“We teach who we are.” 
— Parker J. Palmer 

My teaching practice resonates with the understanding of teaching as a Prep-Teach-Reflect cycle. I view this process as most effective when informed by relevant research literature and ongoing scholarly debate, shaping teaching as a productive spiral in which reflection, inquiry, and practice continuously inform and extend one another. 

While this framework provides orientation, teaching itself does not proceed through method alone, but through who we are as teachers. It is this being that enacts our relational attunement to learners—what educational phenomenology refers to as pedagogical tact: the instinctive capacity to act thoughtfully and responsively in everyday teaching situations. 

A lived sensitivity rooted in having been through, pedagogical tact in my case is closely tied to my own longing for learning following an early departure from formal education. This experience instilled a deep commitment to supporting others in expanding their worlds and in their processes of becoming. It involves a fine-grained, in-the-moment disposition toward recognising learners’ needs, concerns, and potentials as they emerge in practice.  

Although I felt drawn to teaching as this disposition matured, I began teaching only after gaining substantial experience outside of it. As a result, my teaching practice grew out of professional experience as a performer rather than from pedagogical prescription alone. Even when working with early-level students, my instruction is informed by an understanding of the subject at a high professional standard, providing coherence and long-term orientation to my teaching.  

My inward impulse to support learners extends beyond specific age groups or guitar approaches. The stylistic breadth and depth of my performance background, coupled with my pedagogical training, enable me to teach students from an early age, and guide them toward musical genres I recognise as most natural and meaningful to them. At the same time, my academic experience allows me to share my work within institutions operating at the intersection of research, performance, musical transmission, and culture. 

My teaching branched out in different directions in response to needs as they emerged in different contexts. I teach Suzuki guitar to pre-school children because an increasing number of parents value instrumental learning from an early age. I engage in teacher training because I identified gaps within the community. I am drawn to higher education because it allows music to intersect with culture, theory, and critical enquiry, and I aspire to offer lectures through which insights from my doctoral research can reach those inspired by cross-cultural approaches to music pedagogy. 

The satisfaction of witnessing a five-year-old play their first song and of contributing to a professional musician’s graduation belong to the same arc. From this perspective, teaching is not a role but a continuum – one that I follow where it is needed, across both community-based and institutional contexts. 

The domains of my teaching activity and areas of interest are outlined in the following sections: Guitar Lessons, Suzuki Guitar Method, Teacher Training, and Undergraduate & Postgraduate Teaching. 

Photo Credit: Top banner image by Yulia Gapeenko via Vecteezy