A Reason to Celebrate

I don't think there's any magic formula for teaching students how to practice. Wouldn't it be nice if that existed?! Or if students could somehow be programmed into becoming good practicers?

It's a constant struggle for me to impart good practice techniques and habits to my students and find ways to make sure that they sink in. And despite my best efforts, I feel like I'm often offering the same suggestions and advice over and over.

Once in a while, however, I find that some of what I've said has actually stuck! Those are the times I celebrate.

Yesterday, one of my students and I were discussing the need to make sure the details were part of the music; things like the dynamics and an idea of the mood and suggested speed.

That's when he turned to me and said:

"Yeah, I was practicing this week and I was really having a hard time with this piece. Then I looked at the tempo and realized that I was trying to play it too fast. I slowed it down and I thought it made a big difference. Then I was playing it this morning and I think it was one of the best times I'd ever played it."

There it was! From his own mouth, completely unsolicited by me! He'd taken the initiative at home to pay attention, and found out all on his own that those details do make a big difference! Definitely a moment to celebrate. I especially love it when my students make these kind of discoveries all on their own rather than through my constant nagging. 

Have you had any reasons to celebrate in your studio recently?

I Know I'm Late...

Students and parents come up with some pretty interesting excuses for not being on time to their lessons. I'm sure we all have our share of stories! :) But what happened at one of my lessons last night was just too cute not to share.

A mother and daughter showed up about 10 minutes late for their lesson. Their excuse? The mom says:

"I couldn't get her to stop practicing!"

You can't be too upset with that kind of excuse, can you?! And especially since this was coming from a student who had been a real complainer about practicing until we tried something new this term. She's improved tremendously in both attitude and practice this term, and I'm so proud of her!

What interesting excuses have your students come up with recently to excuse late arrivals? ;)

Celebrating a Breakthrough!

Teaching can be a frustrating business. Sometimes it seems that no matter what we do as teachers, a student reaches a point where they give up. I've had my share of experiences like that over the years, but I've also experienced some real successes with students, and I try to dwell on those positive experiences more than the negative.

I have a student who has been taking for about 2 years. When she first started lessons she was super enthusiastic and practiced with diligence every week. She was a fast learner and ate up her music.

Then something happened last fall. We really started having problems. She started hating practice, was having trouble remembering even the most basic music concepts, and was considering quitting piano. Thankfully, her mom was not willing to let her give up so easily, so we came up with a plan that I implemented this spring.

We scaled WAY back in lesson material, moving back to My First Piano Adventures to re-learn notes and review interval reading. I was a little worried that this would not go over well, but it's been a fabulous decision! The student LOVES the book and the songs, and her mom is playing along with her each week using the duet parts. I've seen a dramatic increase in her reading skills.

To help keep things interesting, we're also working on several pieces that are a bit more at her level so that she feels like she's working on something besides just the basics. But every week I try to apply what we're working on in the MFPA to the other pieces, and she's making the connections.

The biggest surprise was yesterday when she showed up for her lesson with 5 days of practice and over 100 minutes logged for the week! That hasn't happened in probably about a year- we'd gotten to the point where getting her to practice was like pulling teeth. But this new approach has made all the difference in the world. She has started enjoying practice again and looks forward to her lessons.

Have you ever experienced a breakthrough like this, where a student is just about ready to give up but you're able to develop a plan that helps them re-discover their love for music? It takes a little bit of extra effort, but it's SO worth it when you see their passion for music rekindled!

Question of the Week: January 16, 2012 - Guiding Weekly Practice

It happens periodically with practically every student: they hit a wall. Whether it's resistance to practice, a period of little or no forward progress, or just a general lack of enthusiasm toward piano, every student seems to hit one of those walls from time to time. That's when our jobs as teachers can become tough as we attempt to find the magic piece that will spark enthusiasm or look for ways to help progress happen.

I'm at that point with a student right now who seems to be stuck in a progress rut. I was thinking that it was perhaps just a symptom of the Christmas season, but we're into the January term and it seems to be sticking.

I started off the new year with a new plan- as we review each piece in the lesson we take some time before moving on to develop a specific practice plan for the coming week. I used to just give all the ideas, but I'm attempting to make this process more interactive so that it sticks over the week.

