Composer Alice Parker tells this story about the years when she was working under the late Robert Shaw.  When she was a young composition student at Juilliard, she was singled out to help Shaw create arrangements of hymns and folksongs – pieces that are now considered to be standards of the choral repertoire.  One of her jobs was to find texts for Shaw to set to music, and so Alice spent hours poring over poetry and hymns at the New York Public Library.  She would then come back to Shaw with a pile of texts that she had found, eager to show him these treasures.  Shaw would frequently interrupt her while she eagerly read to him various texts, "No," he'd say, dismissing her find.  "But the second verse is beautiful," she'd argue.  "The second verse is too late," Shaw would respond.      

I have heard this story a dozen times and every time it strikes a chord.  Shaw was asserting that if the text didn't grab you immediately, it wasn't worth holding out till the second or third verse for something better.  This reminds me of a fun dinner party game to play with musicians that goes like this:  you are in a sinking boat with all your loved ones.  In order to save your lives, you have to throw over the side of the boat the complete works of some composer that will forever be lost to humankind.  There's a lot to consider here, for in losing one composer you dislike, you might also then affect later composers.  And certain composers (Berg comes to mind) don’t have enough volume of output to really help your sinking boat much.  The first time Matt played this game, he was with a group of choral conductors who were throwing over Chopin right and left.  Personally, I'd toss Handel, thinking that if I didn't lose another Christmas to a Messiah performance I'd be a much happier woman.  But honestly, that is as cheap a choice as the choral conductors pick of Chopin.  To really play fair, you have to pick from a composer that has some bearing on your world.  In that case, Liszt goes.  I don't even have to think twice.

But it seems no one is throwing anything over the boat.  I can’t keep up.  I am drowning in repertoire, technique, and expectations. Ten lifetimes would not be enough to read through all the music on my shelves.  Every time I turn around I hear about another opportunity for my students.  They are all good ones, I am sure, but between soccer games and homework and piano lessons I am not sure where another music festival fits in.  I wonder seriously about the shallowness of our work and the frenetic tempo of our practices, and whether or not somewhere, between cramming down dinner and another sonatina, we have lost sight of land completely.

I am thinking of all this a great deal at the moment.  Spring break is behind us, and staring us in the face are the annual spring festivals and recitals needing attention.  It is time to stop teaching in “cruise control” and actually begin steering this boat.  I play through dozens of pieces, picking out recital music for my younger students (“Too late,” I think to myself, when after 16 measures the piece hasn’t worked its magic.).  Older students are memorizing and polishing, learning final sections of big works, reviewing old repertoire.  For the next six weeks, we will have no choice but to throw some things over the boat: ear tunes, original compositions, new techniques and skills.  These things will drift alongside for a while, until the load lightens up again and we can fish them out of the water.  Thank goodness for life rafts.

Turns out, my students have plenty of opinions about what is important and what could be tossed.  “Any ideas about what you might want to play on the recital?” I ask them.  “Have you heard a piece you might be interested in learning?  Or is there a composer or style you want to try?”  These questions are dangerous, I realize, but they are really code for:  I am buying myself some time here because I haven’t figure it out.  Maybe you can give me a place to start or at least rule out some things for me.

I should have been asking the kids this question all along.  One serious sixth grader replied, “You know, Amy, I am really into classical music these days.  I think I’d like to play one of those two-page operas by Beethoven.”  I tried not to laugh, after all, I understood what he was really saying to me:  Come on, Amy, time for me to play one of the big boys.  While original two-page operas for the piano by Beethoven are a bit in short supply, finding a great two-page piece by one of the major figures in our world I can handle. 

Several other kids also quickly requested a recital piece by a “famous dead composer.”  I am both surprised and somewhat pleased by this.  Clearly, our work studying composers and major works in performance classes is sinking in, but the message to me is also coming through loud and clear:  Let’s stop fooling around here. 

Which doesn’t mean we have thrown our favorite pedagogical composers over the boat.  In fact, one of the same children who requested a “famous dead composer” in the next breath told me that she loved ALL the pieces in her Dennis Alexander collection so much that each one deserved its own recital.

So we are keeping Dennis, and all those two-page operas by Beethoven.  Liszt, however, is still out of here.

There was one time I had someone to handle things like this.  When we lived in Boston, instead of managing my own studio, I worked for several community music schools where I was simply a contracted teacher, not responsible for any administrative duties.  This, I found, had its own price. 

Just because someone else was managing the business and administrative tasks of my schedule doesn’t mean this was being done well.  One day I arrived at school on a Friday afternoon and the secretary Rita said brightly, "Did you get that phone message?"  

"What phone message?"

"Well...a mother called and there is a sick child."

A sick child.  I waited patiently to see if this sick child had anything to do with me.

"This child had a high fever.  The mother did not sound concerned about it, but I am."

I continued to wait to see if this sick child would affect my life, or at the very least, my afternoon.

"This is one of my students?"  I prompted her.

"Yes.  The mother was cancelling the lesson.  I don't think it was for today."  

This was becoming more and more dubious.  Parents do not call and cancel lessons for days or weeks ahead if their child is sick.  

"What is this child's name?"

"Hmmm . . . seems like it could have been a name for either a girl or a boy."

Rita was surprisingly unflustered by all of this. I wanted her apologetic and groveling at my feet for not taking this phone message correctly.  

I wracked my brain for potential students with androgynous names.  I came up blank.  I could see my time with Rita was rather pointless, so I left and waited for a student to miss his or her lesson.  The sick child's name?  Annabel.

Later, replaying this incident for Matt, he reminded me a Dilbert cartoon.  Dilbert's secretary has been given a poor job evaluation. She asks Dilbert for an explanation and Dilbert says, "Because I got 345 phone messages last year with the note, 'Might have been Bob.'"

A conversation heard outside our window:

A couple of guys were rewiring the air-conditioner next door.  One says to the other, "Man, that woman sure does play the piano a long time."  

The other responds, "She's a professional pianist.  Like, she went to school for that."  

"You can do that?" 

*** 

These days that time at school seems a million years ago.  I am weeks away from acquiring another useless master’s degree.  I spent last semester in a mind-numbing measurement and assessment course, taught by someone who had the unfortunate habit of reversing numbers in his calculations.  (“You know that’s how bridges collapse,” one friend said drily.  Yes, but we are in the social sciences.) I spent the first month of class wondering why I never came up with same numbers as he did, and the next three months wondering which of the numbers might be reversed in the statistical equations I was struggling to understand.  It was a long semester.

I turned in a final paper and the next day began studying for comps.  Comprehensive exams in that last graduate degree 20 years ago (“Like, she went to school for that.”) consisted of memorizing long lists of opus numbers and keys.  There was one time I knew the opus number of everything Beethoven wrote for the piano.  And Chopin.  I knew all the K numbers used to catalogue Mozart sonatas and concertos.  I could tell you that Beethoven Opus 10 No 3 was in D major.  That was a long time ago.

These days I am studying cognition theories and internal and external validity principles.  I can tell you in great detail about the modal model of memory and talk to you for hours about Bandura’s social cognitive theory.  I have nine hours of written comps and a morning of orals.  During June, I have my last class in human development (due to unfortunate timing, I will have to write my human development comp questions the same week I am finishing the course.  Not ideal.).  The end is in sight.

Recently, a student of mine announced that she was “super excited” about her term paper because she was doing it on Bach and “you, Miss Amy, can be my primary source!”  Research methods are not my strong suit, as anyone in the educational psychology program at the University of New Mexico will tell you, however, I am pretty sure I cannot be Corrine’s primary source on Bach.

