Dialectic dialogues between adolescent guitarists learning music outside school

Teenagers learning guitar. How do you teach them in a high school setting?

I taught high school guitar classes for nine years and 10-week courses at a community college for two years. I was interim guitar teacher at a university for two years, also.

I learned to become familiar with disappointing students at the start and along the way. I taught basic beginning guitar to most. Most wanted to rock out. So many obstacles entered the picture right there at the start. 

Students didn’t have the same or adequate equipment to begin. There were assumptions on their part about what guitar was appropriate to begin to play; small hands and big instruments, action height of the strings, toy instruments mistaken for real ones, etc.

How do you start teaching a guitar class? You (can) set standards and expectations from the beginning. This will assuredly disenchant and disappoint so many would-be students. Eh, you’ll probably never meet them anyway because they read your syllabus or heard from a student of yours that you only allow… and don’t allow… More disappointment.

So, you focus on teaching the basics. Or Classical guitar. Or flamenco. Or folk strum-singing. Or rock. Or some other genre. Maybe Fridays are a “free day” and they get to play whatever they want. Anyway, you’re the instructor, the director, the teacher. They are to do what you say. How is this happening as a class? Is it orchestra-style—everyone has a part that you are directing them to work on separately to play with the whole class? Are daily rehearsals like this? The group plays, then when an issue arises, stop! Focus on that section. Then, start as a group again? Or is it the chaos of 12 to 25 guitarists all playing in one place at once? It’s it more like every student is working on their own trying to get something done on their piece?

What about the students who are chatting? Are they learning? Do you allow joint work to happen between peers? How many can work together? Two, three, six? What’s acceptable in the class with the other students who are also trying to accomplish learning?

And what are those collaborators talking about? What are they saying? Is how they interact in words and music—playing with and for each other—and other nonverbal ways meaningful/helpful to their learning? How?

How are dialogues between teenage guitarists helpful to their learning the instrument?