🎓 Music Theory Mastery for Teachers

Many teachers avoid teaching Grade 5 theory — not because they can’t, but because they don’t feel confident. Here’s why I created Music Theory Mastery for Teachers and what the course will offer.

Why I created this new six-week course for piano and instrumental teachers

I’ve noticed for a while now that many fellow piano teachers — teachers who are more than capable of teaching Grade 5 theory to their students — often choose not to. Some opt out because they feel there simply isn’t time in weekly lessons. Fair enough! But others don’t feel confident enough in their own grasp of theory to take it on. That realisation has stayed with me, and it’s led to a new idea.

Filling the gaps and strengthening confidence

Music Theory Mastery for Teachers is designed to fill in any gaps a teacher feels they may have in their own theory background while offering full guidance and resources for teaching up to a strong intermediate level — Grade 5 and a little beyond. We’ll be working from my new Music Theory Mastery Framework — a structured, layered approach to teaching theory that builds deep conceptual understanding and connects ideas across topics.

How it began

The building of this framework began, informally, with my very first job teaching music theory at Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan in the summer of 2000. I was a second-year graduate student, relishing the opportunity to work out the best way to present theoretical concepts to young students (teenagers at the arts camp who wished to go to conservatory) in a way that connected to and served their musical practice.

When I moved to the UK, I brought this same approach into my own piano teaching and refined it over time. Along the way, I noticed that many instrumental teachers taught Grade 5 theory straight from the ABRSM or Trinity workbooks. For me, those workbooks were always the last stop — the point where my students applied what they’d already learned to the format of exam questions.

Why I teach theory this way

The point of theory, after all, is not to pass an exam. It’s to give flight to your musicality.

And so, with that in mind, I’ve written a six-week hybrid — part group-coaching programme, part course — for instrumental teachers who want to strengthen their own theory and come away with workable pedagogy that fits naturally into lessons and builds — from day one — a clear structure of understanding for their students.

This is an approach designed to serve the student — not the exam.

If this sounds like the kind of teaching you’d like to bring into your studio, I’d love to have you join me in January.

💫 Early-bird enrolment (£149) opens soon.

👉 Register your interest here.