Nonetheless, I was charmed, if not by her assertion of my primary connection to Bach, but because she was so psyched about doing an English term paper on a composer.  For weeks she gave me updates, offered fun facts about what she was learning, asked to borrow books.  Finally, one week Corrine declared that the paper was done.  “Do you know what was the toughest part?” she asked me.  “Tell me,” I responded, sensing somehow that piano practice might have taken a back seat the week the term paper was due. 

“The toughest part was trying to explain musical things that I have been doing my whole life.  Like ‘shaping’ or crescendo.  My English teacher had no idea what I was talking about.  He kept making me explain.  It’s really hard to figure out how to talk about what we do.”  In all my years with Corrine I have never seen her so serious.  These days she is a teenager, flakey and distracted as often as she is earnest and intense.  And yet, there she was, talking about being a musician (“…things I have been doing my whole life…”) as if it were a central part of how she viewed herself in the world, as if there was nothing more important than trying to make another person understand this very essence of her.

In the end, perhaps that is why I went back to school.  I wanted to learn to talk more credibly about what it is that I do.  I wanted to understand the theories behind how teaching and learning works.  I wanted to be able to say with some conviction and authority what the educational psychology equivalent of crescendo might be.  Maybe more than anything, I wanted to be able to explain to another person, “Hey!  This is how I see the world.”

You can do that?

I certainly hope so.

This week I was teaching a pre-Impressionist piece to Sophie.  It is a little early intermediate piece that makes use of the five-note pentatonic scale.  I began my spiel by talking a bit about Impressionist art.  We looked at a couple of paintings by Monet in an art book.  I explained the link to Impressionist music, how these composers were enthralled with Asian culture, and how they began imitating this sound by using modalities like the pentatonic scale. We improvised a bit on the black keys, familiarizing ourselves with this distinct sound color.  I reminded Sophie that at this time in history it was difficult to travel from Europe to the Far East and so composers had a fairly limited knowledge of this culture.  I was ready to direct our attention to the actual piece that I was assigning Sophie, confident that I had done my background work thoroughly.

Suddenly, Sophie blurted out, "Couldn't they just go through the Panama Canal?"

Of course not, I thought impatiently, my eyes on the clock.  Don't they teach you anything at school? This was already taking far longer than I had anticipated.  Next week is our spring recital, there is a lot to do.  This juggling act of time management is a constant negotiation.  We need to work deeply on a few things, such as the upcoming recital piece, and yet, at the same time, I can’t ignore the regular practices of technique work, sight-reading, new repertoire, and so on.  If I do, the students will be certain to ignore these things as well. 

There is no right answer as to how to divvy up our allotted time together.  Sometime I divide and conquer well, balancing tasks with poise.  More often I’m afraid that I push through hurriedly, and probably squash some natural curiosity that might have arisen if I had only allowed a bit more space and breath in our work.  Last week, in a rare moment of grace, I decided not to brush off Sophie’s innocent question.  Instead, we got out the atlas and examined the map to understand why the Panama Canal was totally unhelpful to the French trying to get to the Far East.  

Total time:  43.5 minutes.   

Perhaps not the most linear or direct use of our time.  In fact, this might be the pedagogical parallel to going through the Panama Canal on the way to the Far East.  But I wonder, how much do we miss in our quest for efficiency?  I suspect that if we sometimes slowed down long enough for the journey, we might discover that the Panama Canal is actually quite beautiful.

And then there are the one-week pieces. 

Lucy would rather to do 10 one-week pieces than a single ear tune.  This isn’t a reflection of her ability to pick out a fun folk song, but rather of her dislike of the task.  It has gotten to the point where I now have to require her to e-mail me individual steps of the process throughout the week in order to guarantee that it will be done when she arrives at her lesson.  The things we do to motivate our students.  Or, if not motivate, at least threaten them into submission.

But I was talking about one-week pieces, not ear tunes.  “One-week Pieces” (Or simply, “One-Week”, as in “Play me your ‘One-Week’.”)  is the clever name for pieces the students must learn in one-week, sans help from me.  The object is to get the music as close to performance-ready as they can.  Then in the following lesson we score the performance from one to ten, much like an Olympic judging committee.  I choose pieces that are generally close to sight-reading level, which ideally gives them an opportunity to spend the week not cramming notes and rhythms, but rather working at a higher artistic level.  I expect students to think as musically as possible--dynamics, phrasing, balance, etc. --all of which gives me an opportunity to assess how well they can do these things without my guidance.

Students begin the assignment of one-week pieces when they hit mid-high school, one of those tangible milestones of joining the Chopin Performance Class, which is made up of mid-and-senior high students.  Points are recorded for each student and then collected together to earn some kind of party or reward during a monthly performance class. 

I’d like to take full credit for the idea of the one-week pieces, but truth is I stole the gist of the concept years ago from a source I can’t even remember anymore, which is how it rolls in the teaching world.  Like the points for one-week pieces earned by the Chopin class, our pedagogical brilliance is somewhat collective is this field. 

In the studio there is a lot of composing happening these days.  Some kids love it; some don’t.  I never push the issue, offering the option if I sense a kid’s interest, but not requiring this assignment.  The kids who live or die by their composition assignments never let me forget their weekly composition.  Indeed, there are a few who would be forever happy if their entire practice assignment was made up of their own compositions. 

In performance classes we often work with improvisation cards, which are postcards on which I have drawn random shapes or squiggles, an idea I adapted from Jean Stackhouse’s pedagogy class I took years ago.  The task is to try to “play” the card on the piano.  Sometimes I play a card and invite students to guess which card it might be from the selection displayed on the floor in front of them.  Other times a student will play a “secret” card that they show no one and the others have to try to draw what they’ve heard.  Still other times when I am feeling less ambitious and creative, the kids will simply take turns, drawing a card off the stack and one after another improving gestures and sounds to match the scribbling.  It doesn’t much matter which approach we choose, across the board kids LOVE the improv cards and beg to do them in class every month. 

For weekly composition assignments, I have a composition bowl, filled to the brim with little pieces of paper on which are written various composition titles.  Kids draw from the bowl and, Poof! like magic, there is their composition assignment for the week.  I love this, because I don’t have to search my brain and be creative on command; students love it because they never get tired of the suspense involved in taking down the bowl from the shelf, ruffling through the scraps of paper (and inevitably spilling half on the floor, which they also find amusing) and drawing a composition subject every week. 

Lately however, students have been complaining that they have done “all” the compositions in the bowl.  I think they are lying, because it looks like there are hundreds and no one has done that many, but the kids insist.  “Miss Amy,” they whine, “I have already done this one.”  I’d like to point out that like the sight-reading books, it wouldn’t kill them to do one twice, but the lure of the novel is irresistible.  One day recently, tired of the whining, I came up with a brilliant solution to the problem:  I would empty out the entire bowl (That’ll show them! I thought to myself.) and they would be charged with the task of refilling it with their own composition titles, each student responsible for five new ideas. 

Of course, like all pedagogical ideas that involve less teacher and more student, this was the perfect solution.  I didn’t have to do a damn thing, and the kids are thrilled to have this responsibility, loving the notion that other students will soon be playing their ideas.  Win-win. 

Now if they could just write their own sight-reading books…..  

Elizabeth is 7-years old and completely unpredictable. She has been working on Rudolph, which is rhythmically challenging for a little one. In fact, it has been rather touch and go, pedagogically, which is the often the case when we tackle Christmas tunes. Often, I view the playing of Christmas music as an opportunity to introduce certain rhythms, knowing that for the beginners these might be more advanced than they are ready to take on. Oh well, I usually think, come January we can put these behind us for awhile, no harm done one way or another. As far as Elizabeth goes, I suspect she has been picking out more notes by ear than actually reading the rhythms, but in the last lesson she had appeared to turn a corner. I complimented her on her hard work. She interrupted, her little face screwed up in disgust, "I know, but I don't like those 'mess-ups'." 

