The best part of teaching in home music lessons is your students stay with you longer then those who travel to their lessons at a music school or a teacher’s home. There are 3 easy to understand reasons why this is. One, a great music teacher gets more time with the family of their student. Two, a student doesn’t feel the pressure of loosing time in their day traveling to a music lesson. Three, working on your own instrument in your own home makes sense to most students.
Having more time with the family of student is so important for the family to understand what is actually happening in a lesson. All to often if a student takes lessons in a school or a teacher’s house that student’s family doesn’t get to hear what goes on. And what goes on in a lesson is often times gradual and sometimes can’t be marked by progress in moving on to a new song or theory page or the next lesson. It’s in the lesson where the small, most important steps are made, and having a family member understand those lessons is a great asset to a music teachers teaching, and their ability to hold on to a student during the times where they aren’t “getting it so easy”.
I know from having three children on my own that “getting there” is often half the battle when it comes to an activity.  Having in-home lessons means no travel time and no time lost as our kids get busier and busier each and every year. I don’t see being cranky about going somewhere as an indicator that a child doesn’t like an activity. I see it as an expression that time is important, and “cranky”, is sometimes the only way for our young people to express themselves. Especially when parents (like me) get wound up about having to be some place specific at a specific time. In-home lessons takes that out of the equation, and then you can really tell if your students likes the lessons or not, or, do they just not like the travel. On a side note shouldn’t it be positive that our children like being in their home? I think so:).
Taking music lessons in your own space in your own home can really make sense to a beginning music student. There is no way to perceive how a child fully understands what they are learning in a lesson. Maybe that piano in the music store feels or looks different to them then yours at home. It could be the poster of a guitar in a lesson studio makes it easier for a student to understand what’s expected and that poster isn’t at home. The guitar student might not relate to what’s expected for next weeks lesson in a different learning environment. When you have a lesson in your own home, everything is there for you, your instrument, your chair, and your music on your stand. That’s a lot of stuff to take out of they equation and understand how a student in learning music.
It’s clear to me that in-home lessons have many benefits. Although these aren’t compared to experiences other then in-home lessons it’s easy to see that your time with your teacher, in your home and without travel can really keep a music student taking private music lessons longer. And when we take lessons longer we learn to enjoy our instrument even more.
Here’s me teaching teachers about this same subject.