TTTV055: Cultural Difference in Online Teaching with Sarah Lyngra

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Have you thought about teaching students via Skype who are overseas? Imagine being able to teach students when you can't teach students in your own studio, ie during school, early morning or late in the evening. Teaching overseas students does come with some important things to think about. Sarah gives us some great food for thought in this episode explaining that we have to think outside our own cultural experiences and be aware of the cultural differences of other nationalities and religions.

As well as cultural differences you'll need to think about:

• Time zones - what time is it where your students are? And how to time table table that. Try using World Time Buddy to work out times when you and your potential student are available.
• Holiday times in the other country. Be aware that some countries don't celebrate Christian holidays, so you'll need to ask your student for their vacation and holiday timetable in advance.
• Christmas Carols and other holidays songs - remember overseas students may not be Christians, so they may not celebrate Christmas. Be aware of this, to avoid cultural issues.

Using Internet MIDI see Episode 53 and for other beginner tech ideas relook at Episode 52. Here's a great video of how Internet MIDI works:

Sarah Lyngra's extraordinary jouney across many continents will give you some great ideas on how to start your own Skype teaching program. More information is available from her website: www.teachpianoonline.com.

Transcript

Please find a full transcript of this episode at the bottom of this page. Alternatively, click below to download a PDF. If you are an TopMusicPro Member, you can find the full video and transcript in the Member Resources Area. Not a member? See below for how you can get $50 off your membership today. 

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In this episode, you’ll learn

• How Sarah got started with online teaching.
• How to get students for online lessons from overseas
• How to make sure the resources you need are available
• How to be culturally aware

Links Mentioned

• Sarah's website
• PayPal
• World Time Buddy
• Screen Flow

This month's sponsor

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Does the idea of teaching online music lessons seem a bit daunting? Do you know what equipment and technology you need to teach a successful online lesson? Do you know how to set up and use your equipment? What about finding students? Or getting paid? Or setting up your policy? Or knowing which activities can be successful in an online lesson? Are there specific teaching tips you should use for online lessons? How about pros and cons of online teaching? Or troubleshooting when something goes wrong?

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How is your online piano teaching going?

Which bit of Mike's technology would you like to own? How could you explore taking your online teaching to the next level?

Full Transcript

Tim: All right, Sarah, welcome to the show today. Great to have you on it.

Sarah: Thank you.

Tim: Now, before we get started, I think you better tell everyone a little bit about your piano teaching adventures and your life adventures from the last few years. You've had some pretty amazing experiences overseas. And this is all gonna be connected to our concept of online teaching, but yeah, give us the rundown.

Sarah: Well, I actually moved overseas about 20 years ago, and I spent 5 years in Copenhagen. And that's where I learned that the market for English-speaking piano teachers when you're working overseas was pretty big, so I taught piano lessons in Copenhagen to an international crowd. And then from there, my husband and I...my husband's Norwegian, and we've never actually lived as a married couple in the United States...moved to Saudi Arabia. And this was right after September 11th, and so things were quite a bit different then, before and after, than they are now. And the majority of my clients initially... I met a piano teacher who was going back to work, so I got her clients. And then over time, there aren't very many piano teachers in Saudi Arabia. They don't have a music curriculum. You can't get visas for music teachers. They don't teach music in the schools. And so the longer I was there, the more local clientele I had, as word got out, the more adult students that I had. We were also involved in clandestine music concerts with artists all over the world.

And the international expat community is quite a bit different than teaching in a local community because you're not just teaching Americans. You're teaching people from pretty much every continent except Antarctica. Even though everybody I taught had at least one parent with a college education, quite a few of the people I taught, this was the first time that they ever had private music lessons. And in Saudi Arabia, a lot of the local students didn't have...well, they didn't have music education...but they didn't have the background of you go to your lessons, you practice, and then the delayed gratification of practicing and then having recitals. And then we had also a wide variety of religious backgrounds, and it was just completely different than what you normally see when you're teaching in a rural community in the United States.

Tim: Oh, absolutely. I can't even comprehend what it would be like to live in somewhere like Saudi Arabia. I think it'd be amazing. It'd be fascinating. It'd be a huge culture shock, I would guess. So when you were living over there, you're talking the expat community. So that's international people living in Saudi Arabia, and you said there's pretty much people from every continent there. So you were giving live one-on-one, personal piano lessons while you were there, as well as online piano lessons. Is that right?

Sarah: Yes. Well, actually I was giving online lessons to students in the United States because I had some here. I was giving online occasionally to students in Saudi Arabia because women can't drive there and driving can be kind of dangerous. And so some of my students had to commute, and when they couldn't get a driver, then I would give them a Skype lesson. And then one of my trips back to the United States, I got an infection that prevented me from flying for a few months, and so I started teaching my students in Saudi Arabia from the United States to keep them going because I couldn't travel.

Tim: Yeah. Well, talk about giving you flexibility, right?

Sarah: Yes, yeah. And it's one of the things, I think, that teachers don't think about because, like, let's say you are going through chemotherapy, for example, you feel well enough to teach, but you can't be exposed to other students. And so having Skype lessons as an alternative gives you the ability to continue teaching your students without exposing yourself to risk. Or if your students are sick or if you're sick, then it's a really good vehicle for that kind of teaching.

Tim: And in Saudi Arabia, piano lessons weren't really common and music education isn't in schools, how do people get pianos? Are there piano sellers?

