Sally Jerde
Lesson Feesfrom $35.00 / 30 Minutes
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About
Hi there! My name is Sally Jerde and I am a private music teacher with a focus on violin, viola, and piano. I have been performing and teaching for over 20 years. Many of my students have gone on to study music in college and become professional performers and/or music teachers. I am comfortable teaching students from age 4-74. I began my teaching career in a Montessori program teaching pre-kinder music and movement classes. As an older college student, I stepped out of the classroom and began only teaching private, one-on-one lessons while building a small studio of selected students. After graduating from the University of South Florida with a Bachelor’s of Arts focusing on violin performance, I began my performance career. I performed with multiple professional symphonies around the state of Florida and toured with various Broadway tours, The Lion King being one example. I also toured with bands and solo artists such as Sarah Brightman and STYX. During this time, I also attended summer music festivals in Vermont, North Carolina, Montana, and Arkansas. As life progressed, I won a concertmaster position with a symphony in NW Montana. Because I was starting a family and settling down from being a traveling musician, once again, I focused my energy on teaching music. I studied and earned my certification in Kindermusik and Suzuki E.C.C. I opened a school for music and theater lessons with a partner and we successfully ran this school until 2020. As the concertmaster for the area's symphony, I did many outreach concerts at rural elementary schools and began teaching some of the students I met at these concerts online to provide music lessons to families that were unable to commute into town for lessons due to weather or extreme distance. I am a current and active member of the Music Teachers National Association. My husband and I have 3 beautiful sons ranging the ages of 10-20. Our family has recently moved back to my hometown of SW Florida where I am homeschooling my two youngest boys and teaching violin and piano from my home. We have 3 dogs, Penny, Gizmo, and Noodle and 1 tortoise named Toni. As a family we love going paddle boarding at the beaches along the Gulf of Mexico and kayaking down the beautiful rivers Florida offers.
I do not believe in “cookie cutter” music lessons. I do make sure that all of my students know and understand the basic theory of music as they progress through their lessons, but I know that some will learn easier by learning to play their pieces by rote. I balance our lessons with games and repetition of technique. We start each lesson with gentle body and mind warm ups (scales, arpeggios, etudes) to get ourselves ready to focus on the new skills and musical ideas we will be working on. We will then move on to review our last lesson and talk about what we learned and then move forward into our new ideas and pieces for the current week. I will always leave a few minutes at the end of our lessons to gently review what we discussed and answer any questions about new information. I take notes throughout the lesson and send them to my students afterwards. I do like to have a comfortable and trusting relationship with each of my students, so I will spend a few minutes here and there asking about their week. Maybe they had a sports meet or exams…
I know that kiddos these days have a lot of pressure on them to be their best. I encourage them to use music as a way to unwind and take their minds off of their daily responsibilities.
National Music Teachers Association
I was trained as a Suzuki student and also have taken Suzuki teacher training, so I implement a lot of ear training in our lessons. For violin and viola lessons, I will send YouTube links for scales and the pieces they are working on. Depending on their skill level and style of music they are learning, we will use various etude books (Wohlfart, Sevcik, Faber First Position Etudes) and repertoire books (Suzuki, Mark O’Connor, Solos for Young Violinists).
For my piano students I generally use the Piano Pronto series and A Dozen A Day. I will supplement from musical literature outside of traditional method books based on what interests each particular student. For example, I have one student learning a song from Minecraft and another working on Billy Joel’s Piano Man. I encourage my students to bring me songs they want to learn! This encourages listening to songs they love in a different way. They realize they can actually play these beloved melodies, not just enjoy someone else performing them.