The Secret to Building Confidence in Your Private Teaching

🍂 Fall is here - yay! 🍁It’s that time of year when everyone gets back into their academic routines, including private teachers. It’s a time of transition for everyone, whether you’ve spent the last few months recruiting and starting your studio from scratch, or you are already ramped up and managing new schedules for you and your students.

🥁 Perhaps you are still rallying band directors who are already in the throes of their busy marching band season and have limited time to reply to emails. Or maybe you are putting all of your energy into curriculum and recital planning for the months ahead. Wherever you are in your private teaching journey, it’s never too late (or too early) to spend some time reflecting on how you can serve every student who crosses your path. 

⛔ Maybe you’ve hit some roadblocks in connecting with a student in the past, or you are just feeling those beginning-of-the-year butterflies at the thought of interacting with 50 teenagers this week. Trust me, I’d be panicking, too (even with my PSL in hand and a wistful smile accepting the fact that we began this school year during Mercury Retrograde…yes, I went there).

😊 I have to remind myself that no matter how intimidated I am by starting off the year, my students are always WAY more nervous and uncertain than I am, even if they try to hide it. You’re the expert–and the adult–in the room, so you get to establish both the climate and the culture of your studio. YOU get to set the tone with every individual student and create the vibe you want your studio to have–one interaction at a time. The real secret to building confidence in your private teaching is by building meaningful relationships.

💯 We all want to establish rapport with our students to create a bond and build lasting, trusting, meaning-filled relationships. But let’s face it – it can be daunting. Most humans want to go from point A to point B, like RIGHT NOW, rather than taking time to meander from A to F to S back to C and finally come around to Q, V, Z, and finally arrive at B. Relationships are ongoing, living things that are never finite, so our process for confidently building rapport with students should be no different.

📜 A Report on Rapport: First Impressions

In order to build confidence as a private teacher, your relationships must come first. Whether you’re interacting with music professionals and colleagues, or parents and students, first impressions are REAL. It’s human nature to make a snap judgment about a person when we first meet them. This isn’t to say people can’t also be accepting and open upon first meet-cute, but you are running a small business as a private music teacher, so you have to walk in the room with your business boss hat on every day. 

If you treat everything like it’s an interview, you’ll likely always project the most professional and confident version of yourself. That means putting some thought into the details–everything from how you choose to dress to how you keep the conversation going by showing an interest in the other person more than an interest in talking about yourself and your accomplishments. Establishing rapport begins with the first lesson. You are in total control of how the interaction goes, which is a great amount of responsibility! Just a reminder, though–it’s OK if you’re shaking in your boots a bit. That’s human nature, too. 

Our fear of judgment from others is so great that we are always analyzing our interactions based on how well we bantered with someone or how positive the vibe was during that first convo. Don’t feel like you have much in common with a middle schooler? They’re in the same boat! But as the teacher and the adult in the room, you’re the one with the power. Dig deep for that 13-year-old energy and learn what the “thing” is for your individual students. You’d be surprised how meaningful a relatable comment or teaching analogy is when they’re struggling to grasp a musical concept. It’s both impressive and surprising when an adult does take the time to get on their level, so you’ll earn their respect and appreciation by demonstrating that you care about their interests.

🐝 Just beeee yourself 

Genuineness and authenticity are also fundamental to building meaningful relationships. You may feel like your “interview mode” is kind of robotic, stifled, or limited in expression. It makes sense to play it safe when you’re talking with a student for the first time, but it’s also okay to be a little goofy, flamboyant, or show some of your vulnerable human side, too. No one wants to work with someone who comes across as fake or disingenuous. It also ruins the foundation for building trust that you so desperately want in your relationships with your students.

In order to tap into your own genuineness, you have to be honest with yourself about who you are, what you want, and what your goals are. This begins with your teaching philosophy, which can be established long before you even meet a prospective student. If you truly know why you teach, you will more confidently infuse your authentic self into all that you do. 

As you approach students, if something feels forced or not true to who you really are, then take a step back and reflect on the situation. Where did these beliefs come from? If they aren’t things you feel are authentic to you, whose ideas are they to begin with? What shaped your earliest memories of what and why you should do something a certain way (especially as it pertains to teaching and teacher-student relationships)? Ask yourself the tough questions, and take the time to articulate your experiences, even if it’s hard to do. The work you put into building a solid philosphy for your teaching will pay off immensely when you’re working with students (and humans in general!).

Go for quality over quantity when it comes to authentic relationships. It’s healthy to accept early on that not every lid fits every pot…a.k.a. not every student and teacher are going to mesh perfectly. It’s actually more important to find the students that do fit, especially once you’ve philosophized a coherent why for your teaching. You will have more job and personal satisfaction building deep and genuine relationships with three students than you will coasting on the surface of a relationship with 30 students. Authentic relationships will foster more authentic relationships.

🤗 “People don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care.” –Theodore Roosevelt

Building deeper connections with other humans only happens over time. Once you’ve made a connection and established some rapport with a student, you can begin to peel back the onion a bit at a time to help them develop their playing and also discover more about themselves as an individual. Trust is essential for growth, and the main ingredients in trust include care, active listening, and empathy. 

You want every student you interact with to walk away feeling cared for, seen, and heard. Students will pick up on the fact that you begin each lesson asking, “how are you today?” or “what’s new in your life this week?” They’ll also feel seen and heard if you remember these small conversations. If they have a big math test or soccer game coming up, follow-up with them and see how it went. Encourage them to ask how you are today as well. This establishes a safe-space routine and instills professionalism and kindness in the first minutes of your lessons each week.

“Active listening skills” is a buzzword phrase for a reason. Make good eye contact with your students in every interaction and put your cell phone away so they always have your full attention. Demonstrate in your body language that you understand their frustrations with practicing or managing school, extra-curriculars, and social lives. Rephrase their questions about musical/techncial concepts to better gauge understanding. On paper, active listening is very simple, but it takes consistent practice to truly make it part of your teaching routine. 

Building trust also requires copious amounts of empathy–another skill that you can develop through conscious practice. If a student is disappointed they didn’t win an audition, take time in the lesson to talk about their experiences. Empathetic responses don’t have to “make it all better”–they just have to be kind and understanding. Validate their feelings rather than try to “fix” the problem or find a quick solution. Give them permission to grieve a lost opportunity and hold space for them to do so in the lesson. If the moment feels right, demonstrate that you “get it” by sharing a vulnerable experience about how you overcame an audition or performance obstacle. Talk through what they think their choices are or if they see a way forward. If they aren’t sure, offer gentle advice about what they can do differently in a future situation to be at the top of their game. Tell them it’s okay to fail and encourage them to lean into the lessons they’ve learned through the experience of failure. Prompt them to think of something in the near future that they can look forward to to help them get excited again about music-making.

At the end of the day, there’s no way around it: real, deep, and meaningful relationships take time. Start by digging deep to figure out what your values and beliefs are when it comes to teacher-student relationships, and from there, make it your primary goal to be positive and caring in all of your interactions. As you build rapport and develop trusting relationships with your students, you’ll also become a more confident teacher. Even when so much about building a studio may feel out of your control, your ability to put yourself out there in the world–genuinely–is entirely up to you.

-Dr. Z