I’ve been thinking about giving private guitar lessons to kids and was hoping I could find some useful advice from either parents who have paid private teachers or dopers who have taken private lessons.
What did you like about your teacher and what did you not like? What kind of cancellation policy did your teacher have? Was there a contract between you and your teacher?
Any other advice or comments would be welcome 
Oh…that’s not fair. I want you to give my kids lessons…I’ve been trying to find someone who is responsible and likeable for a long time.
I don’t have any prior experience with this, but I am a mom–and I do have a beautiful guitar gathering dust.
This is what I’d love to have in a guitar teacher:
Good luck–it’s cool that you’re thinking of sharing your gift with kids.
s
You don’t happen to live in Southern California do you? 
Right now I’m unemployed and I’ve been trying to come up with something that I can do that I actually like and still get paid for it. I’m a struggling artist/singer and that hasn’t taken me anywhere but I’ve played Guitar for 20 years and have worked with school-age kids for over 10. I love the guitar and I love kids so it seems like a match and I don’t believe there are too many female guitar teachers out there ;).
I have all your requirements down except for #3. I have an idea of how much per 1/2 hour since I don’t think all kids can give a full hour of attention and take it all in. I don’t know about the absences or payment schedule or cancellation policy though.
I took them both as a teen and as an adult (27-30).
I think the two things are very different.
As a kid I could have used more time spent on fundamentals. Scales, chord progressions, some theory, that sort of thing.
As an adult my teacher was great and realized I was in it for fun so we spent more time exploring what I could do with the guitar and it was more of a practicum.
Alas, I do not live in SoCal. Sounds loverly, though
My brother is a professional musician–is there such a thing? So I know your frustration…fame certainly doesn’t equate talent.
If I were you, I’d contact some of the colleges in the area and find out what the music majors who give lessons (that’s how a lot of college kids make dough) charge. I think you’re wise to limit it to 1/2 hour lessons, FWIW.
Have you figured out what your market is? Are there lots of eager little pluckers in your area? Do you have a good place to give the lessons? Lots of dumb questions, I know. But like I said…I’m a mom; it’s in my nature.
I have taken guitar lessons for about 3/4 of a year, 3 years ago.
Unfortunately, the circumstances of my situation means that only a small proportion of what I can contribute may be applicable.
The guitar lessons I took 3 years ago was during school (literally during x period), taught by our school’s head of music. (This was 1 on 1 sessions, btw.) The way I was taught was very relaxed; I was introduced to simple scores and basic picking. Personally, I dislike being told what I was to play; rather I was given selections of songs (which was at the difficulty level whereby I could see improvement in my skills), which I’d choose ones that I would enjoy learning. I think this had a positive impact on my willingness to learn guitar.
Finance was simple. Pay per lesson. Since it was during school, there was no real problem of absence. I’d suppose for private lessons, both parties (teacher and student) should have a general sense of commitment to teaching and learning, respectively.
IIRC, I started out learning picking before moving on to chords; tablature before sheet music. I guess that explains why I can play songs such as “Classical Gas” much better than chord songs such as “Wonderwall”. As it stands now, I still only have a basic grasp of playing guitar, which is in no fault towards my teacher. But hook me up with some tablature, and I can play pretty much anything. Sorry for going slightly off topic; I think I had a point somewhere in this paragraph.
I also learnt piano that same year, except it was very different. My tutor at home would have specific lesson plans and ‘homework’ which was to be completed. I hated that. Took two lessons, and then quit. Which is why my piano playing ability is mostly self taught. It is much more difficult (I would imagine) starting out with a piece like “Maple Leaf Rag”, but as I progressed through it, there was a sense of satisfaction of learning something of moderate difficulty, as basically my first piece.
I think the flexibility of being my own personal teacher, allowed me to enjoy learning piano.
I guess, in summary, while it is important for a student to grasp the fundamental basics of guitar early, it should not be to the extent to sufficiently dissuade the student from enjoying the instrument.