The main problem is that I just don't see our plan put into action over the week. The same problems persist from week to week- even when we isolate sections in lessons and agree to focus on them over the week.

Have you found yourself in a similar situation with a student who wasn't willing to take the steps to make progress over the week? How did you motivate them? Do you have any tricks that helped them start taking disciplined practice more seriously? I'd love to hear some ideas from more experienced teachers on what works and what doesn't work- so share your comments!

Spring 2012 Practice Incentive: A Garden of Music!

I opted for a springy, garden-type theme for our contest, because even though it's only the early days of January, this teacher is already longing for spring!

Each student will begin with a butterfly and a caterpillar head. Every week their caterpillar will grow longer and longer as they add pom-pom segments for every 100 minutes of practice. On a separate page, the butterflies are on a quest for the flower garden, and every week they'll flutter closer depending on how many days of practice they've accomplished.

However, our flower garden needs a little help getting started! Good thing my students can help with that. ;) For every song they memorize, they get to plant a flower in the garden of music.

Below you'll see a copy of the handout each student will receive for their binders at their first lesson next week. I'm hoping that this will get my studio excited about lessons starting up again!

Question of the Week: September 19, 2011- The Slump

I want to take a little time this morning to take a brief survey with the help of other teachers. It's only my third week into the fall term, and I'm already beginning to experience what I call "the slump".

Several students have shown up for lessons this week with little or no practice logged. One student even had the guts to tell me he'd "forgotten about practicing".

Over and above this, the level of focus among my students was way off this week as well, and I had a hard time reining in the energy and maintaining any kind of focus.

I always find this phenomenon occurs about mid-term, after the first month or so of lessons has passed and the reality of the recital hasn't quite hit home. I've never had it hit so early. Two weeks ago we were just started off, setting our goals, and talking about what we wanted to accomplish this fall.

Over the years as I've taught, I've seen this slump slowly shifting earlier and earlier each term, and lasting longer and longer. It seems that students just don't have the enthusiasm and discipline that I expect them to have. On top of this, the parents also share their attitudes and don't make disciplined practice a priority, rather, they'll come in and make excuses for their kids and expect me to be the one to pick up the slack.

I am just curious if other teachers out there are noticing this type of trend in their respective areas? Do you find my observations to be relevant and applicable to your own studios? Have you dealt with this in the past? Do you have any ideas for how to breathe fresh inspiration even when it seems to be needed in the first month of the term?

I'm not meaning for this to be a negative post, I'm just sharing my observations and looking for feedback and (hopefully) some advice from more experienced teachers. If you wouldn't mind taking a few moments to share your own experiences by commenting, I'd love to get a good discussion going on this topic!

Crazy About Scales!

As a musician, one of my favorite ways to start a practice session is with scales. As practice time is often limited, I don't always take the time to do so, but when I do I have SO MUCH FUN!

I don't know when my little love affair with scales started, but I think it was sometime in college when my teacher showed me all the many ways I could get creative with scales and arpeggios. Up to that point, scales had been super boring and monotonous- 4 octaves ascending and descending with the metronome, arpeggios, cadences...where's the fun in that?! But a whole new world of possibilities was opened up to me when I realized I could play scales in parallel 3rds/6ths/10ths, perform both scales and arpeggios in parallel and contrary motion, vary my dynamics, articulation, rhythm...it was exhilarating! Suddenly scales transformed from boring drills into exciting, creative experiments. I started to enjoy that part of my daily warm-up so much more and continue to enjoy it to this day.

Having the rare opportunity to warm-up with scales yesterday reminded me again how much I enjoy them and also got me thinking about the role we as teachers have in finding creative ways to inspire our students. There are teachers who merely teach, then there are those who inspire. I make it my goal to be the type who inspires.

What does it mean to be a teacher who inspires? It means constantly thinking outside of the box and looking for creative ways to approach new concepts. It means embracing new ideas rather than sticking with the tried and true. It means taking the time to learn what makes each student tick and then finding ways to teach to those specific needs. It means being willing to make mistakes. It means being a teacher who teaches with excellence but also has fun!