This reminds me of another young kid with an already healthy respect for accurate performance practices. Last week Kyle stopped in the middle of his eight measure ditty and announced to me, "I am going to start over because that was just full of mistakes." 

Katie was playing a piece for me from her sight-reading book.  Checking out a book every week from my SR library, as we call it, is something she had been doing for some time now.  I have several hundred method and repertoire books in my library, catalogued by levels.  To look at my shelves of SR books one might think that I am an organized person. The kids would tell you this is deceptive at best, and that, in spite of what appears to be an unlimited supply of SR books, I am ALWAYS in need of fresh material.  After all, many kids have read through every book in my library.  I remind them that they could probably check out a book twice and it wouldn’t kill them, but they don’t believe me.  I am tired enough of their whining for new SR books that I promised them that over this break between the summer and fall semesters I will take myself to the music store, armed with my inventory list, and buy new books to start the year.  They are thrilled. (Really, when I think about it, what am I complaining about?  The kids are begging for sight-reading books.  Clearly, I have won some pedagogical battle.) 

Yesterday I was just beginning my early morning warm-ups on the piano when I heard a knock on the door. Several mornings a week I teach an 8am lesson to elementary age students whose school, a few blocks away, doesn't begin until 9 o'clock. But this particular morning, I didn't have a lesson scheduled. Instead, I had already drunk several cups of coffee while dabbling in a few books piled on my coffee table, had checked e-mail, and was now settling down to begin an hour or so at the piano. But standing at my door, I find young Teddy and his dad, music books in hand. Teddy is only "kind-of" taking lessons. I teach his older sister, but didn't have an empty space to begin his lessons this fall. We did a few over the summer, and Teddy was an enthusiastic student. So enthusiastic, in fact, that I agreed upon a compromise until a regular spot appeared in my schedule: Teddy would come for a short 30-minutes every other week, instead of my default weekly 45-minute beginner lesson. This way, I reasoned, I could pretend he wasn't exactly my student. He was young enough that this non-commitment was hardly a problem, and in the meantime, he'd get a healthy taste of music lessons. Win-win, I thought.

Except that I am having trouble remembering to write down, from month to month, when it is that he will be showing up at my doorstep. This isn't exactly a problem, because there's no danger I would be teaching any other student on those mornings and I am not likely to be out running errands or anything, but his rap at the door does sometimes startle me. "Come on in, kid," I told him yesterday. "I forgot you were coming, but let's have a piano lesson."

This fall I am teaching Sunday afternoons. I resorted to this schedule after discovering that most Ed Psych courses are offered in the late afternoons, which is, by all accounts, prime piano lesson time. In order to carve out room in my schedule for even one class, I had to find another three hours I could teach. And so, Sunday afternoons find me working. In a similar attitude to pretending that I don't actually teach Teddy, I am trying to pretend that I don't really teach five days a week or on weekends, but rather that random kids I happen to like just "show up" on Sunday afternoons and we do piano. Mostly this is working, which tells you how easily I can ignore reality. But my success here has me wondering: what if I could persuade myself that there was no difference between work and play, that it was all equally appealing and fun, that my life wasn't unbalanced, but instead a bountiful manifestation of what I loved doing? This would be a wonderful way to live if I could just wrap my mind around it.

Some month ago, someone knocked on the front door. We have two entrances to our sun room and the big French doors that open to the courtyard are rarely opened. Everyone--Matt and I, our friends, my students---generally just walk into the house through the side door. So a knock on the French doors is a sign that it is someone we don't know. I peered out, and there at my door was a man I recognized as being someone who lived down the street. I opened the door, and he said, "Hi. I heard that piano lessons were given here. I am looking for a piano teacher for my daughter."

While I have gotten students from a variety of sources, never, in all my years of teaching, has someone just walked up off the street and inquired about piano lessons. This makes me fear that I have become like the piano teacher in The Music Man who has a sign in her window: Piano Given. Teddy's surprise appearance this week, and my pretending that I don't actually teach as much as I do, only confirms this suspicion. A friend recently suggested I should embrace the "eccentric" label, as it would be an easy way out of so many traditional expectations of our profession. The way I see it, it is only amount of time before I will be known around town as the crazy piano teacher with the cats.

Another Teaching Moment

October 18th, 2009   ::   Teaching Days

Recently our local MTNA organization held district level competitions. Like in many places, these are pretty competitive events. Students compete by age group, with first, second and third places awarded. Winners go on to the state competition, which takes place next month at the state convention.

Honestly, I am rather conflicted about the whole thing. On one hand, such events give students goals and force us to work more carefully and thoroughly than we might otherwise do. It is a chance to get what hopefully will be helpful, constructive feedback from judges, which can validate our work, and remind us what still needs our attention. This is all a good thing.

On the other hand, such events can be so arbitrary. Judges can be fantastic, thoughtful, and sharp or they can be thoughtless, harsh and hold a completely different set of values than we might practice in our teaching and music-making. Assuming that the level of playing is strong, which is often the case, than the picks for the winners can seem almost like a game of "Rock, Paper, Scissors." There are many years where I am very thankful not to be on the side of having to pick among good performances a single winner. I work hard to instill in my students a certain confidence in what they do, and to remind them repeatedly that ultimately we have no control over what a judge might be thinking. But I cannot guarantee that students completely understand this, which is the risk. Which students are psychologically and emotionally sure enough to handle such pressure? Which students will rise to the standard required, and be better for the experience? Which students will gain assurance knowing that they are part of a special group of talented, committed students, and that their presence at such a competition is a sign of their hard work and musicianship? It's a puzzle trying to figure these things out, and wakes me up at 3am, worried and anxious.

Even years like this one, when my students played well and were rewarded for their efforts by the judges, I question seriously whether it is worth the hours we spend in preparation, or the internal wrestling that is required to make sense of it all. Even with my best attempts at undervaluing the event, it is hard not to place a certain significance in what judges might decide, and to question my work as a teacher as a result. My husband reminds me that I get to filter this event for my students, and that their experience is somewhat subject to how I treat the whole thing. I know this, and I squirm under this pressure. I can handle this as a potentially important teaching moment, or I can make the whole thing mysterious and confusing to an 8-year-old who didn't place. My choice.

Here's a teaching moment I am faced with this year: how to handle contradictory comments from the two judges. This is somewhat delicate. Obviously, in our preparation over the last two month, my students have gotten my opinion about how these pieces should be played. But in my own teaching, I err on the side of letting kids do quirky things in their music-making rather than molding perfect but uniform little models of piano students. This means that in more than a few cases, my students were actually doing things I didn't love. I think that's OK. Several weeks ago, Dennis Alexander came and coached all the kids on their competition pieces, and we got his wise opinions about the music. As always, work with Dennis is enlightening and extremely helpful. He reinforced certain things I had been saying for weeks. He reminded us of some things I had been ignoring, hoping they would work themselves out. He pointed out things I had never thought of. It was wonderful to have his musical guidance, and we were all better for it.

But now I have to explain such opposing comments from the judges as: Great use of the pedal to accent beats. And then to the same student: You are using too much pedal. This should be played without pedal. Or: I loved your second movement. It was so lyrical. As opposed to: Your second movement is too romantic. You have missed the style completely. My head is spinning after reading such remarks. How does a 12-year-old make sense of this?

You could certainly argue (and I will) that this just proves that everyone has a different opinion about how music should sound. I have an opinion. Dennis has an opinion. These two judges also have differing opinions. But from the child's point of view, these judges had the power of awarding winners, which makes Dennis's and my opinions seems secondary in comparison. How are the judges' remarks (good, bad or neutral) not inherently worth more?

