SAT Reading Comprehensions Strategies Part 1

Had her over a year as my first violin teacher, huge mistake and waste time and money. To start she's overall she was very mean to me and she NEVER showed up on time to a single lesson. Between 30 minutes and an hour late EVERY SINGLE WEEK. More importantly, while she can play violin very well, she does not understand what is important for a beginner to learn. She doesn't care about tone or musicality, she only cares about playing difficult pieces. She will take beautiful pieces of music and butcher it by artificially making it more difficult (adding slurs, ridiculous positions, and harmonics.) This made it very demoralizing to play as nothing I ever played sounded as intended. It doesn't matter how bad your tone or phrasing was, if you hit the right notes, she believed you should move on. This resulted in her asking me to play pieces that were greatly above my skill level. One of the most frustrating parts of having her as a teacher is the wildly inconsistent lessons. In one lesson, she will ask me to practice 3 different pieces. In the following lessons, we cover none of it and instead asks me to perform some pieces from a lesson a few weeks ago. As it was not prepared I would naturally have difficulty playing it to tempo, and she would assume I didn't practice, despite me being very dedicated to the instrument and practicing daily. In addition, she insists on playing with you the entire time, and never watches you play by yourself, which honestly makes no sense and forces you to play at her tempo. I've found a new teacher who focuses more on sound quality and phrasing and it has been far more enjoyable of an experience. My overall tone has greatly improved and I understand the phrasing of the beginner classical pieces far better. I've had probably over 50 lessons with her, so I'll give you an overview on what each lesson will go like: 1) She will arrive late 2) She asks you to play some scales and arpeggios, but if you can't do 16 notes a bow stroke as a beginner while shifting positions, she will get mad at you 3) She will take some random pieces that you haven't practiced in weeks and insist that "we practiced it the other week" and then get mad when you can't play it to HER tempo 4) She will pick a new piece to play, but spend 5-10 minutes making it more difficult by adding slurs where they don't belong, higher positions for no reason, and harmonics because why not, regardless of the intended musicality of the piece And the worst part is, she refuses to listen to your concerns. I've mentioned all this to her and she doesn't care, insisting that she knows better. I've talked to several other violin teachers since our departure and they all agree her teaching method is terrible for beginners. She may be a suitable teacher for an advanced student, but if you are a beginner or even intermediate, do not waste your money.

Made an appointment for 4pm. Ordered all the books she requested. Showed up for my appointment 10minutes before 4 and she did not answer me. I called her and message her and nothing. at 4:15 she finally called saying she would be 5minutes late. I told her I wasn't going to wait and I'd be going home. She said she was still going to charge me, even tho she was 20minutes late to out 4pm appointment. I called customer service and got it solved but her punctuality and her way of treating clients is horrible. How dare she still try to charge me even tho she never showed up? If the first appointment she didn't show, I can't imagine what the others would of been like. Wasted my gas and time.