6. I believe that the music lesson’s primary purpose is for the development of the student’s skill. It is not there for the teacher’s self-aggrandizement, mentoring, building a “connection” with the student, meeting the emotional needs of the teacher, or providing a career or income for the teacher. All of those things are secondary to the mission and purpose of the music lesson.
7. Given this, I believe the three most valuable objectives in a lesson are (a) teaching music to the student, (b) teaching how to skillfully play the instrument, and (c) repertoire acquisition (more on this in point #9).
7. In developing the student’s skill, there are a multitude of things that the teacher must teach to the student. Musicianship, style, accuracy, body control, practice habits, proper technique… just to name a few. The teacher must judge the student’s ability in each of these areas. And, the teacher can judge their own instruction by noting areas in which all of their students struggle. These typically line up with deficiencies in the teacher’s methods and instruction.
8. As I became a better teacher, I noticed that better instruction resulted in more songs passed in a shorter amount of time. From Primer to late beginner method books… my students learned songs faster, played them more expressively, and experienced less stress in the learning process. Speed was never the goal (nor should it have been)… it was a happy byproduct of better instruction / better students.
9. Closely correlated with this was the student’s participation in a group lesson. When I had the ability to immediately see the results of my teaching in the student’s performance, I was able to correct problems in my teaching IMMEDIATELY and not let the poor students go home and practice their music wrong for an entire week. We got better together… and this could never have happened outside of the group environment because I simply didn’t have the time to see this in greater depth.
10. An hour-long group is NOT the same as an hour-long private lesson. You cannot decouple the educational results from the learning environment in which those results are achieved. In every case that I’ve been able to work with the same student in both a group and a private lesson, I got better results out of the student in the group lesson (I’m going to go into more depth on this in tomorrow’s email - you really don’t want to miss that one).
11. Each child should be allowed to progress and develop at a rate that is good for them! This is why I reject a group curriculum that forces all students to “learn” at the same rate (this idea is preposterous to me). This is why I teach multi-level groups (I recently made a video about this - you can watch it here).
Do you have questions or comments?
I’d love to hear from you.
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