Finding the right piano teacher for a student is crucial for success as a mismatch of a student and teacher can lead to a lack of enjoyment, a lack of understanding concepts and frustration which can unfortunately lead to a student quitting.
It is important to find the right piano teacher for you. If you want to learn classical piano, then a piano teacher who teaches jazz is not going to be a good fit at all. Neither is the other way around. You need a teacher who will teach you the way you want to be taught. They have to teach you what you what to learn, not you learn the way they want to teach.
Apart from having the teacher be able to teach according to your goals, you also need to have a teacher that you can get along with. I have been a piano teacher for many years, but I have also been a classroom teacher for many years as well. My experience has demonstrated to me that in the classroom setting, a student doesn’t have to get along well with the teacher or even like the teacher in order to learn, but, when it comes to piano lessons, the teacher and the student needs to get along well together or else the piano lessons and therefore the progress will be slow and difficult. I’m not really sure why this is the case, I suspect that it might be because piano lessons are one student with a teacher at a time, instead of a group setting. So if you are in the market for a piano teacher, make sure it is someone you can get along with on a personal level.
Different piano teachers can have different styles of teaching. Some piano teachers can be very explanatory while others can be big on demonstrating. Some teachers are focused on scales and technical work, while other piano teachers are more interested in teaching through pieces of music. There can also be huge variation in how much choice a piano student has in picking the music that they wish to learn.
I want to point out that none of these styles are wrong, they are just different and what suits one person won’t necessarily suit another person. There are many valid methods of teaching the piano, not just one and the end result is still the same – the student successfully learns to play the piano.
Over the years I have met many piano teachers and even though we don’t teach in exactly the same way, none of us are wrong. I would have to say that most piano teachers take their work seriously and are genuinely doing their best for their students, despite having different styles. I think that out of all of the piano teachers I have come across, there is only one that I would claim was not a good piano teacher simply because he didn’t ever have piano lessons, he just picked it up through playing by ear and then started teaching without any training or qualifications. I must clarify that I have nothing against people playing the piano by ear but I don’t think it is enough of a foundation to become a piano teacher.
Finding the right piano teacher for you may take some time but it is worth it. If you are looking for a teacher, do ask questions and be clear about what you want out of your piano lessons. Don’t rush this process. Also remember that you don’t have to just confine your search to your local area – you might find the perfect piano teacher for you is someone who teaches through platforms like Zoom and Skype and could potentially live anywhere in the world.