With a COVID-19 edit to this post, here are five helpful strategies to get students out of a rut, work through that trough, and get back to a peak of enthusiasm!
In Part 1 I talked about this matrix: Practice Not much or No practice Support 1 Fastest possible progress 2 Slow progress Not much or No support 3 Reasonable progress (unusual) 4 No progress In Part 2 I’ll talk more about each individual quadrant: what support means and what marks progress, and how to […]
I am a member of several piano teacher groups on Facebook. To me it seems that the conversation that comes up most often is on how to retain students who don’t practice. There are rants about the schedules that don’t permit enough practice time, the parents who expect everything to be fun and easy, the arguing between parent and student at home (and sometimes between student and teacher in the lesson!) and the expectations from all that are rarely met.
Recently, I decided to learn the guitar. You would think that given my musical knowledge and background, my good ear and great fine motor skills from playing piano for over 40 years
In Part 1 of this blog I talked about ways to get students to sing more confidently, as well as the three ‘essentials’ for good aural training: Singing, Practising and Memorising. Now, let’s look into some of the sections of the exam more closely.
Wouldn’t it be great if there were never any misunderstandings between teachers and parents? Wouldn’t it be amazing if everyone was on the same page re things like practice, missed lessons, budgeting for music? In this blog post I
When it comes to playing piano – in fact any musical instrument – I think there are enormous similarities between sport and music. For example: 1. It is a physically demanding activity that takes hours of practice/training each week to do it well; 2. It is not possible to ‘cram’ – that is, ignore practice […]
Although it feels like going against the culture, it’s absolutely, positively FINE not to do exams. Here are five good reasons NOT to do an exam.
Do you feel like your students are not practising enough? Check out a few tips why you don’t need to be upset about it.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably read many blogs on motivation. Most of them deal with how to motivate our students, our children, ourselves – and it’s usually about positive, intrinsic motivation. But motivation can actually be negative, or at least result in negatively engaged students/children/self. In this blog I am going to simplify […]