Bill Powelson's
School of Drums
STEP #1 SELF ASSESSMENT
SELF ASSESSMENT
ASSESSING AND ACQUIRING THE BEST 'TEACHING' TRAITS:
Do you have what it takes to become a great teacher?
Can you acquire those traits?
Before embarking on any new career, including a career
as a drum instructor, it might be most wise to do a
critical self assessment of your own inner qualities, natural
tendencies, and God given talents toward the job at hand.
Get ready to jump these first 'EASY' hurdles . . .
- A. Are you a working professional? Have you played
in several bands for money? To be totally honest,
It will be hard to gain credibility
as a teacher, if you are short on experience yourself.
BUT, DON'T LET THAT DISCOURAGE YOU! You can begin teaching
anyway! You will just need to contain your teaching activities
to total beginners for awhile. With time, you will hopefully
gain the needed onstage experience.
- B. Do you enjoy helping and working with adolescents
between the ages of 8 and 14?
You will quickly discover that
the bulk of your students will be in this age group, and most
are easy and fun to teach. If you are one who can not tolerate
younger, different, tastes in music, it could pose
problems.
As teachers, we must often do the bending and the flexing,
into the students frame of mind. It's best to accept whatever
music styles they like, and teach them what they want to learn.
We really shouldn't ever try to impose too many of our own musical
tastes onto our students.
Remember! We're teaching an ART form. Art and beauty are both often individually
opinionated assessments that occur within the
eye (or ear) of the beholder.
Most art forms, artists, and creative minds are filled with
a certain amount of artistic rebellion and defiance. The most 'creative'
minds are often the most difficult to teach and/or tolerate. Most
true artists will have a natural tendency to argue with tradition,
imagine freely, innovate freely,
and re-invent the wheel from their own perspective.
We, as teachers, if we are wise . . .
should always allow our students that creative freedom with as few restraints as possible.
It goes with the teaching territory. We teachers need to gain the ability
to recognize raw talent, innovative imagination, and the other
traits our students may possess. We need to HELP AND ENCOURAGE our students
grow in all their own natural directions they are inherently inclined. Our job
isn't to shape them into clones of ourselves. Our job
is to help and guide them in the directions they are
most inclined to follow. We should avoid dictating our tastes and
biased opinions onto the student. We should encourage our students
to follow their own paths, as much as our own rationalities will allow.
In the mind of a youngster, if we try to saddle them with too
many of our tastes and opinions, it will only brand us as old.
The student will probably be gone in a
flash, and we will have lost our opportunity to help them grow
in their own directions. It can be like walking a tightwire
at times, but it's wise to often err in favor of the students
opinion. This is especially true if we are observing the
embryo of great talent within the student.
Sometimes it's hard for an older person to accept the
thrashing, grinding, explosive noises that kids may call
'their own' music, but if we're wise, we adapt, and we help them
learn to play what they love. The objective is to keep them
coming back for more . . . every week! Hopefully, after some
time and coaxing, and with a little luck, we may even entice them
to broaden their musical horizons a little more towards our own.
- C. Do you possess the communicating skills necessary,
to teach others? We teachers all tend to be especially
talkative and expressive. I think it is one of the more
important qualities of a good teacher. The 'silent types'
aren't normally 'great teacher' material. If you are a
'silent type' . . . get out of that shell and learn to
communicate . . . teaching may be just the vehicle you
need to accomplish that end.
Teaching music isn't as difficult as you might think
at first. Most students don't give a hoot about dry, boring,
and complex theories. They simply want to be shown how to
play like YOU play, and they want to be shown in the shortest
possible time, how to play 'THEIR OWN' music. Give them what
they want in large doses, and they will usually follow you
to the end of the earth. Save the dry, boring (ie; Note-Value
and Rudiment ) stuff for later.
Once you have turned the student into a budding pro, it'll
be easy to take them into the dry, boring stuff. A lot of the
(would be) dry, boring material in my course has already been sugar-coated, anyway.
FOR EXAMPLE: Studying Note-Values as they appear in lesson
#4
isn't at all necessary. They'll learn all that material
in a much more 'fun' way as they study the Note-value FILLS.
