I have been teaching the piano for many years and I must say that I have enjoyed the journey so far. It has been a pleasure and a priveledge to teach and help the hundreds that I have encountered, to learn to play the piano. If you follow my blog you would already be aware that I have many tales to tell and I have many, many wonderful memories. Spanning in age range from 5 to 85, all of them have brought me some level of enjoyment.
Maybe because I’m not considered young anymore, but I must say that teaching seniors is the best of all. It would be very easy to say this when I am writing this because the target audience are seniors. I do assure you that this is exactly what I think.
When I am teaching someone who is of retirement age or beyond, they are easy to teach because they know what their reasons are. Younger people that have lessons are frequently not as committed as an older person. Kids especially start taking piano lessons because they may have been talked into it or told by their parents that they must take piano lessons, or even because it sounded like a good idea at the time. It is only the few kids, like me, that realize that playing the piano is important to them and then become dedicated and disciplined to furthering their skill.
Older people not only have worked out why they want to learn to play the piano, they already come with an understanding that learning to play is a process and it takes sustained effort and practice over months and years, rather than days and weeks. This makes their piano lessons enjoyable for me as their teacher because I don’t need to encourage them to be patient with learning or coaxing them to practice – it already happens.
Probably my favorite part of teaching older adults is that the lessons feel relaxed and pleasant. Sometimes, there is time for cup of tea or coffee and a chat afterwards, where conversation can often go beyond the topic of music. Not that these occasions happen all the time, but they do happen for me on a semi-regular basis and they are always very enjoyable.
The main reason why I am sharing this is because I have heard from some seniors that they don’t want to waste a piano teachers’ time. From the perspective of a piano teacher, I find working with older adults to be quite delightful and certainly worth my time. If you are considering piano lessons from a teacher, rest assured you will not be wasting their time but probably giving them an enjoyable experience.