Today I officially had the worst piano lesson of my career.
I’m sure I will have many more awful lessons over the years that I plan to continue teaching but this was definitely the worst so far. I had an elementary age student who came in with a poor attitude and it went from bad to worse. He started to blatantly disobey almost everything I was asking him to do.
So, we only played one eight-measure song the entire lesson. Over and over. And over.
He wouldn’t follow the most basic of instructions, like hold the whole note for 4 counts, or sit up straight. When I did stop to correct him he would make snoring noises at me. I honestly got to the point where I didn’t know what I should do. I’ve never had a student have such a disrespectful attitude towards me.
I was a little taken aback.
I’ve had problem students in the past but usually a straight-forward “you need to shape up” scold does the trick and then they actually do! I’ve even made students cry in lessons before, but even after that they adjust their attitude. So, I tried to keep my cool and told him I was extremely disappointed with his attitude (along with various other “you need to shape up” talks through the lesson) all to no avail. So I wouldn’t let him play anything else until he played his first song correctly. And he never did.
Then I made the dreaded trip to the car afterwords to talk with his Mom. Never a fun conversation, but she needed to know. She was apologetic and frustrated.
It wasn’t a fun lesson.
Hopefully we’ll have better luck next week!
Oh, my gosh. I’ve never had that. But you’ve already given way more lessons than I’ve given in my life, I’ll bet. Still. That’s really bad.