Five Vital Skills for Piano Students

1. Time management + the ability to say NO! Everyone's time is valuable.  You cannot get good at piano and everything else at the same time.  We recommend that our students limit their extra-curricular activities to a total of 2  (if you have piano lessons and church youth group, you've reached your quota).  
2. Consistency.  Practicing for 2 hours twice a week, every other week is far less effective than practicing a little each day.  Also, taking the summer off is a bad idea.  In two months of missed lessons, all of the skills that we work so hard on during the year atrophy.  Even worse, students can develop bad habits of technique and practice that are difficult to fix when they return to lessons.
3. Focus.  Work on one thing at a time and be clear about what it is you are working on.  Know the limits of your attention span, and shift your focus to extend your productive time at the piano.  Awareness of one's mistakes arises from this kind of deliberate focus, and you can't fix your mistakes without knowing they exist.
4. Critical listening (and thinking). Piano students need to learn to listen in a thoughtful way.  Listening for specific elements, like dynamics or articulation, is a good way to start.  Before critical listening is developed, students will play a piece, and not hear their mistakes.  After a student performance riddled with wrong notes and rhythms, and stops every other measure, I'll often ask the student how they felt about it.  If they say something like "I thought it went pretty well, but I think I missed a note somewhere in the middle", they weren't listening critically.  The best students are sensitive to every blemish, and are often pessimistic about their performance, while the worst students are ignorant of their mistakes and frequently have inflated ideas about their musical ability.
5. Delayed gratification.  The understanding that practice yields results over time comes from experience, but students benefit when parents model delayed gratification through saving for things they want, planting a garden, or learning a skill.  When kids are also encouraged to engage in activities like this, the idea of practice will seem natural and logical.  When kids never have to wait for, or work for, anything at home, the idea of practice will be foreign.  The idea of talent is best abandoned as well; nothing will undermine a teacher's efforts faster than a student who believes he is talented.

A month of no excuses.

I have just completed the most amazing month of my entire teaching career.  In the month of January, I had exactly zero students come to their lessons unprepared.  That means no one came into lessons last month with an excuse ready for why they didn't practice as much as they should have.  How remarkable is this?  Well, I have been teaching private students since 1993, and it has never happened before now.  I have had good weeks, sure.  But never an entire month.

So, it is time to reflect.  How did this happen, and more importantly, can it happen again?

Hypothesis #1: My student's parents don't make excuses.

In the past, I have always had a few parents who tend to make excuses for their kids.  I don't have that problem this semester.  Kids who have parents that make excuses, have kids that make excuses.

Corollary to Hypothesis #1:  Our studio kids have awesome parents.

Hypothesis #2:  Self evaluation.

All of my students complete a quick, self-evaluation at the beginning of each lesson, and give themselves a rating based on the following criteria:

10 points are possible.  A score of 10 indicates perfect preparation.

Subtract 1 for every day that no practice occurred.

Subtract 2 for any item not practiced that was written in your notebook.

Subtract 3 for not doing assigned theory.

Subtract 1 for any item that you forgot to bring to your lesson.

Subtract 1 for Long Fingernails .

Subtract 1 for each excuse you make for not coming prepared.

Subtract 1 if you use our bathroom.

Subtract 1 for arriving 10 minutes late, 2 for 20 minutes and so on.

Students results are plotted on a graph, that over time, might look like this:

 There are two lines because they get a score from me as well, which is based on my perception of whether they have made sufficient progress over the course of the week.  Gaps in the chart show either vacations or missed lessons.  The student above is fairly consistent about getting to the piano during the week, but has dropped the ball a couple of times.  When students hold themselves accountable for their work during the week, they take more responsibility for making sure that they practice.  I have noticed marked improvement in my students' performance since I implemented this chart last summer.

So, can this happen again?  I'm not betting on it.  But, at least now I know it is possible.

Positive Thinking

This video is on the mark. I wish that all of our students' parents would drop the positive thinking paradigm. (Some of them have!) Learning a skill as complex as piano is not all smiles and warm fuzzies. There are rough patches to get through and walls to climb over. Frequently a student's preparation is lacking and the teacher must be the bearer of bad news. Sometimes students get upset when this happens, but that is not the teacher's fault. Honest, constructive criticism is not abuse, even if a student cries upon hearing it. Honest, constructive criticism is, in fact, a large part of teaching in general. People seem to forget that. We're not cheerleaders, we are teachers!

2010 MTNA Convention

Last night, Robyn and I returned from the MTNA Convention in Albuquerque, NM, our old stomping grounds.  The convention was fantastic.  Nearly 2,000 teachers, students and other presenters attended this conference of the oldest professional music teachers association in the U.S.A.  The highlights for us were the talks by Frederick Chiu on stage fright, Randall Faber talking of course about piano adventures, and hearing the winners of the MTNA national competitions.