One year I was in such disagreement about the way the judges handled the comments, that I shredded the papers and never let the students see them. Interestingly, none of the kids even asked or seemed to care. I lost a teaching opportunity of having the judges reinforce things we had been working on, but it was worth the price of not exposing the students to some inappropriate and unconstructive comments. I would not want to make this action of tossing out judges' remarks a habit, but the kids were perfectly happy about their experiences that year without the judges' sheets. All of them wanted to participate again the following year, which says a lot. Well worth the loss of a few helpful suggestions.

In spite of how tempting that might be, I won't do that this year. Instead, we will wrestle with our own evaluations about how the day went, and the somewhat differing opinions of the judges. I saw one student yesterday, who placed last year, but not this time. I had worried that he might be devastated, but he wasn't, having moved on to the next thing. He has his winning composition for Hey Mozart! to get ready for his recital with New Mexico Symphony Orchestra players (which, just between you and me, is far more exciting anyway). One student, who did place in the competition, headed off that afternoon to his two weekend gigs -- one at a retirement community, and another at country club, where he earns several hundred dollars every Friday night. Another child had played in chapel at school last week, and still another had played service music at church a few weeks before. One student is working on an arrangement of one of his compositions for his school band that he has been asked to do. Two others are doing a set of four-hand duets on our fall studio recital, and were busy planning their rehearsals. I hang onto these tangible signs of how functional and versatile these young musicians are becoming. I never want to be a teacher that is teaching only to competitions. It is far more important--in spite of our success in the narrow competition arena---that they become flexible musicians, able and willing to play in a variety of styles and places.

Talking with friends later, I shared my struggles with the whole competition subject: my fear that by bowing out completely I won't be taken as seriously as a teacher; my need to prove through my students' success my worth as a teacher; my suspicion that I am being called not to step to the beat of the drum of the traditional esteemed teacher, but to foster a different way of being a teacher and a musician altogether. This brings up a host of conflicted feelings, which I have only begun to recognize, let alone sort out. But when talking this through with trusted friends, one commented, "Amy, it seems to me that your kids had a great experience doing this event. It is only you that is conflicted." It's true, and worth remembering. Just yesterday, Claire, who competed for the first time and did not place, came to her lesson. We talked about the competition and the judges' comments. "So," I asked her, "how do you feel about the whole thing?" "I think it was fun," she replied brightly, having clearly worked out the whole thing in her mind just fine. "Can I do it again next year?"

Later that day, out of the blue, one of my youngest students asked me, "Miss Amy, are there places you can go and play the piano and then someone wins?" Yes, I told her, wondering where she had gotten such an idea. "Cool," she responded, and, without missing a beat, turned back to her romping rendition of O Susanna.

It's altogether too easy to give a judge's opinions too much weight, and all too tempting to want to start teaching toward next year's competition now. I have to remind myself that I value the quirky, original kid in my studio. I have to tell myself that my kids out there making music in the real world is worth far more to me than having a winner in every age level. This is easier said than done, which, of course, is why I am wrestling with the whole issue. But there is something important here, if I can only sort it out, and worth struggling with in those dark 3am hours of the soul.

I Spy

September 27th, 2009   ::   Teaching Days

Because I don't require my students to do regular written theory work, I am always looking for ways to incorporate theory into the lesson. Technique work is an obvious place to begin, because Five-Finger Positions, scales, chord progressions and arpeggios not only work on finger dexterity; they also can be used to review and drill key signatures, to work on spelling scales and chords, and to reinforce relationships within the Circle of Fifths. But if I am truly going to claim that my students have a working knowledge of music theory, then I can't stop there. We must connect our technique and theory work to our music.

The longer I teach, the more I realize that I'm never going to get on top of the time issue. I will never have the luxury of extra time in lessons, so I have to use our time well. Intentionally using the assigned music to work on theory kills two birds at once: we practice our theory knowledge, yes, but perhaps more importantly, we gain a deeper understanding of the music at hand, which should make the learning process go quicker and more smoothly. In upper levels this is easy: we can analyze the form of our music, identify key centers and harmonies, mark phrases. It's the beginning levels where I have been rather haphazard about this work. Partly it is because beginning music is so simple (duh) that there is little to talk about. Sure, we can identify similar phrases or sections, but in two or three lines of music let's face it: this isn't going to be a long (or maybe even very enlightening) conversation.

One of the biggest challenges for beginning student is learning to read music. I have a variety of games and strategies using note-flashcards (I particularly like the ones Bastien sells. The notes are big and they print the whole grand staff on every card, something other brands don't do.), but students often struggle a bit making the link between the flashcards and the notes on the page. This has always been mysterious to me, but nevertheless it's a widespread bump in the process. And then there are the kids who seem to immediately to lose all their note-identification skills the minute they "graduate" from flashcards. I have long needed another way to firm up the connection between the knowledge of the notes on the flashcards and the notes on the page, and to drill note recognition after the students no longer have flashcards as part of their assignments.

One day, during a frustrating lesson with a stubborn 6-year-old, I stumbled upon a solution: I-Spy. This was a rather liberal adaption of the old car game, translated to the music lesson. "Let's play I-Spy," I said. "Follow my directions: Second page, third line, fourth measure, right hand first beat: what is the note?" This child (who had only moments before resisted all my attempts at correcting her wrong notes or even answering my impatient question, "What is this note?") suddenly became animated. "Wait! Say it again." I repeated the instructions, and she happily (and correctly as it turned out) identified the note in question. We continued this game for a while, the student becoming faster at following directions involving pages, lines, measures and beats (I quickly figured out that it is important always to prompt the line of questioning in the same order: page, line, measure, then beat). A tense moment was diffused. She got some good theory drilling of note-identification. In addition, she had to practice following verbal cues: Second page, second line, second measure, second beat... and so on, which will serve her well in any ensemble work later in life. Most importantly, I got that damn wrong note fixed in her playing.

Since that day, hardly an afternoon goes by without a game or two of I-Spy. I use it to correct wrong notes (it's less threatening than saying, "You played this note wrong. What it is supposed to be?") and to regularly drill theory concepts with my beginning students. Sometimes they identify notes, sometimes intervals, sometimes rhythmic things, but I always begin the same way: "Let's play I-Spy...."

As I explained to a young teacher recently, there are a thousand components to good teaching, but some of it is just having tricks to turn to. I-Spy is one of these a trick, but it has proven to be a valuable one. I wonder if it would work on my husband? "Let's play I-Spy. Marigold-colored study, purple chair, random pile of clothes. Whose are they and when are they going to be put away?"

Goody Goody Gumdrops

July 12th, 2009   ::   Teaching Days

I probably should go on record saying I don't think theory books are a waste of time. Some people, based on my previous rants , might think otherwise, but I actually think that most of theory books that are packaged with various methods are quite good. Life is full of hard choices, however, and choosing not to assign regular written theory work is one of the tough pedagogical decisions I make about how to use our time. But this summer, I decided to have some of my elementary students do some written work when they have less schoolwork in their lives. I purchased theory workbooks and started handing them out. On the first day, no fewer than 100% of the students squealed with delight as they grabbed the books from my hands, some even asking me, "Can I do extra pages if I want?" "Goody goody gumdrops!" one child exclaimed, a phrase one doesn't hear enough these days, much less in piano lessons.

Now, one might take this response as an argument for using theory workbooks all the time, but instead I think it only strengthens my choice to limit their use in my studio. Because clearly, by doing so -- and through no real forethought or calculation on my part -- I have increased their value and appeal to my students. I can coast on their good attitude about this assignment, and get some dedicated written work out of them this summer. Hopefully, they won't do it long enough to begin dreading it, but surely even a few months will help to further secure some of basic concepts that the books will reinforce.

