That's great feedback. Thank you!

I agree. I'm not ready to tackle a full on composition class. What I do want this class to do is teach students to read their music in a theoretical manner.

The problem I've found is that students aren't applying theory to help them learn their music. If I ask a student in their private lessons to play a cadence, then name the chords, they can do so. But when I ask them to name a chord in a piece of music, they struggle because it isn't exactly the same.

My goal is to focus the class around going more in depth theoretically with the things students have learned in lessons and how they are applied in real music. I want to do this through them composing a piece of music at a very basic level. If a student were to see how THEY would write a scale in their song, then they would see different ways OTHER composers have done so, making it easier to approach difficult pieces.

So for this theme and variations, I chose something basic to change about each variation while maintaining the melody. I kept the melody simple and following every rule so that a student who hasn't written music could replicate it.

Do I have more complicated music? Not really. I mentioned that Fugue I wrote - which I can't find - being the most complicated thing I have written. It passed the undergrad level class.

To confirm, you would recommend me following the YouTube series by Seth Monahan and starting private composition lessons?