Our practice incentive theme for the year is now finalized and I’m really excited about it! I can’t divulge the details yet in case some of my students sleuth around here looking for more info, but here’s a sneak preview:

I’m heading off to the teacher resource center this morning to do some laminating and get all the wall decor designed and put together. And this Friday, we’re having our annual local association Kickoff event where I’ll be presenting a workshop titled, “Creative Collaboration: Making Every Lesson Come Alive!” We’re jumping on board with MTNA’s Year of Collaborative Music and planning a variety of events and workshops to coincide with this theme. I’m making an effort to emphasize this in my studio throughout the year as well. Is anyone else focusing on collaborative music in their association or studio this year?

In other random news, it occurred to me recently that I’m getting ready to celebrate my 5th anniversary! Not wedding anniversary (remember, I’m not married!), but it’s been almost 5 years since I launched Music Matters Blog with the official Welcome post. And to think that I was so worried when I first started the blog that I would run out of things to post about. In fact, truth be told, I mapped out the first 60 days of posts just to give me a cushion and time to concoct other post ideas. It’s all rather humorous now, especially considering that I have way more ideas than I ever get around to posting!

Anyway…I figure this is the perfect excuse to do a complete site overhaul. I’ve been tired of this current design for a long time, but just haven’t taken the time to work on a new design. Now I’m ready! I’ve started working on it, but I can tell it’s going to take a while to get the new site up and running. So in the meantime I thought I would open it up for any ideas or suggestions you all have. Is there anything specific you’d like to see on the new site? Feel free to leave any and all thoughts in the comments below or e-mail them to me directly.

Until then, though, we’ll make the best of this current look. I’ve got a number of exciting things lined up for this fall, so stay tuned!

So, without further ado, here is a comment from Migna that I just love and can’t wait to try with some of my students!

I hate saying “you need to try that again…and again…and again”  and nothing improves because they’re not focusing.  So here’s a game I play, similar to the penny game, that helps them intensely focus on what they’re doing.  I will put a little toy frog, dinosaur, dog, or whatever I have on hand if I’m at their home, and place it on the last 5-6-7 keys (or however many you choose).  Each time they play the measure/section PERFECTLY, they may move ahead.  If they make a mistake, they must move back. I have them move it forward or back themselves.  It seems to “hurt” more and they have to reposition their hands again. Sometimes I have the frog jump on the last 5 black keys.  Goal is to have the marker go off the piano.  A 6 year old student of mine told me how his sister put a pretty rock they use on the first low white key and she made him practice 2 measures until he got it perfect 66 times!

After doing some final work to tweak this and make it adaptable for any studio, I am happy to report that the Exploring a Galaxy of Music practice incentive program is now available! I know you’ve all been waiting with bated breath, right? The downloadable package includes everything you need to successfully implement this year-long practice incentive in your studio. You can either use it exactly as-is by printing the .pdf files or you can tweak the .doc files to your heart’s content to make it fully customizable for your studio.

And, for the best news of the post…for everyone who purchases the Exploring a Galaxy of Music practice incentive this month, I’ll enter your name in a drawing to win the complete set of studio wall decorations that I used this year! That includes:

• The banner verse
• The theme title letters
• Three black galaxies
• Hundreds of planets and stars to put in the galaxies

All of these are cut and laminated and ready to put on the wall! You can see what it looks like in the picture below. Also, just for your reference, I printed and laminated an equal number of galaxy objects for each team and then placed them in an envelope. Then when the students had enough points to put an object up in their galaxy, I just gave them the envelope and let them pick out whatever they wanted.

Here are a few of the comments I’ve gotten from teachers who have been using some of these practice incentive programs in their studios:

“Just received and downloaded my Practice Incentive Program and am so anxious to use it. Thanks for taking the time and energy to share your creative ideas with all of us who sometimes need a little “boost” and a fresh approach to teaching piano.” ~N. S.

“I currently am using one of your incentive programs and LOVING it (Climbing the Ladder to Success). I’m already looking into the next theme for next year.” ~V.K.

“Your incentive program has made my life easier this year! I usually try to come up with a creative program myself.” ~ J.E.

“I recently ordered your “Climbing the Ladder to Success” practice incentive and I love it! I’m so excited to introduce it to my students this week. I’ve been dropping hints, but this week I think I’m going to kick it off.” ~K.S.

“Last year the students loved the Climbing the Ladder program so much that they keep asking what we are doing this year.” ~M.R.

This is the million dollar question, isn’t it?! I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue recently because I just presented a workshop at our state music teachers conference on this topic. I see it in some ways as a creative challenge – what can I do as a teacher to inspire and motivate my students to practice consistently? In some ways, I suppose our work as teachers would be less exciting if all of our students automatically practiced every day without us having to invest any energy into getting to know them and figure out what appeals to them, right?