Life is all about making tough choices about how to spend our time. In and out of music lessons, these decisions have to be made, because if we don't make them, we end up doing too many things rather poorly, instead of a few things well. Theory books aren't the only thing in my studio I choose to do in the summer months that I wouldn't do during other times of the year. I've got a number of drop-in students this summer: extra adults, college students home for a few months, even former students interested in revisiting their piano skills for a few months. I don't have time for these students during the year, hanging on as I am by a thread most of the time, but in the summer, when my normal load is less predictable, I can take on extra lessons. I find myself teaching them differently: I'm more relaxed with these students, letting them call the shots about what they want to work on, not prescribing my usual doses of etudes and technique work. This has got me thinking, wondering if this attitude of: well, what do you want to do on the piano this summer? isn't a healthy change from my always dictating the learning schedule. I'm not suggesting this would be a good idea taken to an extreme, because I have lots of experience knowing the best way to get from Piano-Playing Point A to Piano-Playing Point B, and that's what I am being paid to do. But shifting my focus a bit away from my assumed "best" way to learn the piano, to a more open-minded: what would serve the student best here in the next few months and give them joy? isn't a bad way to think either.

Honestly, I could use a dose of that philosophy infused into my life at the moment; dragged down as I am these days with the heat and unfamiliar humidity. The New Mexico version of air-conditioning, the swamp cooler, which work fine in a dry heat, can't hold up when the air is retaining moisture. I swear some students are going to melt during one of their sweaty lessons, and leave a puddle on my piano bench. Asking the question "What would serve us all best here and even make us happy?" would be a helpful survival technique during these scorching days.

There are moments when the clearest answer to that question is "ice cream." However, if theory workbooks can make a child utter the words, "Goody goody gumdrops," then there's hope for all of us.

Recital Notes

May 17th, 2009   ::   Teaching Days

I think every recital could use a little personality. I love it when performers talk from the stage; I like good program notes that give a glimpse into the mind of both the composers and the performers; I like lecture recitals infused with humor and insightful anecdotes. My desire for some pizzazz quadruples when it comes to that potentially deadly event, the piano students' studio recital. So some time ago, I began working in what might be viewed by some as a "shtick" but what I prefer to think of as an antidote to death by boredom. It's not that I think my students are boring; quite the contrary -- they entertain me every day. But a piano recital should be an evening that everyone looks forward to, not an evening that we all have to endure.

One year I asked many of the parents in my studio, who happen to be professional musicians, to also perform. Another year, I had poems and short passages about music read by various parents in between the student performances. Still another year , the kids did performance maps of their recital pieces (either a drawing inspired by their piece, or in the case of the more intermediate to advanced students, a musical flowchart to assist memory) and we did a visual display in the performance space. It has gotten to the point where I feel a certain kind of pressure to have a shtick at my studio recitals, that there is a certain level of expectation about the program, that if families drag aunt and uncles and neighbors and grandparents to our recital, it had better be an entertaining evening.

As I was mulling over what to do this time, it occurred to me what I most wanted to do was to educate my audience (hopefully in an entertaining way) as to why it was we bothered with these recitals in the first place. Especially in this dicey economy, it seemed a good time to reaffirm why music matters. The following are my notes from last weekend's spring recital. In spite of the healthy amount of verbiage below, there really were fine student performances of great music as well. No one wants to hear me talk that much.

***

Another year, another recital. At some point is it fair to ask: why are we doing this? After all, we all have plenty we could be doing with our evening, and for that matter, with all the time devoted to the pursuit of music making. So why? When modern life pulls at us from five million directions all the time, why do we bother?

As a person who has decided to pursue music as a profession, one answer seems so obvious as not worth mentioning: that is, music itself is reason enough. This assumes that one buys into the idea that art matters, and music is important and worthwhile. "Without music," Neitzsche said, "life would be a mistake." But you all also must believe this, or you would not have prioritized music and music lessons in your life. Surely I must be preaching to the choir, standing before a group of people who don't have any trouble accepting that music in and of itself is reason to be here.

I mean, you must accept this premise on some level, as here you are with your cell phones and cameras turned off for the next hour. You've brought cookies and cleaned up your children quite remarkably. We are all dressed up and ready to go, so, let's just play some music, shall we?

But let's assume for a moment, that we needed more reason than just the inherent value of music itself to motivate us to spend the kind of time, money and energy it requires to take up a musical instrument, much less set aside a whole Saturday evening to attending a piano recital.

Here's the thing: if you have thought for even one moment that we what were doing in piano lessons was limited to learning notes and rhythms, then you have underestimated what music lessons can be. While music is my tool, and piano is my artistic medium, maybe the most important job of a good teacher is to nurture the transformation of self that happens through learning, through the growth process inherent in becoming a sensitive and compassionate human being. What I know is that, through music, I have the chance to teach life lessons: how to work, how to learn, how to think creatively and artistically. If I lose sight of the person on the bench in the worthwhile pursuit of music making, then I have missed the point. We aren't just developing musicians here, but creative, artistic, whole persons.

Another valuable reason to hold this musical celebration every semester is that it is the only time we all get together. Look around, folks: this is a community. Semester after semester, year after year, you become a unique group of people who take interest in one another and each other's children, you care about the progress of kids other than your own, you might sense that you have more in common in your struggles and battles to keep your children practicing and engaged than you might think on the surface. I watch you all pick up your kids from performance class every month and catch up with each other in my sun-room and driveway. Those of you who have helped in group classes know that that these kids have become friends, and that sometimes way too much fun happens in the shadow of my six-foot grand piano. In a world where we are losing important connections with one another and becoming more and more fragmented and scattered, this community matters. We are part of each other's lives. Thank goodness we get together like this twice a year.

Over Christmas break I cleaned out the refrigerator. This, I am embarrassed to admit, was a first both for the four-year-old refrigerator and for myself. I have, from time to time, gone through the refrigerator and emptied it of food that had begun to grow its own bacteria, and I have wiped out empty refrigerators when preparing to vacate an apartment. But to clean a refrigerator without the objective of trying to get a security deposit back . . . no, I had never done that before.

It was past time to do so, however, and one day having found some spare time due to The Break and the quietness of the days immediately following the holidays, I got inspired. I took everything out of the fridge, and set about removing shelves and drawers and spent the next hour scrubbing down four years worth of messes: clumps of jam, outside layers of onion skins, sauces and dressings that had spilled at some point and begun to form a permanent coating of grime on the inside surface. Afterwards, the appliance was sparkling; it gave me some kind of strange pleasure every time I opened it and gazed into the gleaming beauty. I almost became a convert to the joys of housekeeping.

But that's the thing: my real life doesn't allow for the kind of time to do more than basic housekeeping, much less the luxury of time to keep a sparkling refrigerator. I am suspicious that as far as housekeeping goes, survival mode is the only one at work around here. But the clean refrigerator got me thinking, because I realized that in too many areas of our lives survival mode is all we are managing. Looking around, I see colleagues and friends who regularly live in that maxed-out place of too much work, too many obligations, too much stress. They manage, but barely, one step away from a possible breakdown--if not of the catastrophic nature, then at least of the kind of minor meltdown we all have experienced at one time or another. My students are no better off: there is too much homework, rehearsals, activities, sports practices and very little unstructured time. I know that my best creative ideas bubble out of moments that almost look like boredom. I also know that its been forever since I allowed for the luxury of such unscheduled time, and that I have never conscientiously prioritized such empty spaces in my life. It isn't just our refrigerators that are messy, but our lives are stuffed and overflowing. We are so busy and stressed out that we have little hope but survival mode.

