How to chose a music teacher?

Finding a music teacher that is suitable to teach your child is not an easy task. Teacher and student need to 'click'. They need to like each other and get on well. It will be, hopefully, a long term relationship. The learning style of the student and the teaching style of the teacher need to match each other for a successful learning experience. You need to make clear about a few things. With private teachers, you get what you pay for. It is a very different type of experience to learn keyboard at school in lunch time in a group lesson or learn the piano in an individual lesson where the teacher teaches the student to read music as well. One will cost maybe $20 the other can cost $90 but the results will be miles away from each other. Unfortunately, many times the school group lessons turn the students away from music for a life time.
A good quality lesson with an expert teacher will engage the student for the length of the lesson and there will clear achievement and outcome at the end of the lesson. The student's concentration will be fully engaged and because of that in the long term, the attention span extended. Playing an instrument without reading is a little bit of a waste of time. Playing by heart only mostly means that there will be a very limited repertoire the student can play. While the procedure of becoming musically literate is hard and takes time, the outcome is that the student can learn a new piece and go ahead in the book even without the presence of the teacher. This is when real learning and fun takes place! In a few years' time the student becomes independent and a life-long engagement with music is established. This means that well after schooling, university, starting family and establishing a successful career, the love of music making and the ability to play and read music in most cases can continue and adults return to having fun and playing music again at mature age.