We are back home feeling a bit tired but also reenergized with new things to teach and share with our students.  In addition to tons of stuff given away by publishers, we spent more than $500 on scores and other resources for use in our studio.  We are going to need more shelves!

Achievement Day Coasters

Over the weekend, Robyn and I worked as evaluators for the Fort Collins Music Teachers Association 'Achievement Day'.  Not only is this a great learning opportunity for the students that take part, it is a great opportunity for teachers to learn a bit about the world outside of their own studios.  Unlike competitions, achievement day participants include more than just the cream of the crop which allows evaluators to get a sense of what is really going on in other teacher's studios.

There are of course the precocious elementary school students who are used to excelling at everything, and the occasional dedicated High School student getting ready for college auditions. But most interesting to me are the "coasters" -  the kids who stick with piano for years doing a minimal amount of practice.  Coasters make steady but very slow improvement.  Coasters are the kids who have had lessons for 5-7 years and are still in method books.  They are almost slackers, but because they show up for lessons and even practice a bit during the week, they squeak by.  They have neither a drive for excellence nor a real desire to express themselves through music.  They hide in mediocrity,  that comfortable limbo that avoids the highs of success, or the lows of failure.  As a result, they do almost nothing for exceedingly long periods of time.

So, what keeps kids in this state of blah?  What prevents them from throwing themselves into something, anything, that interests them?  Is it possible to somehow teach a coaster to become a climber, an achiever, or an artist?  Should it bother us to have coasters in our studios or should we simply be glad they come to their lessons each week?  Should we allow these students to continue with lessons?  Can teachers influence a student who coasts in every other aspect of their lives to do something different with piano?

One thing is certain:  Coasters are no fun to teach.  They are predictable and lack the curiosity that enlivens the work done in lessons.  So, should we teachers keep dragging these students along?  I don't know.  I will say that I have had more than one student switch from coaster to climber.  I take no credit for the switch, however.

I know what to do with slackers:  Let them slack elsewhere.  I know what to do with climbers and achievers as well.  It's the coasters that are the challenge.  Thanks to achievement day, I know that ours is not the only studio  dragging a coaster or two along for the ride.

Amplify one, then amplify all.

Last night was the final round of Greeley's version of the Kiwani's Stars of Tomorrow competitions.  We had three students from our piano studio make it into the finals and they all played quite well, but none of them won.  Nonetheless, it was a very positive experience for all.  Furthermore, all of the winners played well and deserved recognition.  Elementary, Middle, and High School divisions were all awarded to pianists all from the same family.  The Best in Show award went to a high school violinist.

O.K., here is the gripe.  This is a talent show that accepts any kind of performer.  Singers and dancers are very popular and are always amplified.  In between singers, there are young pianists that are not amplified.  They sound like they are playing in another zip code.  The only way to compete in this situation is to resort to theatrics and banging the piano to smithereens.  Therefore, tasteful, polished performances don't stand a chance against loud, crass, and sloppy playing.  This is especially true in the elementary and middle school divisions because of smaller hands and smaller sounds.  If everyone were amplified then the pianists would be on equal footing with the 7 year olds singing something cute, the middle schoolers singing something country (and flat!), and the High-schoolers singing something inappropriate.  Not only that, but the expressive players would be on equal footing with the pounders.

It would be nice if they would have the piano tuned as well.  Maybe that's why they won't amplify the pianos...

Middle School Piano Students

Students in middle school are more likely to quit piano lessons than any other age group.  Why is this?  Here is a list of reasons.

1. Students are more self conscious of gender roles.  Boys frequently quit at this age because "piano is for girls".  In elementary school, we have roughly the same number of boys as we do girls enrolled in lessons.  By high school, girls outnumber boys by about 5 to 1.
2. Students are developing their sense of personal identity and are attempting to separate themselves from things they perceive as childish.  Students that started in elementary school can begin to view piano as something for kids.
3. Students are being allowed to make more decisions about what they do.  Piano lessons are often the most challenging activity kids are involved in.  Because kids at this age have difficulty seeing the long term rewards of playing the piano, they will frequently want to quit at this age because it is too hard.  Parents frequently will decide that they no longer want to "fight this battle", so the student is allowed to quit.
4. There is greater peer pressure to fit in.  Since piano is a pretty solitary activity most of the time, it is vulnerable to outside pressures.  When competing against more visible activities, such as sports, piano can be a hard sell.  Plus, most middle school bands and orchestras have no chair for a piano.  

So, how do we keep these students?  I think positive adult musical models help.  Assigning more popular music helps motivate students and gives them something that they are willing to play for their friends.  Offering group classes for students of similar ages can really help as well.  Taking students to piano concerts can help students envision piano as something for adults.  That can be a powerful motivator for a middle schooler who is trying to appear less childlike.  

No matter what we do, Middle School is a challenging time for students and their parents.  As teachers, we can do our best to be supportive and use our best motivational tools.  For parents, we recommend love and logic.