ARTICLE WRITING

More important than progress, I, as a piano teacher, am most protective of a child's curiosity, enthusiasm for learning music, & heart for exploring the unknown.

                                       What is important to the teacher

For me as a professional teacher, my students' Happiness, and Inspiration to want to be better are most important to me.

I am extremely protective of their imagination, and creativity. Most children come with them, so my job is to not only help them to maintain them (because as they grow older, they start to lose them), but to extend them, and to help them to put these traits to good use.

 I find it very rewarding when the students gain more confidence about who they are and what they can do at the piano. Their young minds know there is something really special about their ability to play piano with both hands in the first few months! And they are some fancy songs too! In all cases, the newly gained confidence is later transferred to academic and social success.

My job is really to assist students to get to know who they are in the endeavor of learning music.
My students demonstrate great progress even with minimum practice (0 minutes - 30 min each week). Their progress is not my focus for them however. It's a natural by-product of their happiness, creativity, self-liking and confidence. 

That's why I spend quite a bit of effort of developing the fundamental learning qualities in my piano students.

AP is truly the only place I don't have to hold back when I teach a child.
I have taught at various schools, including 8 years with the Dalton School, and even created many piano programs for them. I was always limited, having to accommodate to the schools' staffing talents and business models.

In the AP curriculum, I can give to a student all I have got!  I apply innate intuition and plan every lesson based on my 18 years of hands-on experience. The lessons I draw from the 20,000 one-on-one sessions (not an exaggerated number) I taught have been my main source of teaching inspiration. 

My private students can start young and so far everyone has much faster progress than their previous curriculum. Up to 80% of my students are capable of performing at the level we now call "gifted." 

As a substitute piano teacher, I could use a fraction of the lesson time to finish a targeted curriculum for the week. For example, I was able to conduct my former colleagues' 45-minute lesson plan at various schools under 6 minutes (not an exaggerated number on my part). And the students, ages ranges 4 - 13, remembered the material more, with more comprehension, and were happier piano students. 

Why is this possible? 

There are dozens of reasons as the art of "children learning" and "adults teaching" is complex, and scientists and social scientists have not exhausted their exploration. I will start with these 3 points: 

1- I very rarely waste one second of lesson time. Even down time and sticker breaks are planned as part of a constructive, although fun, lesson. For young children, every 2 minutes is a learning cycle. That means if we have three 20-second sticker breaks and four 30-second down time, most students can still learn about 15 little things on the piano. In a month, that is about 60 little things. And in a semester, that would be 300 little things and in a year, that would be about 600 little things. Do you know any beginning piano students that can learn 600 little things in their first year of piano as a 3, 6, or 12 year old? 

2- Most students and parents come to their first lesson not knowing the proper behavior (mental, verbal, and physical) of an one-on-one, inviting, however extremely focused and directed, classroom setting. Most of the time, students will bring their home behavior to my piano studio when the parents are present. And parents often lack experience in what is expected of them for maximum possible learning of their children. Many times, they bring their own past childhood experience to my classroom. To avoid wasting for future lessons, I tackle these basic needs right away, so problems do not occur repeatedly in different forms throughout the year. 

3- I spot a student's weakness and strength very quickly. This type of assess will include intangible matters such as the child's self-perception of his own ability, which can be evaluated inaccurately. Correcting a false self-perception will improve learning confidence dramatically. Always, the students will adapt new attitudes towards himself and eventually appreciate himself more. 

I do not believe you can teach today's children with yesterday's methods and still produce a child ready for his well-rounded future.

​​​​                                                     Why Parents Should Use me?

Listening to music is easy, but learning to make music at an instrument is difficult. You need the best piano mentor & an education system on your side for learning. 

While learning to play an instrument has enjoyed a great reputation (discipline, high form of art, higher IQ, creativity, fun), in reality for most children, the process itself destroys other elements of learning and creates bad feelings in the students (lost interest & curiosity, little progress, feelings of inadequacy at the instrument, boredom, repetitive practice, no joy in studying it).

Learning piano or any instrument is not easy. It requires a lot from a child, his mind, focus, analysis, problem solving skills, stamina, his coordination of his eyes-brain-fingers which is at a continuous cycle repeating at one-third of a second. 

More, a child's high self-image, confidence, morale, boldness, and positive internal experience with the process of piano learning are also important as they discover the spirit of the piano playing. This internal experience of self- exploration is often neglected by the music educators.

If you agree that all these elements are the crucial ingredients for a young mind, especially in the early stage of learning the piano, then I should be the right teacher for you.

I can also bring much faster progress (First year student can learn fifth year's work). It’s a tremendous progress and the amazement the child gets from this is beneficial in many ways.

Constant robotic repetition on the piano can cost a child's creative mind. My education program can maintain your child's innate curiosity & untouched imagination.

If you like the idea that regular, "happy" practice at home is crucial to your child's progress, then part of my job is to guide the parent's role at home.

 My teaching style is more than just play-basedwhose original message and effect have already been diluted over the years. I believe that play-based methods can be more wonderous if they don’t sacrifice a child’ opportunity for real learning. Finding that perfect balance is a practiced art which can only happen when the teacher is completely in tune with every tiny movement of the child’s mind.

I am a thoughtful, curious, persistent person. I enjoy bringing students and their parents to places musically that they did not think existed for the child. When all educators forfeit the idea that an average 3 year old can learn piano, I explored the possibility relentlessly. Or when most teachers think piano learning can only be advanced by students in the 1% with talent, I discovered a different truth.

And after 18 years, I can speak with confidence that learning in the AP curriculum can make all the difference for a child's development.

AP curriculum is the only program in NYC that offers an overall comprehensive learning experience, attending to students' internal or external needs.

I apply AP teaching methods at full capacity as it is my private practice. According to the teaching/staffing culture of each institution, I use portion of the curriculum in other schools.