Richard S  
Instruments: Clarinet
Styles: Classical, Musical Theater, Opera, Marching Band

I have been teaching since the summer after my freshman year of college. I knew that I wanted to gain experience teaching private lessons early in my career, so I contacted middle and high school band programs in the Dallas Metroplex and slowly began building a teaching studio. By the following year, I had a full studio with students of all levels. After finishing my coursework at Southern Methodist University, I completed a semester of student teaching at Berkner High School and Liberty Junior High in Richardson, TX. While I was student teaching I had the opportunity to teach and learn to teach not only clarinet, but all of the wind and brass instruments! It was an amazing experience and I was able to connect so much of what I learned about other instruments back to teaching the clarinet. I am comfortable teaching students just starting to play the clarinet, all the way up to advanced students looking to bring their playing to the next level!

Typically, I first like to have the student play something they want to play for me - anything they know or like to play! From here, I can take that information and use it to form a plan and we can address fundamentals or skills that need to be worked on. I firmly believe that fundamentals are incredibly important to playing the instrument at the highest level. Alongside work on fundamentals, I will prescribe music that is on par with the level of student so that they are challenged but will be successful. The student can also always bring in whatever music that they are also working on, for additional help on certain passages and bumps in the road that they might've run into!