It's the same knowledge, taught from a much more palatable and painless perspective.
- D. ATTITUDES ABOUT DISCIPLINE: I personally don't
believe in strict discipline! I feel it is the instructors job
to keep the student fired-up! If the students discover the
true thrills of playing, strict-discipline is rarely ever necessary.
Leave all that garbage for the Marines! Be on a best-friend
basis with all your students, and they'll stay with you forever.
I never scold or discipline a student unless
they are completely out of line, and testing my authority.
I find, when dealing with young students one on one . . .
discipline is only rarely necessary. Even then,
about all that is ever needed might be a 'stern look' and the
threat that they may be dropped from the already over-loaded
schedule.
*** FOCUS ON FUN ***
I feel the focus should ALWAYS be on fun! We must help
a student discover the thrill of jamming with music early on.
If we do that much as instructors, everything else will, (or
should), occur naturally within the student. That is, 'IF' the student
is destined to ever become a drummer.
Still, there are times when we must 'roll with'
the hyper-activity of some frantic 10 year olds. It goes with
the gig.
IT IS EASY TO TEACH FUN!
Think about it! What was the thing that made us stick
with drums? It was the music wasn't it?. Am I right or wrong?
We played because it was FUN. Maybe we didn't know what we were
doing at the time, but it was just plain fun. So, we continued
to do it until one day we became really good at it, and gradually
it all began to make sense.
Really, we teachers are no more than glorified
tour guides. Our job is to keep pointing the student towards
FUN, new directions. Their own finesse and (disciplined) polish
will occur in a totally natural way without force or threat by
keeping this in mind.
If we don't succeed in making them love to play . . . no
amount of discipline will cause ANY measurable improvement anyway.
PATIENCE: Some students will try your patience
to the limit. This also goes with the gig. There are those who
can't clap both hands together without hurting themselves, breaking
furniture, and slapping you in the face at the same time. If
this is the case . . . then we must patiently and calmly teach
them to clap before we do anything else (from a safe distance,
haha.) If the student eventually shows some improvement then
we move to the next step very slowly, (and cautiously.)
............................................................................
A SPECIAL NOTE ON HYPER-ACTIVITY AND A.D.D.:
Many kids (and adults) suffer from these conditions. I've found that
music (and drumming in particular) can often offer tremendous help.
I say this after teaching literally hundreds of children (and adults) who were suffering with those
difficult afflictions.
There's something about 'focusing deeply' (as we must do
when drumming), that helps people LEARN to focus. With drumming,
they're having fun as they focus, and the more they focus, the
better they become at focusing. Very often, the hyper-activity
and the A.D.D. problems may tend to clear-up, as the students
gradually gain mastery of their instrument.
..............................................................................
TEACHING IS THE BEST TEACHER!
So, after assessing all your own traits, it comes down
to a simple shocking fact! You don't have to be a GREAT drummer
to become a GREAT teacher. It HELPS if you are a great drummer,
but that isn't a prerequisite. On the other side of the coin,
TEACHING will help you become that GREAT drummer YOU want to be.
That may be the BEST part of all this. TEACHING IS THE BEST TEACHER.
It isn't even necessary that you be a great reader or
writer of musical notation when you begin teaching. Most students
just want to learn to do what you do. Show them the quickest,
simplest, most thorough, most fun, way to do that, and those students will stay
with you always.
Reading and writing notation is secondary to the whole
process too. Your own skills will improve dramatically as you get paid
to do it every day. I have special lessons that will help here.
See TD lessons #13 and #14 in the TD Archives, (ie; Lesson Menu #4.)
TADA! THE HOMESTUDY COURSE TO THE RESCUE . . .
Also, this is where my course enters the picture. It has
been developed over a lifetime of trial & error. I'm convinced
it offers the absolute quickest, simplest, most fun, route towards producing
a working, jamming, creative drummer of professional ability.
The hard part has been pre-designed for you already. Simply
print and teach my lessons one-at-a-time to your own students.