Most of my students now are very diligent practicers, but it’s been quite the process to get to this point! Here are some varied tips that I’ve found helpful:

• Only accept students into your studio who want to take lessons. Very rarely will I accept a student who doesn’t want to take lessons, but is being required to do so by his parents. Along with this, I make both the parent and student state during the initial interview that they will commit to practicing consistently.
• Reserve the right to dismiss a student for lack of practice. It is clearly stated in my policy that a cause for dismissal is: “The student consistently fails to show diligence and determination in home practice.” I’ve only had to do this once, but it’s nice to know that it’s an option if lack of practice becomes a persistent problem.
• Have high expectations for your students and expect them to live up to them. Sometimes I think we do ourselves and our students in by letting them get by with minimal or no practice for extended periods of time so that it becomes acceptable. My students know that I expect 5-7 days of practice a week and that’s what most of them aim for. They are also required to record their practice in their assignment books so that I know how much they’ve practiced. (This is all in theory, of course…I have my fair share of students who have difficulty locating a pencil with which to mark their practicing, or who slide by some weeks on 1 or 2 days of practice… )
• Create a culture where dedication and excellence is the norm. This is one of the reasons that I design year-long practice incentive programs. I want the whole atmosphere of my studio to be full of fresh, exciting goals and challenges that will inspire each student to do his/her best and reach for new musical heights. Nothing works perfectly, but each year we are learning and growing and trying new ideas.

Obviously, there are many things that contribute to a student’s practice habits, but I think one of the key things to remember is that diligence begets success, and success begets diligence. The two go hand-in-hand. One of my overarching goals as a teacher is to help my students develop disciplined practice habits so that they will be successful, and to help them be successful so that they will be more disciplined in their practicing. It takes a balance of fun and creativity, coupled with high standards and firmness to achieve this, but it sure is motivating to me as a teacher to work toward this end. My students want to play the piano well and I want to do everything I possibly can to see them attain this goal!

This is a favorite topic for most of us teachers, so I’d love to get some input from others as well! What do you suggest for helping students develop better practice habits?

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

Anyway…I offered a special deal at the conference that teachers could purchase all four of my currently available practice incentives for only $50. I thought I would extend the same offer to readers of Music Matters Blog. Now is the perfect time to pull together ideas for next year’s practice incentive, so until the end of June, you can purchase the collection of Climbing the Ladder to Success, Let’s Have a Ball!, Go for the Gold!, and Mastering the Mystery of Music for only $50 (regularly $15 each).

Practice Incentive Collection | $50

Chris Foley, of The Collaborative Piano Blog, has put together a wonderful compilation of 20 Collaborative Piano Videos that I’m loving! I’m hoping our local associations will be able to get on board with this initiative and plan a festival in conjunction with it. Are any of you doing any special projects or festivals in conjunction with the Year of Collaborative Music?

Milestones to Musical Mastery is the first year-long incentive program that I developed for my studio. It wasn’t as fully developed as the programs that I do now, so I don’t actually sell the incentive package, but I am including several files that you can download for free if you’d like to use them in your studio.

Each student’s assignment book contained eight of the Milestones to Musical Mastery worksheets. A page with the Milestones to Musical Mastery Guidelines was placed in the front of the book to explain what they had to do to reach each level on the Milestone worksheet. On the studio wall, I had a thin black line (made from construction paper) that connected eight milestones, each of which had the name of a famous composer.

At the beginning of the year, each student selected his or her mode of transportation (I had a whole range of options cut from the die cut presses at our local teacher resource center!) and then began the journey to reach as many milestones as possible. Throughout the year, I held “Composer Tours,” where students who had reached the corresponding composer milestone were invited to come to a special event. We traveled back in time and learned about the life and work of each composer. Well, actually, we only ended up doing two of the composers, but they were very memorable!

For Handel, I bought a bunch of panels of royal-colored fabric and hung them from the ceiling to create the “Throne Room” of King George I. Each student got to take a turn sitting on the “throne” while eating grapes and being fanned by the other students. I also gave them a tour of the room, highlighting the various artifacts and pictures that were on display representing Handel’s life and compositions. For Bach, we climbed into our attic, played a game that required putting together Bach’s very extensive family tree, copied sheet music by candlelight, and munched on homemade German hard rolls.

This was a really fun year, and that’s what convinced me of the value of developing practice incentive programs that would inspire the students and encourage them to reach for higher levels of musical achievement. As I mentioned to a friend a couple days ago, I don’t see these incentives as a bribe for students to practice diligently or strive to reach certain goals. Those are things that I expect of them. This is just my way of creating a vibrant studio atmosphere and expressing my appreciation for their hard work. Not to mention that it makes teaching and running a studio more fun for me, too!

