How To Choose The Right Guitar Teacher

The process of choosing a guitar teacher is very important. 

As purchasing an appropriate guitar, finding a good teacher is an investment that will help determine the likelihood that you will make great progress and stay motivated in playing the guitar.

First, the teacher should be experienced not only in playing, but in actual teaching.

I recommend that the teacher have a minimum of five years of guitar teaching experience.  It is a big plus if the teacher has had actual pedagogy training.  Then you know that there Is a good chance that the teacher has been trained using proven techniques of teaching the instrument.  If you are a parent looking for a guitar teacher for your children, it is important the teacher have experience teaching the guitar to children as children learn different than adults.

A very important quality of a good teacher is that he genuinely cares about his/her students.  

He/she can care in many ways.  First, he recognizes that there is not just a "one size fits all" method of teaching guitar.  The teacher should spend time really getting to know the student by asking questions about the musical interests of the students,  and finding out how his students learn best.  The teacher should have a variety of teaching methods.  For example, many of my students, especially, adolescents are reluctant to sing, so I concentrate on giving them instrumental tunes that sound "cool."  Other students love to sing and want to learn the guitar to accompany their voices.  Besides giving my beginning students songs with basic chords and strums, I encourage creativity.  I show them how to improvise using scales that go with the chord progressions.  I will typically give my students some common licks from a scale and then I will ask them to do one or two variations on their own.  I also show my students when they are more advanced how to figure out songs by ear.

It is important that the teacher be organized. 

The teacher should provide you with a practice schedule  so you have no questions on what is required to practice after each lesson.  The teacher should also track the progress of the student and be aware of the student's musical and guitar goals.

Just as important is being organized is being reliable and consistent.  Many teachers are also performers, which is great as a part of learning how to play is learning how to perform.  However, be sure that the teacher can be there for the lessons at least 90% of the time.  Taking lessons once a week is important, especially in the beginning stages of learning guitar, where one can easily develop bad habits without correction.

The teacher should be able to collaborate with the student in terms of creating an individual curriculum that combines the student's interests, goals, and the teacher's choices for how best to serve these goals.  For example, I always tell my students that we are creating a songbook and instruction manual together.  
In the beginning I bring all the songs that I think are appropriate for the student to master the basics.  When the student has got the basics down, I am open to suggestions from the student.

Finally, it is a plus if you can find a teacher who can help you find opportunities to play with other guitarists or other musicians. 

 An important part of learning the guitar as well as learning any musical instrument is learning how to play with other instruments.  When I was learning guitar, I started out taking group lessons and I found other people who played guitar and other instruments and I played in bands.  I found these experiences to be invaluable.  Learning guitar on a one on one basis has its advantages, but if your teacher can put you together with other students, you can learn how to play with other instruments, which is a skill that will reward you throughout your life.  As a young guitar student, I played in bands that I formed myself and bands associated with music schools and found them to be all valuable in different ways.