Tuesday, July 31, 2012

More

In an effort to challenge my students, I am working on giving them more to play each lesson.  I'm not sure what an "average" student should take home, but I'm pretty sure my beginners have not been trying enough pieces each week.  I have also written out an outline of a practice plan for the students and parents to take home, showing them how their time can be spent  each week.  I'm giving my beginners at least two new pieces each week, one or two review pieces, and a "fun" piece.  I am trying to raise my expectations of the students, and hopefully will see them raise their own expectations of what they can do.  I hope they will realize "Yes, I can do more!"

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

OMTA Conference Recap

This was my first year attending the Oregon Music Teachers Assoc. conference, which was held in Washington state this year.  What was most interesting to me even more than the various presentations was spending time with fellow teachers and watching how the group was governed and how members interacted with one another.  I am very thankful for the local group of teachers I am with.  We are a small group, made up of varying personalities, experience, and ability, but we work closely together and support one another however we can.  We are able to offer many opportunities to our students as we collaborate together.  I look forward to growing with the group, and offering what I can to it as I gain experience teaching.  As far as presentations I got to see, my favorite was Forrest Kinney's Pattern Play and Chord Play books.  He was a very engaging speaker and made his books come to life.  I tried Pattern Play with a few of my students already, especially the ones who are more tense at the piano.  I have one student who has a particularly hard time with sensing pulse.  I hope doing some of these improvisational exercises may help him become more steady over time.  The Chord Play is also a great series for the Intermediate or above player to help teach how to play with lead sheets/fake books, arrange hymn accompaniments, play with singers, etc.  I am starting one student on it slowly by having her play a hymn by ear, chord it, then incorporate some of the accompaniment techniques the book presents.  Overall I think I returned with a sense of being recharged, ready to make some changes and challenge my students!

Save!

The dreaded ring of the phone about 3 hours before a student's lesson...what will it be this time...?  Yes, it's an inconvenience to the teacher to receive a call so late, and of course it eats away at your monthly income, but what does it do to the student?  I could list a myriad of consequences, but I think we can draw the conclusion that students who come regularly to lessons progress much faster than students who become "hit and miss."  The reason this time was that the student's family had been busy with summer activities so he had not practiced his lesson that week.  I knew that starting a habit of skipping a lesson due to family busy-ness would be detrimental.  I explained briefly to the parent that I understood, every student has weeks like that, and that I always have activities we can do at the lesson: flash cards, review games, concept reinforcement, etc. etc.  The parent of course felt badly she had not kept up the home practice, but didn't realize that I could still work with her child.  I explained that they will forget concepts if too much time goes by, and encouraged her to stick with it, especially as he is just a beginner.  She agreed to bring him, and we had a wonderful lesson!  I feel like a piano student was saved and will continue on to play piano another day....!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Tricky Passages

A student was having a hard time with a particular series of notes in the left hand which included chromatic changes.  He had to pause and think for each change.  We studied the notes and played them all together like a blocked chord, then one after the other, then finally put the phrase together as it was written.  He was able to play it easily without any pauses.  Another student was having a difficult time playing the first the note of her left hand at the beginning of each measure.  We noticed that it started on the same note for 4 measures, then went down a step for 4 measures, then moved down chromatically.  Finding patterns that click can be a quick way to take care of some tricky passages.