@ jb1966-
Nicely put, it really is a classic case of the journey being as valuable as the end result. While teacher recommendations are valuable places to start, a teacher your private teacher is set on, or the school, may not be the best one for the student, music teachers have their own biases (in my S’s case, his teacher in high school recommended some teachers, that when my son saw them, realized they were just like his his school teacher, specifically the negative things he was looking not to repeat, another one she recommended ended up being his teacher, who he loves). And you never know, that teacher you saw and loved might be a lifeboat if the teacher you decided upon turns out not to work, or could end up being who you study with in grad school. One of the biggest lessons I learned with this whole journey is that it is a continuous path of discovery, kind of like peeling an onion (and sometimes just as eye watering lol), and that anything you do to increase your knowledge, or explore things, ends up giving a more clear picture of a somewhat nebulous process.