The real question is . . . can you patiently go to
SQUARE ONE and STAY THERE however long it may be necessary
to teach the student? Can you assess the students learning
speed then progress at a pace that will be both comfortable
and productive for each individual student? Some students
may need 6-weeks on just one lesson, while others may swallow
6-lessons whole, within the first 15-minutes. We teachers
must gauge the students learning speed and then search for ways
to keep them feeling productive, and confident. Confidence
is half the game, no matter what we do. Learn to instill
it, and then continuously instill it, into every student. That's
really what the job is all about!
If you feel you can do all these things, then my guess is you will
become a great teacher and you will learn all the other finer
details as you go.
................................
REWARDS & PITFALLS:
A career as a drum instructor is filled with many rewards
and benefits. There are also a few pitfalls you may not be expecting.
*** REWARDS ***
Besides the most obvious reward of helping someone
else into a career that you have both loved and enjoyed,
there are other very nice benefits built into this profession.
- A. Money: This profession pays very well here in
America . Though the rates vary from one geographic location
to another, the current average is between $25 to $50+ per hour.
You can make a nice amount of money just seeing 15 or 20 students
per week. The lessons are usually 30 minutes each, but this still
equates to being a nice part-time job . . . And, it is fun!
Teachers in foreign countries will find the pay scale different,
but I'm betting that in most areas on earth, teaching will
pay relatively well . . . in any currency. Call around your
locality and see what others are charging. If you do not
find a drum teacher in your area, that's the best news of all.
It means you can probably charge as much as you want to charge.
- B. Sleep til noon! I love this part! We can play
our gigs until 2:00 am, sleep-in and still have time to teach 3
or 4 hours in the afternoon. You will discover that most of
the students attend school until 2 or 4 pm. They like their
drum lessons after school, between 2:30 and 7:30 pm. This
is a 'dream schedule' and may have been one of the main
attractions for me in the beginning. It is the perfect job
for night owls and nocturnal types.
- C. Get paid to learn: This is unquestionably
the very best part. There is something about going over the
basics with student after student. We often learn more than
the students. Questions often arise that force us to crack
the books and bring the truth back to the students. Again,
we benefit from this AS MUCH, OR MORE than they do, while getting
paid to do it.
*** PITFALLS ***
- A. NO-SHOW STUDENTS: It goes with the gig!
You will hear every excuse in the book, from: "Johnny came
home from school with the flu" . . . to . . . "Freddy fell
and broke his arm this morning". Most often there is no
excuse at all. Sometimes they just don't show up!!!!
This can be very distressing if you don't handle it
correctly. I make it known from the beginning, the lessons are
paid in advance, and the full lesson amount will be forfeited if
I do not receive 24 hour notice of cancellation. It works!
If they don't show . . . I Take a break, and get paid anyway.
They won't do it more than once or twice. Even if they
do . . . WHO CARES? It is fine with me! I don't mind being paid
to sip coffee, and flirt with the waitress in the restaurant
across the street. How about you?
NO-SHOWS can become a blessing when handled correctly.
- B. NO BENEFITS: You will be self employed.
This means no paid vacations, no sick leave, no bonuses,
no retirement benefits, or any of the usual 'real job' amenities.
We musicians don't receive those benefits from our night
gigs either! It can be a real problem for some folks, but
I love the freedom I have, being totally self-employed.
.....................................
TEACHING AND 'BABY STEPS':
HOW TO 'THINK LIKE A TEACHER':
To teach means that we must originally assume the
student knows nothing.
To get a real idea, imagine the
following scenario . . .
Assume you are faced with the task of teaching someone how
to put on their shirt, and they have never seen a shirt before.
- Where do you start?
- What do you say?
- Do you simply tell them to stick their arm through
the sleeve?
NO!
First, you must show them WHERE the sleeve is and
WHAT it is, then you explain everything else in detailed baby steps,
one simple fact at a time.
That's what teaching is all about. Learn to do it with every
lesson and you'll do just fine.
Try to keep this simple principle (above) in mind as you teach
every drum lesson. This perspective alone, is the secret to becoming
a good teacher.
...............................................
Now, we'll learn a little something about planting the seed
from which all drummers grow. This is square-one and it should become your
number #1 priority with EVERY beginning student. (You might also discover
that some students who 'think' they are advanced may need it too.)
Planting the Drummer Seed.
International copyright secured @ Bill Powelson 1994 all rights reserved.
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