In Courtney Crappell’s article in the latest issue of American Music Teacher, “Dealing With Narcissism: Are Our Students Self-Absorbed Or Just Afraid?” he shares two concepts gleaned from another author that we can embrace as teachers to help our students overcome fears that may hinder them from learning: 1) Letting down our personal guard; and […]
Practice Incentives
Consecutive Club
In the latest e-mail from Yellow Cat Studio, Sarah shared her idea for the Consecutive Club, a simple way to keep students (and herself!) accountable for spending time at the piano every day. I really like this idea, and may try to incorporate something similar into my practice incentive theme next year! We did something […]
Monday Mailbag – How to Incorporate Student Options Into Practice Incentives
What did you mean when you said a good practice incentive should include student options? One of the primary purposes of a practice incentive is to motivate students to practice. And what better way to do that than to let them choose what they are going to practice? As teachers, we have to tap into […]
Monday Mailbag – How Can Parents Help Motivate Their Children?
I am a new piano mom. I’ve been wanting to put my children in lessons for many years, but we’re just finally able to put it in our budget. My two daughters both started lessons a few weeks ago at ages 9 and almost 7. Their teacher doesn’t use an incentive program or anything, so […]
What do you want to be able to do by next May that you can’t do right now?
One of the quotes from The Creative Life conference that gave me lots of food for thought was one by Michael Card, “You can’t say everything all the time.” The more I pondered this, the more I realized how much I try to do this as a teacher. I want so much to equip my […]
A Couple Quick Images
Have you missed me?! 🙂 There are so many things I have been learning and working on that I want to post about – especially an amazing creative arts conference that I attended last week. (In fact, I’m planning to do a week-long series of posts on it next week, so stay tuned!) But for […]