Being this type of teacher does mean more work. It's a lot easier to stick to the middle of the road and never go outside the boundaries of what's comfortable looking for new ideas. But the incredible rewards of the extra work make it all worthwhile!

So what do you do to inspire your students and motivate yourself to go the extra mile to make sure it happens? Did you ever have a break-through moment as a student where a particular teacher made a musical concept come alive for you?

Re-Thinking Practice: Week 1

If you read my post on the group lesson activity on practice I planned, you already know that I have made it my goal to emphasize practice over the remainder of the spring piano term in my studio.

Taking the ideas introduced in group lesson and branching out from there, here's how I've been implementing the concept of better practice in my studio this week.

First, I enlarged and printed off the handouts I passed out to my students and hung them on the wall in my home studio- hopefully as an eyecatching reminder that I can reference with my students in the future.

Then, I spent some time thinking about the number 1 item on both charts and created a handout for students to fill out at the beginning of their lessons this past week to help them think about better practice. I plan to do this each week to help my students internalize good practice habits. I got all kinds of responses from my students- all the way from one student who took almost 20 minutes to fill her sheet out (I finally had to call it to a close since I wanted to get some playing time in!) to one student who looked a the sheet and 10 seconds later told me, "I don't know how to answer any of these" (yeah right- I don't think he'd even had time to read any of the questions, much less think about answers ;) ).

Finally, I'm getting creative and developing some alert stickers for my students! This weeks' stickers centered around spots in the music where students may have experienced a 'fumble', or sections where they speed ahead and forget to pay attention to details or wrong notes and rhythms

(a turtle reminds them to slow down, or they'll receive a 'speeding ticket' ). I'm hoping that putting these fun stickers on the music will make my students more conscious of their mistakes and help them be better listeners while they're playing.

This afternoon I'll be working on the handout for week 2- and some new stickers :)

Quick Tips for Better Practice

I have a student coming this afternoon whose mother just had her third child, meaning that he's been doing a good deal of practice on his own over the past month. He's a younger student as well as a quick learner, but I've been noticing that his practice habits lately haven't been as disciplined as I'd like them to be. He loves to speed through the music without taking the time to count or take in other details (I have a feeling he'll be getting a fair number of my new 'speeding tickets' but more on that in an upcoming post). So I took a few moments this morning to write up a short handout I'm going to staple into his practice notebook for him to use over the week at home. Hopefully this will help him be a bit more conscientious when he sits down to practice!

What do you do to help younger students whose home practice sometimes leaves a few things to be desired?! Anything you'd add to my list?

Group Lesson Activity: Best and Worst Practice Habits

While I haven't been nearly as productive this week as I had planned, I did want to share some of the fruits of my labors from group lessons. Here is one activity I used in all but my very earliest beginning group:

I found this great Top 10 Best and Worst Ways to Practice list posted on Marcia Vahls' Piano Perspectives blog. I loved the post and thought it would be a great item to present to my students.

I designed a colorful handout for each student to put in their binders, but I also wanted to spend a bit more time focusing on these concepts so that they'd hopefully retain them! So I ended each group lesson with an activity using the list- I printed off and cut out both lists and mixed them up. Up on the wall was a column for "Best Ways to Practice" and "Worst Ways to Practice". Each student had to pick one of the pieces of paper, read it, decide whether it belonged under the "best" or "worst" heading, and place it in the right spot. Sometimes the individual student decided, other times we all voted just to make it more fun! :)

As each group of students left and were given the handout I had designed, it was really cool to see them actually reading it, saying "Oh, I do that!" and sharing it with their parents.

I'm going to be further discussing these ideas in lessons over the coming weeks, but more on that later (I'm still tweaking)! In the meantime, the handout I designed for the group lesson can be found under the printables tab.

Question of the Week: March 21, 2011- Using Theory Books

When I started student teaching back in high school (I won't date myself here... ;) ), my mentor didn't use theory books. In fact, she used an entirely different method than I use now.

