We have talked about this before, but it is so important to keep sharing this part of the overall story of music education and our place in the community. We work extremely hard to make sure that the people on our team are a part of the team for so many reasons. They’ve got to be not just highly capable musicians (that should be a given). They’ve got to be great people. This means they are relational, they are people of character, they are sensitive, compassionate, great listeners—the kind of people you will connect with! To this end, we often have people that want to do a trial lesson to see if their teacher is “a fit,” and that’s fine, we are happy to do a one-time lesson, but we don’t do free trials because our teachers are professionals and are rates are super affordable so they should be paid for their time.

But you know what, people end up enrolling anyways because they always love our teachers. But another important factor besides this “fit” and being a capable musician, which you often won’t find elsewhere, is that you need a teacher that understand what music education is, how people learn music, and what they need to learn (this is the pedagogy of music for a technical term). Lots of people play. Lots of people teach. Too many don’t understand how to teach well and what to teach—and those are major areas of our focus.

We are extremely committed to deeply impactful, relational, and effective teaching at TIA. All our teachers observe the director or co-director and at least a few other team members in our teaching, we constantly talk about key components of great teaching, and when we can, we observe our team members teaching as well and offer feedback. Teaching isn’t just something we do, it is who we are.

Questions about these things? Drop us a line! SD is always happy to set up a time to chat about them!