Lessons... help!

Irish Flute
1

Hi all!

I start teaching tin whistle & trad flute for the first time on Tue evening, & I’m looking for some help. Tunes won’t be a problem, and explaining ornamentation etc should be fine; I’m a bit worried about crowd control though. I’m teaching over 3 hours, so maybe 10 - 20 pupils, aged (as far as I know) from about 10 - 16. I’ve got the advanced whistles, and all the flutes. Any teachers out there who have some experience of this? School teachers? What do I do if they start trashing the room? (I’m sure they won’t - please don’t give me any horror stories! ) Do you have any recommendations on how to split the groups up? (They’re grouped from last year’s teacher - I have no idea how). Age? Ability? Manageability?
I’m sure it’ll be fine - it’d just be nice to have some input from people who’ve been in this situation!
TIA,
Deirdre

[Also on whistle board]

2

Greetings,

Get in touch with my teacher, Skip Healy, at skip@skiphealy.com. Skip has taught group classes for Boston Comhaltas and he has also taught several junior fife workshops populated by younger players in larger numbers. And he’s very good at it all.

Take care,
John Harvey

3

Are they all continuing students or are some new? Attention span varies greatly with age, as it does with skill level. An approach that seems to work well at my daughters music school is grouping the children by level of accomplishment instead of by age. There is nothing worse for self confidence than hearing someone the same age just blow you away. Kids don’t think in terms of “he’s been doing it for 5 yrs. and I just started” They think in terms of “We are the same age so I should be able to do what he/she is doing”