Both personally and professionally, this is a concern. Obviously, living one beat away from insanity is not desirable, but more than that, what I know is that when we are in survival mode we don't have any mental or emotional space for artistic, creative thinking. Not only do we fail to clean out our refrigerators of unwanted science projects, but huge areas of our lives get moldy and dusty. It's hard to think big idealistic thoughts when we are barely getting our basic needs met. Of course, this is psychology 101, the idea that we until our primary needs of food, shelter, and love are met, we are not capable of anything more complex. While we may be lucky enough not be primitively fighting for fundamentals, I wonder if there isn't a parallel somehow that says as long as our lives are completely full of pressing obligations and time restraints, artistic and creative thinking is but a faint probability.

Recently, this idea was brought home to me. I was traveling, doing a workshop for teachers about creative thinking in our studios. At the end of the talk was a discussion period. Although I liked to have thought that I shared lofty, cosmic ideas about teaching, the questions I got were basic survival kinds of things: What do you do when your students don't show up for lessons and don't call? How do you handle it when your students come to lessons without their music? What do you do about students who can't afford a full-size keyboard? "Wow," I found myself thinking. "Did you even hear me?" I dealt with the questions as kindly as I could feeling all the time a little like the Alice Waters of piano, proselytizing on the benefits of healthy, organic music-making and teaching, only to be asked how I prepare Hamburger Helper.

Although I may not deal regularly with the above problems, I think I get it. I get how teachers might be fighting so hard for such fundamentals like a committed student roster and regular paychecks that high level creative teaching never gets to be part of the equation. I understand that, for many classroom music teachers trying to manage in rooms without a piano, perhaps seeing a class of children once a week at most, that teaching complex harmonies might not be at the top of their agendas. I recognize that for every teacher who might get the privilege of teaching highly dedicated advanced students, there are dozens of other teachers working to keep music alive in our society no matter how basic the level. For people who actively have to fight for every meal, whether or not the food is organic is not really important. Yeah, I get that.

So what's the answer? On the one hand, I love big lofty ideas (Music in every home. A piano in every classroom....) and think that as a functioning artist and teacher, I need motivation as much as the next person. Obama resonated with voters because we were people in desperate need of inspiration. But taking a good look around our profession reminds me that we need both: we need encouragement and a motivating reason to do what we do and we need practical tangible solutions to the problems we face every day. While we can get by without clean refrigerators, that doesn't mean we should ignore the fact that our starving spirits need to survive too. Truth is, I know altogether too well what survival mode looks like. I face plenty of it in my life, and certainly it is not only my creativity or my refrigerator that suffers. The difference between surviving and thriving is relevant to us all.

I am a huge fan of big blank sketchbooks. At any given time, I have a half-dozen blank notebooks in use: one contains teaching notes, another serves as my practice journal, another holds recipes, and I carry still another everywhere to capture miscellaneous thoughts and ideas. My husband, on the other hand, likes the small moleskin notebooks to record all of his random information, and he teases me about the size of my sketchbooks. "Why do they have to be so big?" he asks, eyeing my pile of black spiral-bound sketchbooks. "My ideas are too grand to be contained on your tiny little pages," I retort, as he slips his admirably compact volume into his jacket pocket.

Not only do I swear by these big sketchbooks in my personal life, but I require that my students own and use theme for their practice assignments. This is, admittedly, because I have a lot to say when writing down assignments for students. I am fanatical about assigning specific practice steps. For example, a beginner working on a new piece might have the following assignment: play RH 3x, LH 3x, BH line 3 5x, then whole song BH 3x.

Or something that looks like: tap BH 1x, play RH 1x, LH 1x, BH 3x, repeat from beginning each step 1x.

An advanced student might have an assignment such as: Practice each section of the piece a different way every day: using metronome, hands separately, different rhythms, in phrases, etc.

This comes straight from my own practice journal, full of ideas about what is working and what needs to be done next. Keeping a journal reminds me of what I've already done, and what I might have neglected. It is a place to catch those brilliant, if infrequent, moments of insight while practicing, when suddenly it is perfectly clear what might fix a particular problem; it is a map of my learning process for every piece of music. For years, I was convinced I remembered these moments of enlightenment and the intentions I might have for the next day's work, but after years of keeping a practice journal, I know I was only fooling myself. It is amazing what I forget when I get up from the piano bench. It is quite startling to realize how painfully blank the slate might be every practice session if I don't have a means to catch my progress.

So, I have become compulsive about writing down Every-Specific-Practice-Step for students, and this teaching habit borders on both the obsessive and the dogmatic. I know this, of course, and find it a bit ironic given how laid-back I generally am. Compulsive behavior isn't really a problem with me; establishing and maintaining habits are more of a challenge. But because of this, perhaps, I am more conscious of how important it is for students to have a plan when they sit down at the piano to practice. Students with a set plan are more likely to feel a sense of accomplishment when they work, and practice plans make the whole ordeal more objective. Have you practiced all your assignments carefully? Yes or No? Sometimes I scribble this in the margins of student's assignment notebooks just to see if they are reading their practice plans. Certainly in my own life and work, I welcome anything that will make this nebulous art form more black and white. If I have a practice plan and complete it, I can, in good conscience, feel like my work is finished for the day. I find the same to be true for my students.

But to counter this controlling tendency, I encourage students of all levels to think about their own practice plans. "How should we practice this?" I routinely ask students. "We don't have time today for 'Waltz'. What should the practice plan be next week?" This is good for all of us: it gives the student more authority and ownership and requires them to think about what constitutes a reasonable practice plan for a given piece. Equally important is the fact that it starts to write my role and absolute authority out of the equation. As a teacher, I want this for my students: I want them to become independent musicians, not dependent upon my holding their hands through the learning process. But even on a more personal level I want this: if I can give them ownership over their own music-making the work gets easier for me as a teacher. It takes an enormous amount of energy to push and prod students along; it is no small thing to step back and just provide the healthy atmosphere for music-making without all of the energy coming from me. If I can allow them to make more of the decisions and make more of their own learning discoveries, I am a far better teacher at the end of the day. I'm also far less exhausted.

I was reminded of this just this week. For three years, I have been pushing and prodding Jake along. This has been necessary, or so I tell myself, in order to get this now 4th grader to the point where assignments are being learned accurately and thoroughly. Suddenly, he is taking off at a breathtaking speed, sailing through his pieces, where once it took him weeks to master even the simplest skill. This is thrilling for me, as you can imagine, and as I watch this unfold in front of me, I am deliberately trying to hand him the reins whenever possible. "So how I am supposed to practice that?" Jake asked me as I was writing down a new assignment this week. "Hmmm....how about you use your own brain and figure it out?" I suggested, "You write the practice plan and follow it." "Oh, good." Jake responded. "I like to use my brain. It makes me feel less like a robot."

If we accept for a moment that our real job is teaching life skills, not just music skills, then using one's own brain ought to be on the top of the list. Daily, hourly, I have to remind myself of this and relinquish control: stop jumping in to correct every small or large mistake, but allow students to stumble through and discover their own process in my presence. This doesn't mean I stop making my assignments specific, but it does remind me that there is a line to between healthy, appropriate guidance, and putting students more in charge of their work. These are contradictory ideas, to be sure, but there's a balance to be found in the tension between these practices, if we can only learn to embrace that grey area.

Occasionally, when I am faced with another big empty page to fill for a student, I feel a lot like a robot filling in the blanks. But when I am doing my best work, and being attentive to all the complex nuances built into the art of teaching, its a far cry from anything mechanical.