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

This is probably one of the most helpful skills to learn as a teacher. One of our goals in teaching should be to help the student be successful, and one of the ways we can most effectively do that is by identifying potential difficulties and then equipping the student to overcome them. The natural tendency of every student is to start at the beginning of the piece and then stumble their way through, glossing over problems until they reach the end. And, of course, this is usually the least effective way to learn a piece. Here’s a step-by-step list you can use to approach teaching a new piece:

1. Pre-Lesson Prep – play through the piece several times and make a note of any potential challenges for the student in these 10 areas: note accuracy, rhythm accuracy, dynamics, articulations, tempo, style, pulse/continuity, fingering, technique, and pedaling. For example, I recently had a student who was going to learn the familiar Burgmuller L’Arabesque. I knew from playing it, and from previous teaching experience, that the short phrase at the end of the B-section would present a fingering challenge. So, I determined that this would be the first part of the piece that I would go over and assign to the student.

2. Determine the Best Preemptive Approach – Typically this will not be starting at the beginning and playing through the piece! It could be clapping the rhythm away from the piano, talking through the notes or intervals, doing a chord analysis of the patterns, playing hands separately, tapping the correct fingering on the piano fallboard, etc.

3. Look over the Piece with the Student – Using this Piece Description Worksheet is a helpful approach. I always start a piece by having the student identify the time signature, key signature, form, and rhythmic and melodic patterns. Usually, I also ask them if they can tell which part of the piece will be the most difficult.

4. Isolate and Drill the Challenging Spots – If at all possible, avoid just assigning the student the spot to work on without any work at the lesson. I try to walk them through every step of the initial practicing, encouraging a slower tempo when necessary, separating the hands, breaking into even smaller sections, or whatever seems the best way to help them achieve mastery. This often calls for “The Penny Game”!

It’s all well and good to study these sorts of things theoretically, but there is nothing like working with real live students to gain a better understanding of issues that students will face and effective ways of preparing to deal with them. One thing that I often do is say something like this to a student, “A lot of times, students who play this piece don’t figure out good fingering at this section, so they always stumble over their notes and it never sounds very good. I want you to be able to play it really well, so let’s work on this section first so that it feels easy by the time you have the rest of the piece learned.” This seems to help them understand my reasoning for requiring practice on a particular section first and motivates them to master it.

Honestly, I don’t have any students who consistently forget their assignment books. I think a huge part of this is the fact that I custom design assignment books to correspond to our practice incentive program every year. Their assignment book includes not only the assignment pages, but all of the supporting material and tracking information for earning points, Diligence Dollars, balls, etc. If a student forgets his assignment book, he gets nothing for that week because I have no alternative method of tracking his progress.

Now, this is not to say that all of my students faithfully refer to their assignment book throughout the week, but it does almost always make it to the lesson. In the past, before I started doing my yearly practice incentive programs, I remember hearing a suggestion that I used a couple of times. Write a short note and “embed” it among the other assignments on the page…”If you circle this sentence, I’ll pay you $1.” Or something like that. The student was always mortified if they arrived at their following lesson and discovered that they could have earned $1 just by reading their assignments!

I think the key is to give the students a reason to read and bring their assignment books. Some students are naturally inclined to practice systematically, following each assignment step-by-step. But others are convinced that they can remember everything perfectly and never need to refer to their assignment book. Also, if it’s a serious problem and is affecting the progress of the student, I wouldn’t hesitate to enact a policy that students who forget their assignment book will have to call the parent and ask them to retrieve it for them or will forfeit the lesson. A one-time lapse of memory can be excused, but when it persists from week to week, you have to let them know that you’re serious about the importance of bringing it.

Those are a few of my thoughts. I would love to have some advice from others, though. How do you deal with students who forget to bring their assignment books? Or do you use something else in place of assignment books?

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

The book is divided into three parts:

1. Artful Practice, which includes chapters on: Getting Organized, Practicing Deeply, and Musical Collaboration.

2. Fearless Performance, which includes chapters on: Unmasking Performance Anxiety, Becoming a Performing Artist, and Performing like a Pro.

3. Lifelong Creativity, which includes chapters on: Injury Prevention and Succeeding as a Student.

Each chapter is further separated into sections with descriptive sub-headings, making it incredibly easy to locate information relevant to a particular need. The extensive Notes, Bibliography, and Index at the back of the further contribute to the value of The Musician’s Way as a tremendous resource that would benefit any music teacher.

The Musician’s Way exposed how much my own practice habits are in need of reformation and how critical it is for me to learn these principles of effective practice, performance, and wellness so that I can pass them on to my students. I am not quite done with the latter half of the book yet, but I know that this is one of those rare books that I’ll be reading and referencing again and again as I attempt to achieve higher levels of mastery in my practicing, performing, and teaching.

Mr. Klickstein is obviously passionate about his message, and has set up a companion website with a wealth of additional materials. And…most exciting of all, he has offered to give away one copy of his book here on Music Matters Blog! Just leave a comment below if you’d like to be entered in the drawing to win. You can earn a double entry by posting about the giveaway on your blog and linking back to this post. I’ll select a winner next Friday, May 7, at noon CST. This will be a wonderful read for any musician or music teacher!