For the last week of regular lessons this spring (the week before the Year-End Evaluations), I let each student choose whatever he/she wanted to do for the lesson. It was kind of fun to see what they chose! Some opted for a bunch of improvising, some wanted to play through their regular assignments, some wanted […]
Teaching
Listening to Classical Music
Listening to good music is such a critical component of learning to become a good musician, but one that is often overlooked. That’s why I especially appreciated this question I received from another teacher: One of the things that I am facing with my piano students is that they lack an accurate concept of how […]
Monday Mailbag – Students and Pop Music
How “strict” are you about your students playing popular music from films, radio, etc. as notated? The piano arrangements are never really identical to the song the student knows, and they naturally play the rhythm they know. Lately I’ve been going through the notated rhythms with them correctly and then giving them permission to play […]
A Week of Year-End Evaluations
Eight years ago, I started doing Year-End Evaluations with students and their parents at the last lesson of the spring semester. This has been such a helpful tool! A couple weeks prior to the evaluation, I send home a Student Questionnaire and a Parent Questionnaire. I change the questions a little bit each year based […]
Year of Collaborative Music
Did you know that we are in the midst of the Year of Collaborative Music? It commenced at the March MTNA conference in Albuquerque and will culminate at the MTNA conference in Milwaukee next March. I am really excited about this and am thinking about designing my practice incentive theme around this initiative for next […]
A New Approach to Teaching Thumb Position
At our fifth Briefing Session this year, the theme was “A Galaxy of Theory Concepts for Creative Minds.” Each student had to present a musical concept of their choice. The presentations could be simple or elaborate – basically as creative as the student wanted to be with it. It turned out pretty fun, and I […]