In the last issue of American Music Teacher, I wrote a column which dealt with some of the issues around student competitions. Specifically, I talked about Charlie, a young precocious student of mine, who, while having plenty of problems certainly, is a delightfully spirited kid who plays with great flair and enthusiasm. In fact, I argued, he was exactly the kind of kid I like to put in competitions because he performs with such drama and exuberance. He exemplifies what I want to nurture in students: creative, passionate music-making.

But competitions are not typically rich ground for such vitality. Indeed, many competitions seem designed to suck all the life out of a room. Participants' playing is usually restrained and careful; judges are encouraged to reward perfect reditions of big, ambitious pieces over tasty, spirited playing of age-appropriate music. It becomes all about the details, and as a result we drill every last marking on the page into students, in hopes that we can prevent them from being marked down for exhibiting any offbeat or unexpected personality. In my column about Charlie, I even suggested that this debate could be enlarged to include all the work we do every day in the studio: are we developing unique, colorful artists, or generically boring and inhibited musicians?

I been overwhelmed by the response to this column. People have written from all over the country, echoing many of the same questions and concerns. "You know, Amy, we all think this. You just had the courage to say it out loud," one person from Houston told me. Many have written to ask what happened to Charlie and his "Jungle" pieces, wanting an update or a follow-up column. So here it is:

Charlie placed third in his age group. I was thrilled. Given the competition that afternoon, I was perfectly satisfied with third place; it felt like a validation of what I was trying to do with all my students that entered that day: give them permission to show some personality, even maybe at the risk of showing less polish or perfection. This didn't work in every age level, but my students had a better showing this year than ever. One teacher told me, "You know, across the board your students play with personality. It's great to see." That comment alone was worth the gamble. There is no predicting what a judge will think, I never agree with everything judges say or do, but this felt like evidence that I was on the right track. I'll be braver about taking musical risks with my students in competitions in the future; I can already tell a greater confidence in doing so, even in their weekly lessons.

And Charlie? I can assure you he is still asserting his personality at every possible opportunity. Yesterday, he had changed one of the notes in Dennis Alexanders's Troubadour, insisting that an F# in a couple of places in the left hand would sound better. I compromised on that one, saying that as long we talked to Mr. Alexander about it he could do whatever he wanted. Even though Dennis lives minutes away from me and is a frequent guest in my studio, my hedging will certainly buy some time. In that case, Charlie's F# sounds pretty awful, but still every time he stubbornly played it, I found myself thinking, "Isn't it something that he can embrace this funky sound?" I can assure you, he is flagrantly breaking all harmony rules when adding that F#, but still, give me Charlie any day. We need each other, Charlie and me. He needs me because I just might be unusual in my willingness not to get in his way too much. I need him because he reminds me to embrace the unexpected and to question the conventional. We don't always win around here, but day after day, we continue to make our strange funny little noises, trying to find our voices in this world. Most days, you could even call it music.

I am a pretty decent sight-reader, and I have always prided myself that my students' reading is better than average. In the past, this has probably has made me lazy about doing specific sight-reading work on a weekly basis, both in lessons and in the students' assignments, but in the last few years I have mended my sorry ways.

In addition, I have started a sight-reading library of music. (This has been an expensive thing to get going, involving me buying hundreds and hundreds of dollars of method books and pedagogical literature so that my library is big enough -- and the levels accessible and varied enough -- to be helpful.) Each week, all my students--with the exceptions of the very beginners--check out a sight-reading book. Their assignment is to play each piece in the book once and to bring it back the next week. Then I allow them to pick something that they liked from the collection to play for me, after which I choose something for them to play (thereby lessening the possibility that they actually only played at home the one piece that they then picked in the lesson). This whole ordeal takes a life-sucking amount of time. Me: "Did you play your sight-reading book?" Kid: "Yeah." Me: "Great. Pick something to play." Minutes go by while the kid picks something to play me. I try not to act impatient, fully realizing that just because I move at the speed of light, not everyone does. "I want to play, 'Frogs on a Log.'" "Fantastic." Kid plays. I then say, "OK. Now lets hear the first three lines of 'Minuet.'" Kid plays. Then the kid checks off his name from the sight-reading library sign-out sheet, signs the back of the book and then puts it away. More life-sucking minutes go by while the kid chooses a new book, usually verbally describing how he feels about each one as he browses through the basket. "Have I done this one? Oh, yeah, I signed the back already. But I don't remember it. I want to look at the music to make sure. OH! I loved this song. Could I just play it again really quick?..." Need I point out that this proves the kid likes to play the piano and has generally warm fuzzy feelings about the whole sight-reading process? I have the books labeled and organized by level to save time, although I laugh as I type that sentence because NOTHING about this process saves time. In fact, it is all I can do not to rip the book right out of the kid's hands, file it away myself and grab a new one.

So why do I bother with this waste of probably 8 minutes every lesson? Because although I can't begin to list them all, I think that all sorts of life skills are being developed and self-suffienciney encouraged when I let the kids do this whole sequence themselves. I see too many examples of parents doing things for kids to save time, and children as a result are more helpless than they need to be. So that's one reason I sacrifice lesson time. Another reason is that students are free to have uninfluenced opinions about this music with very few cues from me about whether or not they "should" like something. Because they read through an entire book every week (at least that's the goal), there's lots of music going through their lives and under their hands. Some books they love, and beg to be allowed to take home again. (Mostly I say no to this request, so that when I do agree, they think I am absolutely wonderful. I know, I know, cheap psychological trick.) Other books they hate, and are quick to tell me all about it. I think this is great in every way. Mostly I teach music I love and kids are quick to pick up on this fact. (Life is too short to not teach the music you love. Besides, as pianists, we are blessed by never being able to exhaust our repertoire so there is no reason to teach bad music.) I have an easy rapport with my students, so most of the time they wouldn't think they were hurting my feelings if they didn't like their assigned repertoire, but still that music has certain expectations that their sight-reading books just don't, so they are free to love or hate their sight-reading books at will. The final reason is simple and profound: since I began this six months ago, my students have leaped forward in their sight-reading skills. They read way above their levels, they learn their assigned music faster, they are more confident about starting new music and tackling new assignments on their own. This has been one of the biggest win-win pedagogical things I have ever done. The only drawback is the time involved, and honestly, that's just me and my own impatience.

But the whole concept of sight-reading has, from time to time, led to some misunderstandings. There was the time with Yun-Sun (not my cat, but my cat's namesake). Yun-Sun was probably five at the time and a pretty precocious reader already. Her mother had a masters degree in piano performance, but English was her second language, and so occasionally we had communication issues when discussing practicing. For some time, I had been assigning Yun-Sun to "sight-read" through such and such pages, and then one day in the lesson discovered that she and her mother had taken this to mean that Yun-Sun should say out-loud every note on the page. No actual piano playing was happening, jsut verbatim "sight-reading." More recently, I have discovered that even kids who have been speaking English since birth misunderstand "sight-reading". I had been writing "Play your SR book" in their assignment notebooks only to find out that some of the kids thought this meant "Play your silent reading book". (How they were translating this assignment to piano playing I have no idea, but those kids are nothing if not flexible and creative.) Last week, I stumbled upon Richard Chronister's term for sight-reading: sight-playing, which is wonderful and accurate in every way. However, I tried renaming the assignment with one kid only to have him whine, "But I like sight-reading. I'm used to that." You can't win.

With all these seasonal marks comes the normal push and pull of full schedules, long days, taxing routines. I work the next four weekends doing piano teacher kind of things: recitals for my students, competitions and master classes, performance classes and extra lessons. It's all good, as the kids would say, but I resent it a bit. I wonder what will happen to the almost habitual Friday morning hikes Lora and I have been doing. We are hoping to squeeze in a morning to go horseback riding; I would love to get to one of the art shows around town in the next month. When a colleague asks me to play another rehearsal, I nearly fall apart and weep at her feet. It should have been no big deal, but at that moment it was more than I could take on. I'm saying no almost protectively these days, without even consulting my calendar first. I know I am teaching more than I should be. I have several upcoming performances and the corresponding rehearsals to play. And then there are the next four weekends; my next two-day stretch with no obligations is a month away. I swallow hard even writing that sentence.

