I welcome students of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds to my studio, from musicians just beginning their journey to students preparing college auditions. I believe in compassionate education that promotes excellence and a life-long love of learning.
Please contact me if you would like to set up a trial lesson
Teaching Philosophy
My ultimate goal is for my students to develop self-efficacy, which is the belief that through their own effort and hard work, they can achieve their goals. By cultivating this belief, I hope that my students will feel empowered to dream big and work hard. In my studio, I focus on developing three main qualities:
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1. Self-Belief: I teach students to believe in themselves by demonstrating my own belief in them unconditionally. I will always encourage my students and hold them to high standards, even when they begin to doubt themselves. I will work with students to develop high levels of technique, musicianship, and expression. In turn, students will be expected to come to each lesson prepared with scales, etudes, and repertoire. By expecting excellence from all my students, I hope that they learn to expect excellence from themselves. 2. Strategic Learning: I believe in teaching students how to learn, rather than just how to follow directions. Inspired by the research of Molly Gebrian, our lessons focus on developing practice habits and strategies that have been scientifically shown to support learning in any subject. Specifically, my students will learn how to set goals, develop practice strategies, and think critically about their learning. |
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3. Grit: Based the research of Carol Dweck, I believe that perhaps the biggest predictor of student success lies in their ability to recover from setbacks. I teach resilience by being there for my students when they fail and guiding them when they get back up. To me, failure is a crucial part of the learning process that needs to be addressed head-on rather than treated as a sensitive subject. By teaching students to be honest and constructive with failure, they can learn to reframe failure as a learning opportunity rather than any sort of personal deficit. Students will be expected to perform at recitals, exams, and auditions throughout the year. Through all of those experiences, I will always be there to celebrate their successes and coach them through their setbacks
Programs my Students Have Attended:
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Testimonials
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"Narain is a wonderful teacher, and we feel so fortunate to have connected with him when we moved to San Francisco! His high expectations motivate us to practice and stretch our skills, while he also graciously meets us where we are each week and adapts our lessons to respond to questions or needs as they come up. He is very attentive to form, noticing and suggesting even seemingly minor adjustments that have major impacts on both physical comfort and quality of sound. Narain is great at explaining the mechanics of how we play, often with great metaphors or quick demonstrations to illuminate a concept, and I appreciate the way he asks us as students to observe our own experience and make inferences about how we might improve. He brings that same creativity to teaching how to read music, with a wide variety of games to help us learn notation, rhythm, and dynamics. He is also very organized, clearly communicating about lesson plans and continuing practice, as well as offering additional opportunities like a joint recital coming up in a few weeks. Above all, Narain is knowledgeable, kind, encouraging, challenging, affirming, and fun!" – Candice (Parent) & Elijah (Student), 2022 |
“I feel so lucky to have found Narain as my violin teacher. I was a complete violin beginner and Narain was extremely patient and helpful with getting me started on the violin. When I encounter difficulties, Narain always finds the most efficient method for fixing my problems. He is also an amazing musician and his violin playing motivates me. Because of Narain, I have made great improvements on the violin and now I enjoy playing this instrument!” – Vivien (Student), 2022 “Narain is a great teacher. He is extremely patient and detail oriented. He explains the techniques and focus points very well and make them easy to understand and follow by kids. And he always shares the tips to play clean and to sound better. We also like that he would introduce different play styles to students and let the students decide their own way to play.” – Anonymous, 2022 Narain tries “to understand underlying issues of the kids and give different ways to solve them. Trigger the kids to think and bring up their own music in a right way.” – Jetty (Parent), 2022 |