TEACHING

Philosophy

I am dedicated to providing personalized instruction for my students. With all flute students, I spend time discussing their personal goals with them in order to have distinct focuses during practice and instruction.

I am focused on fundamentals in my teaching because I strongly believe that fundamentals, whether taught to beginners or maintained for more advanced flutists, are essential to success in flute performance. During lessons, my students regularly perform major scales, the chromatic scale, long tones, and other fundamental exercises catered to each individual student. When students have a particular goal, I often create my own exercises geared toward helping students reach their goals.

In line with my focus on fundamentals, I spend some time during most lessons instructing my students in music theory. I believe that music theory is crucial to more efficient and complete understanding of music. I provide my own worksheets to the students as assignments between lessons, and I ask that students practice their music theory skills on an online music theory site.

As a student myself, I understand the importance of students receiving instruction on concepts that they want to strengthen. I am enthusiastic about helping flutists to reach their goals and build strong fundamental flute skills.

Experience

I have experience teaching young flutists in one-on-one and group settings, as well as individually in person and virtually. I am the Director of Chamber Flutes of New Jersey Youth Symphony, a group comprised of young flutists working to advance their music theory, flute, and ensemble playing skills to advance more broadly as musicians. I am on faculty at Wharton Arts, where I instruct students in grades 3-11 during weekly private flute lessons. I recently taught flute, clarinet, and music theory to students in grades 4-12 at the Morris School District Summer Music Academy. For my individual students, I send personalized emails after lessons to inform students in writing of some reminders of their focuses for the week, their assignments to be performed in the next lesson, and one or a few YouTube videos of flute performances (solo, chamber, orchestral, band--a variety of videos). I think it is very important that I make students aware of skilled performers and well-written repertoire for them to listen to in performance.

I have been accepted to honor bands and orchestras at the local, region, all-state, and international level. I also completed successful auditions at a variety of universities. Based on my experiences, I feel confident that I can offer students instruction that will lead to successful auditions.

My students' recent accomplishments include acceptance to The College of New Jersey's Honors Wind Ensemble, acceptance to North Jersey Junior Area Band (principal flute) and North Jersey Senior Area Band, and acceptance to the music degree program at Skidmore College in New York.

Inquiries

If you are interested in coachings or lessons with me, please email me at seliamyersflute@gmail.com. I currently provide 45-minute and 60-minute lessons. I accept payment via PayPal.

I am open to teaching in-person (in the Morris County, New Jersey area) or virtually.