Sarah: Well, there are. But you know when you go to a show room in the United States, you choose the piano, and then they have a bunch of movers who move them in the tuning community. In Saudi, it's kind of like you shop from a catalog and they ship it in. And when we first got there, it was right around the time of the Second Gulf War. I was teaching group lessons because there weren't many teachers. I had ordered a whole bunch of electronic pianos, and they got delayed because the shippers didn't wanna go into the Gulf until it calmed a little bit.

Tim: Oh.

Sarah: So you had to wait for getting whatever you were gonna get at that point. The tuning, tuning is not a profession that you have in Saudi Arabia, so tuning acoustic instruments was quite challenging for a lot of people. And one of the tuners was deaf, and he wasn't telling his clients. So the clients didn't hear it, and so you could go over to their pianos and you would know that it was tuned by this particular gentleman, who had access to this fabulous group of, you know, Saudis who had pianos. And also, in Saudi Arabia, the music that's often played is played on an oud, which is kind of like a lute, and it's not fretted. And they use quarter tones, and so what sounds out of tune to a Westerner doesn't necessarily sound out of tune to a Middle Easterner.

Tim: Wow. I mean, there are just so many things going against you, even living in the country.

Sarah: Yes, but [inaudible 00:05:39] going for you because there's a real desire for people to learn musical instruments, and so when they find out you're a piano teacher... I didn't advertise. I stopped doing a waiting list because it became overwhelming.

Tim: Wow. I think I could talk to you and ask you so many more questions about Saudi Arabia, but that isn't the focus of today, although it kind of is.

Sarah: Yeah.

Tim: What I wanna talk about is how you went about the online teaching. And as you know, we've had a number of guests on this month who have talked about the technology and things like that, so we can cover that just basically in regard to what you use and what you've seen work. But I think one of the most important things we can talk about with your experience is cultural difference. And so while the first few podcasts of this month have talked about, you know, what to do when it's a snowy day and if you're not too well teaching your local kids or teaching kids in your same country.

But you've got some experience now of teaching in other countries. So what are some of the factors that we haven't really explored in regard to this cultural difference and things you've gotta keep in mind?

Sarah: Okay, so one of the big cultural differences that I see is that, you know, particularly in the United States, in December, everybody does Christmas recitals. And you know, Christmas music is big. The piano [inaudible 00:07:00] all have their Christmas versions of it. Now, when I got to Copenhagen, I was so excited because my favorite Christmas music was actually provincial French carols. We lived down the street from the French school, and I was like, "Oh, my gosh! I've got French students, this'll be their music, and I'll really make a connection with them." And caroling is not a tradition in modern day France, and none of my students knew carols. And I'm like, "Oh, okay." So I had to kind of change my American "This is a great thing" to more European style of teaching.

So then when we got to Saudi Arabia, well, Saudis don't celebrate Christmas. They have Ramadan and Hajj and they have their Eids, and they are not tied to December. They move around through the year. And Christmas is a Christian religious holiday, so my ideas of, "Oh, Christmas music" just totally [inaudible 00:07:55]. And so you see a lot of people doing Christmas recitals in the United States, and some teachers sometimes get a little upset that their students don't wanna do Christmas music, or their students don't wanna do this kind of music. Or they don't even wanna be involved with that particular recital because it goes against their religious beliefs, which is totally fine.

And I think, when you start teaching overseas, it's not your culture that really matters, it's the culture of your students. So you don't teach "Silent Night" to Muslim students unless they are okay with it, you know. You always wanna get consent about the music that you're teaching, particularly if it has a religious bent. "Jingle Bells" is universal, so it seems like you could teach "Jingle Bells" and the secular carols very easily. You know, even "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" is very popular because I think "Jingle Bells," "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," and "Silent Night" are universal. Everybody knows them.

Tim: They're almost folk tunes, aren't they, sort of thing?

Sarah: Yeah. "Happy Birthday" is generally okay, but again, there are a few people that don't do birthday things. So you don't do birthday stuff. And so I think, the majority of students wanna learn how to play the piano because they wanna learn how to play songs and songs that relate to their culture. And if you give them songs that relate to your own culture, then that's not really what they're looking for.

Another thing that I found was really interesting is, in the Middle East, there's a Lebanese singer named Fairuz. And she's like the person that everybody in the Middle East, whether you're Saudi Arabian or... There's also an Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. And these women are iconic, and so you might have a lot of resistance in Middle Eastern culture to taking piano lessons, particularly if they're Western piano lessons. But I found that, if I could make some arrangements of some of these Middle Eastern songs that are universal, it was no longer about taking piano lessons. They were learning how to play Fairuz, and that was huge.

And you know, my adult students, I have Saudi adult students, and in the beginning, they were like, "Oh, I don't wanna learn this. This is what my parents listen to" or "This is, you know, baby music or whatever." But what they found is that, when they went home and they played that, it legitimized their own lessons. Because that's another interesting cultural thing. If you're coming from a culture that doesn't celebrate music, doesn't teach music in the school, and then there's some political reasons why music is not really up there, you don't have people saying, "Oh, my son is doing this," you know, getting everybody around the piano to show them off. So they're not getting a lot of support from home. There's not like, "Oh, great. This piano student is doing wonderfully at home." They have to kind of be self-starters.

Interestingly, though, the Lebanese are very culturally in tune, and you get students' parents who say, "I want my kid to play the Für Elise." And so they're not taking piano...