Teach Piano, am i too young? Options

[grand piano girl]

hi i am currently studying grade 6 piano but i normaly do grade 7-8 stuff for pleasure i'm 14 but bo you think i am too young to teach?i would really love to but i dont know if i would be qualified and would i be able to put students in for eg. grade 1?
thanks.

[sbhoa]

Ask your teacher... that is who is best placed to know your capabilities.

I was much older than that when I started teaching, but it was with the encouragement and support of my own teachers (piano and theory).

[Suepea]

i dont know if i would be qualified and would i be able to put students in for eg. grade 1?

You don't have to have formal qualifications to teach piano (there are quite a few other threads on this topic). It is very unlikely that you would be able to enter pupils for exams as you can't enter yourself for an exam until you are 18. As you are only fourteen, have you thought ahead to the time when you will be busy doing external school exams and probably your own higher grade piano exams? If you are teaching piano as well the demands on your time would be considerable - what would happen to pupils that you had started teaching? I think it's great that you are keen to teach, but you would be better to wait for a few years.

[jacky]

I think it depends a lot on your circumstances. I started teaching when I was 17 - some of my brothers and sisters friends. But as both my parents were music teachers, they could listen in on the lessons and tell me where I was going wrong and give me helpful hints. My 11 year old daughter has been teaching violin for a year now as there is a desperate shortage of teachers in this area - it is not uncommon to travel 100 miles for a lesson. Also, she is preparing for her grade 8. I listen in and give suggestions etc. I also help her prepare lesson plans and we often go over the lesson beforehand - so it is a proactive rather than reactive approach she takes.
What you must realise is that it is so easy to make a lot of mistakes wen teaching - especially at first and do you want to risk messing up a child's musical education all for the sake of some pocket money?
It also depends who you are going to teach. It is often good when taking on a pupil at your age to say that you will just teach them for say six months and review the situation then - and do not be too scared to tell them/ parents that it would be good to find a different teacher then.
Think about it - but i'm afraid you wont really know until you've given it a try. A friend of mine (at least four times your age) began teaching 4 years ago and thought she was doing well until every one of the five pupils she put in for an exam failed. Could you risk that?

[chocolatedog]

I wouldn't teach at that age myself, but if you're determined, you could ask your teacher for advice on how to introduce things, how to explain etc. There are also a lot of posts on this forum about suggestions for tutor books, ideas for aural games, ideas for the first lesson (sorry I can't give you a link but a search should uncover some of them.) I use lesson plans every lesson - sometimes the lesson will move in a different direction, but the plans remind me of what we did the week before and how I wanted to develop/reinforce etc. Please don't think that teaching beginners is easy, because it's not. Please get some advice before you start. And feel free to ask people here for ideas if you're stuck.

[grand piano girl]

Thank you i think i will review my thinking!

[Kate]

I have just started teaching... and as well as it being rewarding, It is actually more difficult than I imagined! What mostly is a worry to me is that I am a quick learner myself and sometimes I worry that I would not relate to a pupil who is having difficulty. Fortunately, as we work on the same material as what I learmt from (I'm expanding it... i'm just sticking to what is familiar at the mo!) the memories of whenh I learnt it are coming flooding back!