Take all of this with a grain of salt though, just my own experiences.
Ideally, you should strike a balance between teaching some immediately useful stuff – familiar popular songs – and more long-term skills and concepts – scales, chord forms, theory.
You should understand that kids have many conflicting priorities, and they change from week to week. Don’t get all medieval and guilt-trip the kid too severely when they don’t practice.
I started lessons when I was 13. My first teacher was a really cool, hippie-type guy who treated his students almost as peers. I appreciated that a bunch.
If you get to the point where you’re covering scales and modes of scales, go slow. That is the part where my guitar playing fell apart.
It’s probably really passe now, but teaching your students some Chuck Berry riffs would be good.
If you’re teaching electric guitar, some information on getting a good tone out of the guitar and amp would be smart. When you’re practicing by yourself, it’s easy to pick a tone that you think sounds good from close up but that sounds too tinny or “off” when heard from further away, heard on tape, or heard in a band context.
My daughter takes lessons once a week for 30 minutes. They cost $15 a lesson.
There are a series of books he teaches out of, as well as how to hold her fingers, and time herself against a metronome. He also writes out songs for her to learn, everything from Xmas songs and classical to simple country songs. (She’s a big country music fan, and she learned some simple Willie Nelson songs to play for my dad.)
He’s also expressed disappointment to her when it’s obvious she hasn’t practiced as well as she should. He is not mad, and does not raise his voice, but he does point out that they can’t move on to new stuff until she has the current stuff mastered.
Oh, and first thing he does every lesson is help her tune her guitar.
I hope so. I plan on going to the student’s home to give the lessons. It seems easier than having the parents drive to my apartment and then have to come back in 1/2 hour.
That sounds pretty close to what my method will be. I know when I was taking lessons I would have never continued if my teacher didn’t allow me to learn music that I like, so that’s one of my main priorities. I’m going to look for a book that has a diagram of a guitar so they can learn what everything is called and then start with basic picking single notes, the basic chords, and timing. I’m looking forward to this, hopefully I will be good at it and can make it work
I’ve taken lessons from numerous folks, and also give private piano and guitar lessons as a side-career.
As far as logistics and pay go, I’d say:
[ul]
[li]Find out what other people in your area charge, and what their respective experience/ability level is. That should give you a good idea of what the range is in your area. I know here lessons go from about 20-50 an hour (10-25 per half-hour) depending on who’s giving them. Certainly don’t sell yourself short. When I give lessons I charge 25 for an hour (which sometimes goes down to 20 if 25 is steep for some folks), and 15 for a half hour. Another consideration is…[/li][li]Travel. If you’re driving to people’s homes, you might want to keep that in mind as you’re calculating what you’re actually making per hour. I do a lot of traveling to students’ homes, but I usually don’t travel if it’s just a half-hour lesson. At that point I typically end up spending more time in my car than I do teaching, and I don’t want to spend my days driving a lot.[/li]
That said, I do drive quite a bit. If I’m driving 20-30 minutes each way to give a lesson, though, I will usually up my scale to 25-30 dollars for the hour, to help compensate for my time/gas. Basically, as a private teacher your time is valuable, and if you can get the student/parent to spend their time getting to and from the lesson, that is money/time in the bank for you.
[li]As far as contracts go, I’ve never given one and never had one when I take lessons. As 11811 said, kids have many priorities (as do adults, for that matter). If folks call me up and cancel, I just consider that part of the risk of the business. And, being gracious about that sort of thing will help you retain students.[/li]
I typically figure that in any given week I may only see (thus only collect pay from) 75% of my students. In the summer that number drops quite a bit. So, if I want to project my income, I use that percentage. It also means that if I wanted to make a certain amount per week I’d need more students scheduled than I actually need on paper, since I probably won’t see a number of them in any given week.
[li]Oh, I almost forgot. If you do drive to students’ homes, track your milage! Your car and milage become partly tax-deductible if you’re using it for business.[/li][/ul]
Well, that’s it for now. I feel like I had some other things to say; maybe they’ll come to me later.
