In my mind, a good teacher is someone who won't shove their own ideas down your throat. An example of a teacher who did this was my previous saxophone teacher. He forced me to learn jazz on saxophone, even though I didn't really like it very much. I'm aware that jazz is probably a requirement for playing saxophone, but he didn't need to shove it in my face. I mean, I would be open to learning jazz, if I wasn't
forced to.
My new saxophone teacher, on the other hand, was really nice when I told him that I wanted to focus mainly on classical saxophone instead of jazz saxophone. He said, "Oh, that's fine! If you don't like jazz, I'm not going to force you to learn it." :wink: After that, we started discussing the ideas behind classical saxophone and some songs that I should look into.
Also, a good teacher is willing to be open to different ways of teaching. My old saxophone teacher thought that there was only one way to play jazz, so he yelled at me for not following his path as opposed to the one that I wanted to make myself. He threw me into
jazz improvisation without even teaching me the basics, and yelled at me when I didn't notice the chord changes.
My new saxophone teacher, on the other hand, actually taught me the basics on how to listen for a chord change while improvising and he taught me about all the different kinds of chord progressions and the stylistic things that should happen when improvising.
So, in my opinion, a good teacher is someone who won't:
- Force you to do something you don't want to.
- Only allow one way to success.
- Not explain things clearly.
- Brag about their intelligence.
- Get off topic (talking about your dead cat, no matter how sad, isn't going to help me become a better saxophonist).
- Tell you to buy new things, when they're not necessary (I'm not going to buy a professional saxophone when I'm only a student).
So, what do you think are some characteristics of a good teacher?
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