Elijah S  
Instruments: Piano, Voice, Keyboard
Styles: Classical, Musical Theater, Spirituals

My teaching begun during my years of private instruction as a high school student. The wonderful aspect of my former teachers were that they allowed more advanced students to teach students that were not as advanced therefore giving the more advanced student a chance to learn and develop skills of teaching. I also taught private students through college and was hired to teach as an interim class piano instructor at Bethune-Cookman University while there was a lack of piano teachers. I taught beginning class piano to two sections as a professor for the fall 2017 semester. Since then, I have been newly relocated to the Orange Park Florida area where I teach private piano at the Orange Park School of Music which has been so rewarding for me. In my lessons, students, along with the parent and I decide on the goals of music instruction which is what the lessons are based off of. I am more specialized in the classical genre but I venture into to other genres based off the wants and needs of the student. Some of my students enjoy improvisation or composition/song writing or pop/Disney songs over classical. Other students prefer the classical method strictly. I try to be as flexible as possible for my students and everything is done step by step from on a basis of principles and fundamentals. Ultimately, I want my students to strive to be their very best, to cultivate a love for music while experiencing the rewarding joy of learning music and the arts and to use the skills they’ve developed in every area of their lives.

For beginning students who are children I use varying method books such as Faber, Bastian, Leonard etc. These method books do a wonderful job of progressing the student naturally and gradually which is my style of teaching. Once the student shows understanding and mastery of the basic fundamentals taught in these books, the level of advancement grows and solo pieces will be chosen that best help the Student progress musically and technically. By the end of all of my beginning lessons students are able to play at least one song, but most are able to play three songs, and had learned the basics of music, fingering, notation, and rhythm/counting.