Guitar Lessons Tulsa | Encouraging Your Students

This content was created for Curtis Music Academy

 

And this edition of the Curtis Music Academy Podcast, I wanted to talk about this topic of encouraging your student positive, encouraging and encouragement for your student as you’re giving lessons. So, without further ado, I love giving this podcast. I love talking about these topics. They really encourage me, not only do I know that they’re encouraging you as well. So without further ado, encouraging your student, encouraging your student is super, super important. When giving guitar lessons Tulsa, it’s super important when now given lessons, it’s super important. And one of the key, uh, factors into encouraging your student is knowing how to encourage them. 

 

That starts by listening to the student, listening to them in the beginning of the lesson, kind of how, asking them how they’re doing and then listening to their responses, seeing where they’re at with their responses, maybe how their day is going, maybe how they’re week has gone, how the month has gone and have the last 30 minutes has gone. You know, I’m listening to the students paramount in starting the process of understanding them and then camp, being able to give that encouragement. So listening is key. So we want to listen to their emotions, we want to listen to their responses, we want to listen to their body language. And so this is going to be very helpful whenever we tried to, which will in turn give us a good grounds as to where they’re at. 

 

When listening, it’s, it’s important that we exhibit good body language as well. And not just an inclined ear but really, you know, responding with a head nod or head shake or a response back, some type of response back. So we want to listen first and then reply with the like a response of yes, I understand, I can see where you’re coming from in the guitar lessons Tulsa. Words that inclined that you are paying attention. Not only are you paying attention and listening, but you are actively engaging in the conversation.

 

And so my second point with this listening should lead to a foundation of understanding. When we listen, we open deep the, the doors of our ears, the doors of our mind or harder eyes to see and to understand a different perspective. So by listening to the student through our body language, through our emotions and excitement and energy, and through our facial expressions, you know, it’ll, we begin to understand more of where they’re coming from. During guitar lessons Tulsa, we’re fully engaged. We’re engaged physically, mentally, emotionally into what the student is saying and how they’re, how their week has gone, how their day has gone, how the last hour or 30 minutes has been for them and their day, and how that will affect the lesson. 

 

Inevitably, you know, we’re human beings and so we have, we’re a three part being a soul spirit body. And because we have those three aspects that they’re dimensions of ourselves, they all affect our everyday physical life. And so it’s important to be observant and listening to student. We want to listen to understand understanding is the key to building knowledge. And so, and knowing how to encourage. So we want to understand what the student is saying, where they’re coming from, understand that they might. While guitar lessons Tulsa are lengthy and thorough, it might’ve been tough for them to even come into the lesson and wanting to maybe even cancel on us. Maybe even just not show up at all without even letting us know, maybe quitting, which is by far the worst case scenario scenario. We don’t want them to do that so we want to continuously providing them with ACC, encouraging environment and environment where they want to be. 

 

So understanding the student, understanding them and then responding as well to their, to what they’re saying and doing in a positive and uplifting way. One of my favorite books is called the art of influencing and encouraging others. There’s another book by Dale Carnegie and it is called how to win. People had influenced people at win friends and influence others or people and in that book he talks about using positive reinforcement as a means to get someone to do something that you’re wanting or get something, someone to do, something that they’re wanting. It’s important that we become positive leaders in the midst of your guitar lessons Tulsa, positive reinforcers, whether or not you believe it or not, your student is looking up to you, they’re looking up to you for coaching. You are their coach, you are their instructor and you instruct them, you give them instructions and so we do that after understanding where they’re coming from, giving, responding. 

 

We want to respond in an understanding way that lets them know that you heard what they said and that you fully can you see that their their perspective or maybe respond with a question, you know we want to respond in a positive way that is uplifting and encouraging, not making them feel like we’re not listening or we don’t care or I have something better to do right now. It could be doing a hundred and things instead of listening to you talk about something negative going on in your life. We want to be a positive listener, a good listener and a positive responder. And so we want to respond in love or in encouragement, something that is going to build them up and what builds people up, complimenting them, giving them feedback that is is there with the intent to build them up, not to make them feel worse or down or will hinder them in some way or make them feel horrible about themselves. 

 

Or what they did. And so say you’re trying to teach guitar and you’re trying to teach this concept and they’re just not getting it. Maybe it’s a chord that they’re trying to play in. They’re just not getting it. Instead of saying, man, you know, I don’t know if this is going to work for you. I don’t know if Qatar’s good. You can’t seem to get this cord. You probably have an trouble with other chords. Instead of saying that using some positive encouragement, man, you know, or girl, you know, you’re going to get it. Let’s try again. Let’s do it one more time. This time. Let’s do it slower or this time. Let’s break away from this cord and uh, come back to it. Cause I know you’re going to rock it next time. You know, positive, encourage inc encouragement, positive, which gives us good momentum in the lesson. 

 

And so positivity will trump negativity. We don’t need negativity in our guitar lessons Tulsa. We don’t need negativity at all. And so negativity actually kills creativity. And so we want to be as positive as we can. Understanding. That doesn’t mean you know, be happy about every single thing, you know we’re human beings, but doing your best to be encouraging and uplifting and everything we say and do and that in turn will build others up around us and we’ll give them something to look up to, will cause us to have even more equity with them when it comes to listening to what we have to say or you know, it’s adding to your credibility as an instructor. It’s adding to your leadership ability, your influence with your student and the more influence you have with your student, the more success I believe you can have with your student. 

 

And so there’ll be more apt to listening to what you have to say to believe in you when you are, you know with them and you’re listening to maybe something that happened that day and you want to encourage them and you have something insightful to say. And even when it is time to give maybe some constructive criticism or some not so tasteful feedback, there’s a method to that that we can also use as well. And it’s the sandwich method of giving positive feedback. So whenever giving positive feedback, we want to do these three things. 

 

We want to encourage with something positive that we like and love about them to the second or the meat of the sandwich. We want to say what they could improve on. And then lastly, rapid back with that third layer, how to layer, saying, you know what you’re going to do? Great. You’re going to get over this because you’re sticking to your guitar lessons Tulsa. You’re going to move on and you’re going to be awesome because you are awesome. So we can use our sandwich method to really help us encourage positively, the students that we have this week, next week, and the times after this. Thank you so much. This is the Curtis Music Academy podcast.