As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, this week I am conducting Year-End Evaluations with all of my students and their parents. A couple of weeks ago I sent them the questionnaires for this year (I change the questionnaires each year to collect different information that I think will be helpful) and then I got busy […]
Monday Mailbag – More About Planning Piano Camps
I’ve received several other great questions that I will be addressing soon, but since Piano Camps seem to be an item of great interest and many teachers are probably gearing up for summer sessions right now, I decided to post a few more questions I’ve received about Piano Camps in response to last week’s Monday […]
Explaining Scales and Keys
Sometimes it seems like I have to say the same thing five different ways before a student loses the glazed-over look in their eyes! And then, usually it’s still many more explanations later that the proverbial light bulb goes on in their brain and they finally get it. They’ll say something like, “I realized that […]
Teaching Your Piano Students How to Accompany
A couple weeks ago, I bookmarked this article on Teaching Your Piano Students How to Accompany. I finally got around to reading it, and really appreciate the thoughts and ideas that Jennifer shares in the post. She gives some practical tips for incorporating accompanying skills into a student’s music education, and also shares her list […]
Teaching Toward the Future
One thing that I’ve realized that I do frequently with my students that keeps my enthusiasm for teaching fresh is visualize themĀ in the future. I imagine that Landon is no longer a 9-year old boy with hard-to-control fingers, but a mature 19-year old who sits at his family’s piano accompanying hymns while his family […]
Monday Mailbag – More About Piano Camp
One of my readers asked a handful of great questions as a follow-up to last week’s Carnival of the Animals Summer Piano Camp post. I think I’ll just do a question and answer format for the whole post to make it easy to read! Q. What was the schedule? 5 days per week? Yes, we […]