I was wondering if you and other teachers would share their policies for students getting their practice time in if they are sick? I have had the flu for 7 full days and realized how completely it knocks one out…I thought of my students, and think if they get it that I should most definitely have compassion on them in regards to their piano practice! But with the season ahead, I’d like to glean from more experienced teachers about how to have a balanced view of piano practice!
This is a good and timely question! Most of my students put in 5-7 days of practice each week, so I tend to be very lenient with them if they have an off-week due to sickness, travel, or an unusually busy schedule. I always tell them, that’s life! As long as they are putting in consistent effort most of the time, I totally understand that there will be weeks like that. When that happens, I usually ask them if there’s anything in particular they want to play for me, or anything that they had trouble with that they’d like to go over with me.
If there are things they’d rather not play, but just want me to reassign, I have no problem doing that. Then we spend all the extra time playing games, sight-reading duets, or improvising. Basically, I want them to leave excited about what we did and energized to put in a good week of practice. That’s far more motivating than laying a guilt trip on them and making them feel bad for what they didn’t accomplish.
Feel free to share any additional thoughts or suggestions on how you handle lessons with students who have been sick and haven’t practiced!
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I will also have students pull out something that isn’t quite so prepared or a not-so-much favorite that would get easily pushed aside. Then we work on it a bit so that they will be willing to work on it again, knowing that they have already made some progress on it.
My approach generally is to take the lesson time to “practice” with a student (through repetition, metronome work, rhythms, memory, etc.) when he hasn’t had a good practice week. It is a good opportunity to instill proper practice techniques and allows my student to accomplish something in the lesson.
I like your idea as well though, and I think it would definitely be suited to those particular students who are much to shy to even want to attempt to “practice” an unpracticed song during the lesson time.
Hi Natalie, I tend not to worry about days practised anyway, so illness in that sense doesn’t make a difference.
Like you I do like to be understanding of these things and if a student has been ill and unable to do any work I like to do something a little bit different from the norm in the lesson. We might spend the time improvising, or we might talk about the history of their instrument, or perhaps listen to some music or maybe we will try transcribing one of their favourite songs.
This does not however mean that they are ‘getting away’ from doing proper work. The goals and targets that we have set will still need to be met. Dates for concerts will still be the same and we still need to be able to play that entire piece from memory by the end of the month. . . .
We all have times of illness but these should not detract from our overall aims.
Hi Natalie,
Another suggestion: duets! That way, quite a bit can be accomplished, but the student won’t have to feel bad about having been sick. Chances are, s/he feels bad enough already.