Tulsa Guitar Lessons | Making Tulsa Guitar Lessons Fun
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
So now I’m going to talk about how our instructors are able to make lessons fun. So here at Curtis Music Academy in Tulsa, Oklahoma it is really, really important to us that we keep our lessons engaging, exciting and fun for the students, whether that be Tulsa guitar lessons, piano lessons or vocal lessons. We want them all to be fun and exciting and keep the students active and engaged. Now obviously this is not a problem for students who are older, even as old as you know in their teens or older adults, they do not have a problem staying focused and on task. But when you have a bunch of younger students, age three, four or five years old, even up to about 10 is really difficult sometimes to keep them occupied and to keep them on task for 30 full minutes. So we train our instructors, we teach them to be very good about making the lessons fun.
And one way that our instructors do this is starting at the very beginning where they, when their student comes up to the door, they will open the door and greet them with a big smile on their face. Because they are genuinely happy that the student is there and when a student is greeted with that much enthusiasm, it genuinely boost their mood for the whole rest of the lesson. So we found that is something that our instructors can do to make the lessons even more exciting and fun also really helps when you know your students by name and can talk to them. Getting to know your students really plays a big role in how well the lessons go and how much fun the student has while taking them. A lot of it has to do with whether or not the instructor knows them. So here when you’re taking a Tulsa guitar lesson, you will be greeted by name and you will be greeted with enthusiasm and by instructors who genuinely want to get to know the people that they are teaching.
So when you start off your Tulsa guitar lessons, you’ll go into their room and the instructor will be very excited that you were there. And then our instructor would just start to talk to you about your day. If last week you went somewhere cool, like the gathering place, they’ll probably ask you if you got to go back to the gathering place or what fun things you did this week. We found that especially with the younger students, if you ask them specific questions about their week, ask them what they’ve learned, what they found out, where they went that was fun, what did they eat for lunch, etc. All of these types of questions really start the student off at a position where they feel engaged and excited to be there because their instructor cares that they are there now. In addition to just getting to know them and being their friend, that applies to all of our students, whether they be four years old or 45 years old, our instructors will do that with everybody.
But like I mentioned, a lot of times it’s hard to keep our younger students on track. So one thing that our instructors will do is they will play games with the younger students. So we have one student, he is five years old, very, very active. He loves to run around the room. He loves to make jokes. He loves to make noise and to play random notes on the piano all of the time. So obviously it is difficult to keep him pinned down at the piano for 30 whole minutes. So rather than punishing or criticizing him for being the active five-year-old he is, our instructors will work with that and they will find a way to use that excitement to their advantage. So one way that they can do this is by playing a game where the instructor will sit at the piano and play a short little song with all of the notes they might know but play a fun song.
And while they are sitting at the piano playing that song, the student will get to dance in the room, run around, dance, jump up and down, spin in circles. And then when the music stops they have to stop dancing and sit back down at the piano and play a couple of notes for a few minutes. And then the instructor will play another fun song for 10 to 12 seconds or so and then we’ll stop. And when they stopped, the student again has to stop. And Go back to the piano. So that is a really fun game that keeps our students who are very active and like Toronto around that keeps them certainly certainly engaged as they are able to burn their energy while also learning the piano.
Another game that our instructors like to play, if their student likes to sit at the piano and just hit a bunch of keys randomly in no specific order, the instructor can also find a way to use that to their advantage. So if this student who is five years old sits down at the piano and just wants to slam around on all of the keys, what the instructor can do is they can play a song that goes along with this hitting of the keys that the student is doing. And they can play it in a similar case. So if the student is taking Tulsa piano lessons on one end to the piano and the instructor is on the other end, they can play together and the instructor is able to make it sound like a real song. So that makes the student feel very involved in their lesson. I feel like they’re actually accomplishing something or really boosts their excitement about what they are doing and we find that that really helps keep the lessons fun and exciting and interesting for all of the students.
Another way that the instructors can make the lessons fun is by teaching the students songs that they aren’t truly want to learn. So we are really big on setting goals here at Curtis Music Academy. So when a student is taking Tulsa guitar lessons, they will come to a studio where the instructors will learn songs specifically to teach that student. So if we have a student who really likes the band, oh I don’t know, the Beatles are instructor will learn some songs by the Beatles so that he or she can teach the students the songs that they actually want to learn. And this is something that we do very, very well and it keeps students interested in motivated in what they’re doing. So it is a lot more exciting when you’re learning to play a song that you really like. Then it is to play a song out of some sort of workbook that you’ve never heard of and that you don’t actually want to play for your friends and family.
So that is one way that really keeps our students interest in an active and their lessons is by teaching them specifically the things that they want to learn and not all of the boring things that most music studios will teach them. Another way that instructors can make lessons fun is by simply just talking with the student and working through the questions they might have. So at Curtis Music Academy and Tulsa, Oklahoma, when you are taking Tulsa guitar lessons, your instructor genuinely wants to be your front as well. So our instructors make an active effort to talk to our students, to make small talk with them, to chat about the day’s events and then creates an environment where the student is comfortable enough to talk to the instructor about life in general. And that is something that we found is really, really important. It’s just connecting with our students in a way that most music studios are unable to do or simply don’t do.
So we have a really big thing about making sure that our instructors, I’m not only instructors, but are also friends. And when you come once a week to hang out with someone who’s not just your instructor but your friend, you are obviously much more inclined to want to come and you’re going to be far more motivated to come and take piano lessons with us. Then you would be with someone who you don’t really enjoy to be around. So it’s really important for us that we focus on making our lessons fun through getting to know our students through being their friends and through playing games with them if they’re younger. And also they’re learning things that they specifically want to learn. Those are all things that are very important to us here.