To me the most important thing about teaching is to remember what it was like when you were a novice. For some mysterious reason, 99% of teachers, professors, etc., have lost that memory, or ignore it, or something. I am always trying to put myself in my students' place -- which can be frightening! -- but if you can't do that, it seems to me you will always be way over their head or wasting their time. The other thing, which no one seems to have mentioned yet, is that you have to be in love with your subject. I think even a mediocre teacher can help students, if they are passionate about their subject: students (in my experience of university) are desperate for something to love, which is of course a distant second to the first thing on their minds, i.e., somebody to love; but it is still in the ballpark.

As a guitar student (of Rick's), I think the hardest thing in the other direction is for an adult student to articulate what is wrong or right, or what they want or need, partly because one doesn't know, but also because it is complicated and usually snarled in personality and old practices and a whole pile of other knots. This makes it hard on the teacher to figure out what is best. I think one related adult problem (for newish students) is to figure out what role music is going to play in an already fully formed (or mostly fully formed life). In this sense teenagers may have it easier, because they are using music, or romantic images, to shape themselves the first time around; and they have the time to fight and make mistakes, and so on. For adults with bad, mediocre, or non-existent histories with music -- or with a lifetime of listening, not playing -- I think a shift in music's role can be a very complex challenge to one's very developed sense of self, competence, expectations. Also -- I speak from bitter personal experience -- even with the best will in the world, it is extremely hard, even if driven, to find practice time when you are a fulltime working adult. Some people seem to thrive on the "a change is as good as a rest" principle, but these seem to me to be a certain personality type: the rest of us just die at the end of a day. Of course, a little less Mudcat time......(ha)

yours, Peter T.