How Do You Not Know This???

This year, I have inherited some students from other teachers. Teaching students who have experience with another teacher is always a hit or miss thing. Either, they have solid technique and strong skills that we can build on, or they have sloppy technique and lack back skills. This year, I have encountered more of the latter, and I have to be the one to correct years of bad habits or fill in the missing knowledge gaps. This is a bit frustrating at times when I know the student is not thrilled with me and my constant reminders to not let their wrists drop or not just giving the answers for how to count a particular rhythm, all the while I'm wondering "How do you not know this??? What did your last teacher do???" But I have to balance this with the realization that there are plenty of things that I have let students get away with and could be doing the same thing to another teacher...leaving messes to clean up. This makes me up my game and make extra sure that I'm not allowing my students to get away with making the same mistakes over and over again. Or making sure that I remind them of the same thing one more time to make sure they get it right. If my goal for my students is that they be independent as soon as possible, that means that I will teach them the thought processes and problem solving skills that they need, so a student who has been playing for eight years doesn't need someone to spoon feed them all their fingerings and counts, so they can figure it out on their own and ask for a teachers advice for the particularly challenging parts. As the years go by, I want my role to change from teacher to mentor and adviser and the way to do that is by equipping students for the challenges they will face in their music study and encouraging their efforts to solve the problems for themselves once they have a solid foundation.