favorite snack and why? And so they really loved that. Third Question. A lot of times I will have a fourth point and a fifth point, which really are just two areas that I’ll be teaching in such as the fourth point being anatomy. And then the fifth point being the g and the C major chord. So that is really what a first lesson looks like for me. And then I’ll have kind of an end title, which will just, I have four points for that on the first lesson, which is 0.1 specific practice tips that I give them to check for understanding student understanding.
That is three, the students’ response to their understanding. And then for the close and the close is where we will, you know, we have a script for that and we will close the student a, which is basically a sales script to kind of help them get started with guitar lessons Tulsa and into our system so that we can begin helping them become a master and an incredible musician. And then lastly on this Trello board, I have action items as a title and this is where I will put anything that I need to do as their instructor before the lesson begins, whether that’s a song sheets, print offs of the songs that we’re going to be learning, core charts, blank chord charts that is, any materials needed before the lesson begins. And so this is very helpful to way to stay organized.
And there’s slots upon this Trello board where I can just input necessary data such as the time they started the date or the date that they started there in the goal where we left off in the last lesson. Also the lesson type, whether it was guitar, you know, piano or guitar lessons Tuls, and then the length of time that their lesson will be. And so this is one of the ways that I organize my guitar lessons Tulsa. This is such an enjoyable process for me. I will spend two hours just planning and just having fun with knowing what we’re gonna do upon your first lesson. And so enjoy the next podcast.