I took guitar lessons as an adult for about a year. Everything was great initially.
I liked my teacher, I was learning and really enjoying the experience. Then he wanted me to learn a Leanne Rimes song. A song I loathed and couldn’t even stand listening to. So I asked for a different song, and I was stunned when he said “No.” End of guitar lessons. So my recommendation would be, if a student asks for a different song, give them one. Have a backup in mind.
I took about 9 months of private lessons when I was in high school. My teacher kicked ass. Sometimes I’d come in and say I just wanted to learn a specific song. He would postpone that day’s lesson plan and just teach me that song. Then we’d jam together on it. When I first learned the chord progression to Hotel California, I’d sit there and do the chords and the vocals, and he’d solo over top of it. Really helped keep me motivated (and it was a lot of fun)!
You’re probably going to do this anyway, but bring your guitar to the lesson too. That way you can demonstrate techniques or play the chords while the student plays the notes.
I took lessons when I was around 9 years old. I had to walk to the music school with my guitar (a good 1/2 mile or more), and it was really hard on cold days. I think the idea of you going to the homes is a great idea. The parents will know what’s going on and will be aware of what you’ve assigned. It’s important the parents are involved to push the kids to pursue music if they’re good.
My brother and father both gave drum lessons. It’s a great way to make a few bucks (or more, if you get a good reputation around school!). I wish I had stuck with it…
I’ve actually been advised that it’s best to go to their homes just in case something were to happen to the child at my apartment, like a fall down the stairs or something, then they could possibly sue and well, I do live in Southern California 
Yes, I can’t imagine doing it any other way
Thanks so much for all your replies. I have gained a lot of insight and am more confident about what I have in mind. Now all I need to do is make some flyers and get some students!
I took lessons for about two years way back when.
I was going to be a rock and roll star!
The teachers at the school I went to all hated rock and roll and loved country music.
Needless to say, there was some conflict. I quickly threatened to quit and they smiled and said, “your mother signed a two year contract.” I finally had to throw a few fits in front of prospective students in the lobby before they agreed to teach me what I wanted to learn.
Please be flexible - if the student isn’t learning something that interests them, they are certainly not going to spend the time practicing.
I am definitely flexible. I felt the same way when I was taking lessons as a kid and my teacher taught me whatever I wanted to learn. Back then it happened to be “Eruption” from Van Halen. I wanted to be a rock star too! 
I’m taking lessons, and I love it. My teacher really is very, very cool, and understanding… It helps that we have basically the same taste in music, so he knows what I want to eventually be able to do, and helps orient the lessons to that end.
I think the biggest thing is that he’s patient, and encouraging. I work 40 hours a week, and spend 30 more hours commuting. As you can imagine, that doesn’t leave a hell of a lot of time for practicing. Some weeks, unfortunately, I go from one lesson to the next without ever having had the chance to practice in between. If I let him know that, we just go over what we’ve already done.
He’s also great about helping me work around my particular strengths and weaknesses. Blessed/cursed with big hands and fingers, he helps make sure I have stuff to practice that he knows I can do (with plenty of room for improvement) and stuff that is more challenging to my personal style. Knowing that he isn’t just teaching me out of some book helps a lot, and it really helps me approach guitar the best way for me.
Funny, when I signed up for the lessons, they told me that I’d have to buy a book on the first lesson. So when I got there, and asked him about it, he said “I don’t teach from the book, so there’s no point in you buying it.” I knew I had a winner!
Quite a few years ago I used to teach guitar to kids on the side to try to supplement my meager, struggling musician income. I just did it out of my house and charged five bucks an hour (it was the 80’s).
My cancellation policy was that the students could quit whenever they felt like it with no finacial penalty. I was not fond of trying to keep plodding along with a kid who had lost interest in the instrument.
It takes a certain set of skills and qualities to teach an instrument, especially to children.
