Hi there, my name is Amanda. I live in downtown (central) Kingston with my instruments, husband, daughter, and many plants.
Lesson times are after-school, evenings, and weekends. I try to offer flexibility in lessons and to accommodate families' schedules. Lessons are generally 30 or 60 minutes.
I teach students of all ages, from young children to adults on tuba, piano, and sometimes bagpipes. Some current students are beginner piano and tuba students, and others are working on Conservatory Exams (I have taught up to Grade 9 piano), and others at many different levels for their enjoyment. I am familiar and have used Faber and Faber piano books, Alfred’s piano series, and Conservatory books (new and old, as they keep adding to the repertoire for each level)
Music is my passion and I hope to share it with others. I take pride in building relationships (often I will have a student for many years) and try to offer flexibility with lessons. Zoom has helped with that! While in person is great, there have been some advantages to online as an option.
Lessons are very routine-based and I try to share knowledge along the way as much as I can. I really enjoyed theory as a student so I enjoy teaching it along with piano or tuba as well.
Mondays through Fridays during the daytime, I am an elementary school teacher in Kingston, Ontario in the Limestone District School Board. I have worked at this school for seven years now. I previously taught in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I love my school job then coming home for music lessons. It's a nice balance.
I have played some concerts with the Kingston Symphony Orchestra, the Kingston Symphony Brass Quintet, as well as BrassWerks (Brass ensemble in Kingston, Ontario). I also play the bagpipes and have played with pipe bands in Ontario and Nova Scotia.
ONLINE
Since COVID-19 began, lessons began on Zoom or FaceTime (whatever the family prefers). What a new experience that was! Tuba students had to find an angle to show me their mouth and valves. Piano students had to find a spot where the whole keyboard was (hopefully) visible.
For music theory, students (or parents, but students did this immediately after the lessons and it was handy), would email me pages of theory (usually from an iPad they were using for the lesson) and we would generally discuss them the next lesson. For students requiring any sort of written work such as music history, we had been using Google Docs which worked very well.
Now that I have become familiar with lessons online, I hope to use this platform whenever it is necessary (such as an outbreak or closure) but also as make-up lessons (from in-person lessons) in the future.
***********************************************
Please feel free to reach out with any more questions!
(Degrees: Bachelor of Music from Queen’s University School of Music in 2010. Bachelor of Education Concurrent Education Program in 2011. ARCT diploma in Tuba Performance (2009). ARCT diploma in Piano Performance (2012).