by Glen McCarthy | Oct 27, 2013 | Classroom, Education, News, Principles, Tips + Tricks
When another teacher requests to remove a disruptive student from his/her class, the logical place to move that student is guitar class. And why not, what kid does not love guitar? This scenario most often occurs when the class is in its tenth week and moving along...
by Glen McCarthy | Oct 25, 2013 | Classroom, Education, Tips + Tricks
Teaching Guitar Workshops is building a new crowd-sourced book of Classroom-Guitar Lesson Plans. The project aims to make more lesson plans available to teachers, generate ideas among colleagues, bring substantive music lessons to kids, and, most of all, help teachers...
by Glen McCarthy | Oct 20, 2013 | Classroom, Education, Principles, Tips + Tricks
How do you know whether to start a piece with your i finger or your m finger? You will most typically start with i, however it is really situational. If you have to do a backwards string crossing to start with i you should choose to start with m. Remember, you can...
by Glen McCarthy | Oct 20, 2013 | Classroom, Education, Success Stories, Tips + Tricks
How can you help students with “wrong” pick holds and is it that important? Emphasize the “platform” formed by the first digit and movement from the elbow. I think it is important, but take baby steps to fix it because they may have learned that way from someone they...
by Glen McCarthy | Oct 13, 2013 | Classroom, Education, News, Tips + Tricks
Motivation happens when the teachers feed the dreams of their students. I find that students are more into performances when I refer to concerts as “shows”. Most guitar students can (and do) visualize themselves playing an electric guitar in a band, on stage, in front...
by Glen McCarthy | Oct 13, 2013 | Classroom, Education, Principles, Success Stories, Tips + Tricks
I wanted to share a very cool idea from my friend Jane who teaches guitar at a middle school up in Nebraska. She decided that during parent teacher conferences this year, that when students brought their parents to come discuss their grade – that they were going to do...