So when I started out on my own and switched to using Piano Adventures, I was, understandably so, a bit prejudiced against the use of the corresponding Theory Book. There were a number of reasons. First, as a piano student I hadn't really been exposed to systematic theory training perse. I did do some theory testing as a young student, but that stopped as I got older. Second, I can still remember my horror when one of my teachers in middle school tried to give me a theory book. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. Third, it was outside of my teaching comfort-zone, and as a new teacher I wanted to minimize the uncharted territory as much as possible.

So for a few years, I supplemented. We did theory in lessons and group lessons, and I made scales and pentascales a part of the lesson, but no theory books appeared. For technique I used the Treasures in Technique series published by FJH rather than the corresponding Technique and Artistry books.

Then just in the past year or two, I decided to do the unthinkable! I introduced both the Theory and Technique and Artistry books into my teaching repertoire! It was a bit of a learning curve, but I managed to adjust.

However, as this term continues, I'm starting to rethink that decision yet again. I am pretty pleased with the Technique and Artistry supplement, but Theory has been a bit more of a challenge.

Theory is the part of the weekly assignment my students most often overlook, and complain about the most. I try to assign it as homework for the students to do over the week as a supplement to what we've learned in the lesson (after explaining the requirements of course) but I often find myself wasting lesson time trying to get kids to 'finish up' uncompleted pages.

So here's my question:

How much emphasis do you, as teachers, put on theory book assignments each week? Is theory inseparable from lesson and technique, or do you supplement with other theory materials? Is it too much to expect every child to do work in a theory book each week?

A few further thoughts from me. I had two students (siblings in fact!) who both recently moved up to the next level in Piano Adventures. After some deliberation, I decided not to provide theory books for them. Neither one practices as much as I'd like them to, and I'd rather they spend their limited practice time focusing on technique and the material in their lesson book rather than adding something else to the mix. We do worksheets and games from time to time to drill theoretical concepts, and the students actually look forward to these breaks from the normal routine.

Contrast this with another younger student who actually throws temper tantrums each week (so I'm told by his mom) when she tries to get him to do his theory homework...

I'm still undecided on this issue, and as you can see, am in the process of a few 'test cases'. But in the meantime, I'd love to hear some feedback from other teachers!

Question of the Week: March 14, 2011

Yeah, it's Thursday- I'm a bit behind. ;) But the week's not over yet, so I wanted to get some feedback on an issue I've been seeing in my studio over the past few weeks. I've been having students come to lessons and tell me that they didn't have enough material to practice over the previous week. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm always willing to assign more and raise the bar if my students are willing to fulfill their side of the bargain...but with all of these aforementioned students this was how the lesson panned out:

As we progressed through the lesson material I found that in each case specific instructions I'd set forth the previous week had been ignored. One student was working to memorize a song and had been struggling with a specific phrase. After our discussion on the importance of focusing on that particular phrase over the week, they returned with the same problems and told me they hadn't spent any extra time on that phrase over the week. Another student brashly told me that they 'hadn't gotten to' several of their pieces, another had uncompleted theory homework...and yet they were telling me that they hadn't had enough material to work on!

As I teacher, I try hard to find a balance between too much and too little, and in giving assignments I am very specific- I write out detailed instructions for each piece. Even with all these precautions, I still find my students lacking the discipline to complete their assignments or listen to instructions.

So what do you do to help make sure your students are disciplined and actually follow your instructions? Any tips to help me regain sanity in this regard?

An Excellent Article on Sequential Warm-Ups

It's a busy day for me here between juggling lessons and then Ash Wednesday service at church, but I wanted to share an excellent article I read yesterday regarding piano warm-ups.

I have to admit that I probably don't put enough emphasis on this as a teacher. While I typically have my students start with scales in lessons and when they practice at home and then move on to technique (either from Piano Adventure or some other type of technical warm-up), I probably don't spend enough time emphasizing why this is so important.

I've been trying to improve in this regard, and that's why I so appreciated a recent blog post from Jason over at The Piano Pedagogy Page. He discusses the importance of sequential warm-ups as part of the student's weekly lesson. I totally agree with him! I'm going to see if I can make this type of approach to warm-ups more a part of my weekly lessons, while helping my students understand just why it's so important.