You have to be patient. You have to be able to sit there and listen to the same ear-splitting mistakes over and over again. You have to remain upbeat and encouraging and keep finding the things they’re doing right.
You have to be able to connect with kids but you also have to project some authority. You have to control the lesson and not get sidetracked. Don’t ket the kids draw you into long conversations about professional wrestling or Spiderman 2. Stay on task. It’s very easy to get off track when you’re working with kids. They get bored and distracted easily and you have to direct them back when they start to drift away.
You have to know what your lesson plan is going to be. You can’t just wing it. You need something written down. I know this from hard experience. I have faked my way through lessons I had not prepared for and it did not go well.
Above all, you have to know how to communicate. You may feel like you understand the instrument very well but it can be surprisingly difficult to convey certain things verbally, especially to kids. Practice how you’re going to explain things at every step. Find someone who doesn’t know anything about music, practice an explanation of major scales and triads and see if they get it. If an adult won’t get it immediately, a child won’t get it.
Keep the lessons simple and focused. Don’t overload them with too much info at once. Give them only one or two new ideas to work with for each lesson.
I always gave them at least one new song to learn at each lesson, starting with the first one. I used to teach a simplified fingering of “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” but any simple two or three chord song will do. You can truncate the chords to just the top three strings at first. It doesn’t have to sound like Pete Townahend. The idea is just to get them playing songs rather than exercises because songs are more fun and they will be more likely to practice them.
Tailor your lessons as much as you can to the kind of music the kid personally likes, Teach him those kinds of songs. Don’t waste time on the Mel Bay “Down in the Valley” stuff. Teach them to play stuff the recognize and like. Feel free to simplify songs at first. Paraphrase them, strip them down to the basics. They’ll still like them.
A lot of kids, I’d even say most kids are going to get bored or lose interest after just a few lessons. They’ll find out it’s hard, their fingers will get sore, they won’t practice and you’ll be repeating lessons. When this happens, ask the kid if he’s sure he wants to go on, and maybe talk to the parents about it. If a kid won’t practice you will never get anywhere. The instruction is a very small part of learning the instrument. 99% of it is practice. You can teach a kid the chords but if he doesn’t practice, he will never progress. If that was going on for me I would tell the parents that they were wasting their money and maybe the instrument wasn’t for him. I actually tried to be very cognizant of a kid’s relative interest and I always let them know that music was supposed to be fun and if they weren’t having fun then they didn’t have to do it. I wanted them to feel they could quit at any time. I didn’t want them to ever feel like it was something they had to do. I still tried to get it across that the work would pay off if they stuck with it, though.
I hope some of this helps and good luck with your endeavor, It feels really good to take a student from the very beginning stages to a level where they can actually play. It’s a nice sense of accomplishment to know that “I taught him/her how to play.” The one kid that loves the instrument, who practices all the time, who can’t wait to learn the next thing. The kid who you realize has talent. That one kid makes it all worthwhile.
I had guitar lessons while in my teens. My teacher was a raving lunatic/pathological liar/comedian type. He actually taught me stuff but it was buried under many layers of strangeness and…flirting.
What I liked: Him. Hey, I was a teenager.
What I didn’t like: The endless unreliability. First I started by having lessons at some store he was working at, where my lessons were frequently interrupted because he was also expected to man the front counter. Then he quit that place and started teaching me at my house. Nearly every week he cancelled out on me, usually about 5 minutes or so AFTER he was expected to show up. He wouldn’t reschedule, but would say, “I’ll call you later this week to let you know.” And wouldn’t! Until I’d threaten to fire him, then he’d reschedule. This went on for months, incovenicening me terribly, until eventually he got a job at another store and I actually had lessons on time, almost on a regular basis. Since this guy, I’ve known countless unreliable musicians and it seems to be a personality requirement of sorts.
I’d reccommend guitar lessons to anyone as long as they stay away from weird people. Oh, and if you are the parent of a teenage girl, don’t, don’t, DON’T let her have lessons alone in your house from a lunatic in his mid-twenties!