When I tell people I’m a music teacher, they’ll often assume I teach children. In fact, I have only one child in my studio at the moment, and since he just turned 18, I’m realizing he probably doesn’t count as a child anymore.

It’s not that I don’t like children; I do. I worked with many children for many years. I have my own children. I’m particularly fond of preschoolers, who are nakedly joyful and self-serving, tiny dervishes spreading chaos. When I teach children, it’s gratifying to watch them discover the joy of making music for themselves.

But I don’t think it’s happenstance that my current studio is made up almost entirely of adults, and that, over the years, the percentage of adults in my studio has climbed steadily toward 100%.

Teaching adults is, for me, pure joy. I wish I had the time and space to enumerate all the reasons adults make terrific students, but I’ll settle for sharing a few!

1) Adults want to be there.

With kids, you often (though not always) have to work to help them want to show up. AND you have to work to help their parents want to help them show up! Adults students do all this work for you. Adults show up joyfully. They show up because they are curious, because they want to grow, because they want help improving their skills and deepening their joy in music. They spend their own money and time to see you, heightening their sense of the value of lessons. Honestly, there are few students more pleasurable to teach then those who show up because they want to!

2) Adults have a past.

Kids come to music lessons with very similar sets of experiences, in that their life thus far has consisted of being a kid. Yes, children are individuals, and yes, they learn in different ways at different times with different supports. But on balance their instructional trajectories are more similar to one another than different.

With adults, it’s like drawing a wild card each and every time! The truth is if you’ve met one adult student, you’ve met…one adult student. Adults come with radically different sets of musical and non-musical experiences, ensuring you’ll be teaching very different things in very different ways. At 1:00 PM you might be helping a former homemaker with arthritis troubleshoot her lowest notes; at 2:00 PM you might be talking relaxation strategies with a music teacher. The amount of individualization you need to do with adults is robust, and that keeps things incredibly interesting!

3) Adults are your partners.

Perhaps my favorite thing about adults students is that they are collaborators in their own learning. The shape of this collaboration can vary– I have students who decide what they are going to play and what they would like me to help them with, and students who prefer that I guide the learning process. But in all cases, we are working together, as a team, to empower them to improve their skills. The process is dynamic, reflective, and iterative, building on itself over time. And it’s deeply fulfilling.

Are you an adult learner or a teacher of adults? What do you enjoy about the process?