Has anyone else had success with taking time for sequential warm-up at the start of each lesson? I'd love to hear your thoughts and any tips you may have to help students understand the importance of thorough warm-ups!

Is Piano Practicing Ever Fun?

Is Piano Practicing Ever Fun? | Piano Teachers Federation

I came across this excellent article published by Dr. Joseph Line at the Piano Teacher's Federation the other day, and I've been mulling over it ever since. It addresses a lot of the attitudes that we as teachers may adopt toward students that can actually be harmful in the long run. It's also brought to mind several issues I have with our current education system and the American attitude toward education in general, but that's a topic for another post! Hope this inspires all you teachers out there to rethink how we present the concept of practice to our students.

Keeping a Positive Teaching Attitude

"No matter how far removed the student's product is from the ideal, there is always a way of starting from a positive angle." - Christos Tsitsaros in Creative Piano Teaching

January has been a great month in my studio. My students have been motivated, they've been enjoying lessons, and it's been a very positive few weeks of lessons. But for some reason this first week of February is not continuing the trend. It's not been a very positive week so far. And I think I know why. We've had a good deal of snow here in Maryland over the past week, and some kids haven't been in school for almost a week. Now, you'd think that so much time off would result in more practice, but (speaking as a previous student) I know that just the opposite often happens. A few days without the normal routine and motivation goes down the drain!

That being said, I've seen this unfortunate trend reflected in lessons thus far this week. Practice is way down, motivation and excitement aren't there, and progress hasn't been made like I'd hoped. I've been tempted several times to give in to a negative attitude in lessons, especially when students return with the same mistakes we had fixed in last week's lesson or continue to struggle with the same passage even after a week's worth of practice on their part.

That's why I found this quote so convicting today as I was reading. As teachers, we have two options. We can either tear down or build up. That's not to say that we should overlook problems or issues and just smile and say "that was great!" no matter what. There is a positive way to correct. But as a teacher, I feel that I should never react to a poor performance or a week where a student's progress has been less than acceptable with sarcasm, harsh criticism, or a 'let's fix this' attitude that makes the student feel like a failure.

Instead, I try to focus on the positive and move on from there. Yes, the rhythm might have been incorrect, but what about the dynamics? Did they miss a note there- maybe- but they managed to maintain a steady speed as well.

This style of teaching takes a lot more effort! It's a lot harder to maintain a positive attitude and find a way of correcting problems that doesn't leave a student feeling discouraged and completely trashed by their teacher. But I want to be the kind of teacher students enjoy taking lessons from and don't approach with fear. I want to creatively help my students to achieve excellence and feel they can succeed, even if they have an off lesson or two.

Easy to say, not so easy to do. But as I slog through the rest of this week, I'm determined to keep a positive attitude and foster an encouraging environment with my students.

Question of the Week: Jan. 24, 2011

To continue with this month's theme of rhythm/pulse/beat/etc...

Do you require your students to count out loud, and if so, do you have any hints/tips/ideas on how to make it something fun?

I'm hoping to get some really great tips on how to make counting less of a chore for my students!

"Are You Going to Cross This One Off?"

Does anybody else have students like this? Students who view the sole purpose of the lesson being getting the piece(s) from last week 'crossed off' so they can move on to the next piece(s)? I have a particular student who predictably turns to me after the completion of each piece at his lesson and says:

"Are you going to cross this one off?"

It happens every week, at every lesson, after every piece, without fail. Never mind how well or badly he may have performed the piece, for some reason he conceives the whole process to be:

1) I play the piece 2) You cross it off 3) We move on

Not exactly! I've patiently explained to him time and time again that there is more to learning a piece of music than just playing it and getting it crossed off. I'll ask questions like: "Did you add in all the dynamics?", "was the rhythm correct here?", "were you counting", "what is your hand position in this measure", etc. and together we'll discover if the piece is really truly learned.

You see, I believe that learning a piece is about more than just getting it 'crossed off'. There's more than just the printed notes. There are the extra details that make it come alive. And there's a difference between a performance where the student painfully struggles to make it through at even a slow tempo with half-hearted execution of dynamics, articulation, and hand position changes, and a performance where the student confidently incorporates all those details at a steady tempo that assures me they have a firm grasp of the piece. And more than that, that they have a firm grasp of the concept the piece was written to teach.

