We have Stephanie Biello here, one of our piano instructors at Southbury Music. Stephanie, what was experience like teacher music lessons over video throughout the pandemic?
STEPHANIE: Ah well? I actually felt two ways about teaching video lessons over the past couple years. I was very thankful for for them, that we were able to continue through the pandemic, it was a great way to keep students going and motivate them to continue playing and not have them stop for such a long period of time, so I was very thankful that we could have lessons through video. I wasn’t planning on having it done for such an extended period of time but no one knew what the pandemic was going to hold. I was forever grateful for being able to continue with my students over video.
It was definitely a bit challenging, there were lots of thing about the video lessons that were difficult to deal with instead of having the student right there in person. As far as piano lessons goes specifically, it was hard to teach the pedal. It was hard to see the students foot, hard to teach the pedaling over the video. It was also very hard to not play duets with my students, I also love playing duets with my students! It really helps them with their rhythm, helps keep their tempo, and not being able to do that for the past couple years over the video lessons was definitely very hard, so I missed those things.
There were plenty of other things that became a bit of a challenge through video lessons as well. Younger students have a hard time with right and left, and up and down. Being in person, I can always point to the hands and point out things and over the video some of the right and lefts became opposite and it became a bit more challenging to teach that over the video. So I had a mixed feeling and mixed experience about teaching over video.
Again, I was very grateful for being able to do it and that my students stuck with it and made it, but I’m defiantly grateful to have them back in person and hopefully we can stay that way.