Each piece in a lesson book teaches or reinforces a concept, and as teachers we need to be aware of just what that something is and whether or not our students understand it before we cross off the piece and move on. Jason over at The Piano Pedagogy Page had an excellent post on just that issue that I stumbled upon the other day. As a teacher, there are times when I give in to the 'Cross It Off and Move On' syndrome, because it's the easy way. Students tend to gripe when they have to work on a piece for another week. But if we want our students to have a firm musical foundation, that's a small price to pay.

I've made it a goal to start making sure each piece is learned, and learned well, before we cross it off and move on. This involves talking through the piece with each student after the performance and helping them to discover (with a little help from me!) just how well-executed their performance was. Hopefully over time my students will not only become better performers, but better critical listeners as well.

Positive Report on Student's Metronome Struggles

Last week in my follow-up posting about metronome use I shared a lesson where I had this very fact quite realistically demonstrated to me by one of my students.

Well, I'm happy to report that this week's lesson was a complete success! My student arrived and immediately played the song- with pretty near perfect rhythm! And when I asked if metronome practice had been part of the weekly practice, they replied in the affirmative.

If you're like me, each week of teaching provides enough moments when you're about to tear your hair out that one success like this is worth talking about! I was greatly encouraged to see that student had not only followed directions, but had worked hard at fixing the problem. Wish more of my students followed this example!

My Thoughts on Metronome Practice (This Week's QotW)

At the beginning of the week, I posed this question:

How important do you feel the metronome is for daily practice in your studio? Do you make it a requirement or just a suggestion? Can it be overused?

And, wouldn't you know it, I had the perfect illustration of the usefulness of metronome practice this week! I had a student working on memorizing a piece who came back to me this week super excited about the work he'd put into memorization. And then he started playing...

The rhythm was TOTALLY wrong! I sat there and listened to him perform, cringing through the entire performance as his rhythm errors continued throughout the piece. At the end, I handed him back the music, discussed a few of the pertinent areas, and then we tried it again- this time with the metronome. And guess what- the counting problems magically fixed themselves!

I had asked him to practice with the metronome while memorizing the piece, but since I could tell it hadn't happened (hence the rhythm errors!) I stressed again that he MUST ALWAYS practice this week with the metronome.

It's amazing to me how students can really not seem to hear their rhythm mistakes, even when they are counting out loud. Sometimes, just relying on a students' own ability to count just isn't enough. Enter the metronome.

As my studio continues to grow, I've become increasingly convinced as to the indispensability of the metronome in daily practice. Not only does it force the student to slow down, it also ensures the students feels and maintains a steady pulse.

I don't often use a metronome with my younger students, except maybe as a fun exploratory exercise, but for those who are at a late elementary level and beyond, I think it's too valuable of an asset to overlook.

Whether you make metronome practice a suggestion or a requirement depends largely on the individual. Some students take every suggestion to heart and follow through, others won't and need more specific directions (ie orders!). If you know your students well, you should be able to tell which method is needed.

Finally, can the metronome be overused? I think so. While some practice is essential to help a student in developing pulse and learning the benefit of slow practice, too much metronome work can result in a lack of musical expression and a rubato feel. Students need to understand the value of pulse, but also the fact that a good sense of pulse is relative to the larger construct of the piece as a whole, and that each piece will require a different emphasis.

So there you have it, my rather wordy answer to the QotW! Hope this gave you some food for thought. Stay tuned for next week's question.

New Question of the Week Series

At this point, there aren't too many people reading my blog, but my hope is that that will change over time! In light of that fact, I've decided to post a question each Monday for feedback through the coming week. It may be a question pertaining to my personal skills as a pianist, an issue about church musicianship, or a teaching dilemma I'm at a loss as to how to handle. Through the week I'll ask other readers to provide feedback or suggestions.

So...here's the first installment of my new QotW Series:

How important do you feel the metronome is for daily practice in your studio? Do you make it a requirement or just a suggestion? Can it be overused?