At the risk that ten thousand stars will become a blog all about teaching piano -- when really I am just a pianist and teacher who writes a blog -- this is another post about with some theories on teaching. Specifically on teaching music theory, which makes for a bit of a word twister indeed. But recently, a reader recently wrote and asked that should the muse strike, she'd be interested in hearing what I might have to say about teaching music theory--how to make time for it, ideas for teaching it away from the piano bench, and so on. "Uh-oh," was my first thought. No one is going to like what I have to say about teaching theory, because I simply don't toe the party line on this one.

Eddie is a high school student and quite a talented pianist. In the last year, he has evolved from someone who practiced because a parent made him, to someone who has decided he IS a pianist. It's a lovely shift indeed, making my job all the easier. He is also a great tennis player, and this summer he has been teaching tennis lessons to young children. He tells me about these lessons, comparing piano with tennis. Apparently, he has been incorporating piano ideas to these youngsters, telling them "You may not like to practice, but you should stick with it!" making me beam with pride that this good-looking kid has adopted this view of the world and his music lessons already.

Just like my teaching teaches me at least as much as it does any of my students, I can see this happening with Eddie. He is suddenly more interested in what I say, how I talk about practicing, what the process of learning a new piece might be. "You know, the little kids I teach love me," he told me the other day, "but the 12 year-olds hate me because I make them work hard." "Yeah," I agreed, "I have the same problem with 12 year-olds. It's not about you; it's just being 12," I reassured him.

Last week we were discussing his Beethoven sonata before he began to play. "Should I play it room temperature or performance tempo?" Eddie asked me, not catching his slip of the tongue.

But I got it. I know exactly what he means by "room temperature" playing. Room temperature is the slower break-down practicing that we do. It is the place where I have long coached him to spend most of his practice time, instead of always racing through at top performance tempo. "You will need to practice performing this piece at some point, but not too much," I tell him frequently, "because you know things unravel with too much performance tempo playing."

Room temperature. Performing frequently this summer has meant a careful balance of room temperature playing and performance tempos, the yin and yang of my musical life. Every day I catch myself saying something really smart to a student that I need to listen to, something that I would do well to apply to my own work. Every day teaching teaches me, if only I would take heed. Too many days, I practice the same way, falling into familiar and dangerous ruts of my own work and habits. I could use more time with room temperature playing, and less run-through performances. More breaking apart, and less putting together until absolutely necessarily. I know this. But saying some version of this to a student reminds me once again. It's humbling to imagine that there is still a gap between what I know and what I actually do, but there it is. My students mirror my own frantic patterns all too well.

As I write this, I am quickly approaching the end of my summer semester. I have a blessed few weeks off before diving into the fall semester, the return of monthly performance classes, the many recitals and competitions that litter the next season. It's hard to believe that the summer months of teaching are nearly behind me and that I might need to start gearing up to the next round of learning. I have plenty of homework over this break: music to read through, newsletters and studio info to get out, a teaching schedule to put together and finalize for what seems to be the 500th time. (If one more parent calls me with the leading sentence, "Oh Amy! We just found out about David's chess club practices and now can't do Thursdays at 4pm." I will scream. The fact that I inexplicably got a perfect score on the logic potion of the GRE means that I should be able to easily handle all these variables. True, I can. I just don't want to.)

It is also the time of the summer when I hit my own seasonal wall. I have read that we are best suited to the season that we are born in, but that couldn't be less true for me. I may have an August birthday, but every year about now I grow weary of the summer heat. I fight the cabin fever of too many weeks of staying inside avoiding the sun. I get restless and depressed and moody. I seem to be better suited to the season in which I was conceived--that delicious fall season between Halloween and Thanksgiving. It's then that my spirits really rise and soar, sending positive endorphins throughout my body. These days it's all I can do to keep from spinning off the planet and to continue acting normal and rational. Years and years of this cycle makes me know it well: I can sense it coming; I even know strategies for fighting the declining sprial. It helps to keep my routines of work and play in place. Too much time off right now is almost dangerous. It is good to get out early enough on a daily basis to walk or ride my bike, or to garden in the evenings so that I have some connection to the outdoors in these hot months. But above all, it helps to just "observe," as my yoga teacher would say. To think, "oh yeah, that's what's going on. I'm not losing my mind. I just have had enough of summer."

Recently I spent a day judging a piano competition in Los Alamos.  This was the kind of contest where the students aren't actually pitted against each other; instead they play for a rating and comments from a judge.  In this particular event, there are some guidelines:  students must play three contrasting pieces from three different styles or periods, and must prepare technique work (i.e. scales, chord progressions, arpeggios) in the key of each piece.  It was a long day, but a good one.  Matt and I spent the previous night in Santa Fe--ate a couple of good meals, hung out in the hotel room, generally wound down from another long week.  Saturday morning I was up early, had breakfast in the French cafe on the plaza, and then drove up through the mountains to White Rock, where my judging site was located. 

The organizer of the event had done a good job with the scheduling:  the students weren't so closely packed together that I didn't have time to write thorough comments, and she had scheduled 15-minute breaks every few hours.  Enough time for me to stretch my legs and take a walk around the block, or go to the bathroom.  When judging, I never lack for things to say or comment on.  Indeed the only challenge is not writing a full page just about the first scale I hear.   I don't want to make a career out of judging, but I want these kinds of opportunities available to my students, so I am happy to take my turn when the time comes.  Aside from an aching hand from writing so much, I was a pretty contented judge. 

But as I watched the parade of students marching in to play for me, I was struck by several things.  First of all, as someone who take a very holistic approach to teaching theory and technique, I was alarmed by the students I saw who seemed to have only learned scales and chords for this particular contest.  The technique work was sometimes in the wrong key.  This was not out of any attempt to be sneaky, I think, but rather simply that the student might have been confused about which scale went with which piece, so unrelated the two things seemed to be in their minds.  The technique work was sometimes at a very different level than the pieces.  Maybe the student was playing mid-elementary level pieces but trying to get through--unsuccessfully I might add--two-octave hands-together harmonic minor scales.  This was unsettling, indeed, and a pretty good indication that these scales must have been learned just for this particular event.  "Teaching to the test" is what I would call it. 

Oh, I do it too sometimes, when faced with requirements that don't necessarily match up with how I teach on a weekly basis.  I think technique requirements are a good thing generally, but wonder if there isn't a way to make it both more specific and less constricted at the same time.  Wouldn't it be possible to set the general requirements for technique at every level in very specific ways-- for example: level one, hands alone five-finger patterns; level eight: four-octave scales hands together--but leave open how the technique had to be played.  I would have loved to see some interesting new ways to practice and play scales and arpeggios; after all, I assign these things in a million various ways every week.  As a teacher, I would love to be able to send my students to such events with a more natural example of how they were currently practicing their scales, instead of having the method dictated to us.  Requiring the technique work and the literature to be at the same level would solve the problem I saw of students playing technique work that was too hard (or too easy).  Students in early literature should be playing a ton of five-finger positions, and later, full octave scales with hands together.   Forcing that the level of the technique and the literature be the same would be better for the students and the teachers.  Allowing the technique to be played in any number of ways (staccato, legato, crescendo-decrescendo, eighth-notes, triplets, one octave, three octaves, or whatever ever creative approach used in the studio), would make things more interesting for the judge.

In spite of my speed and ease in writing lots of comments, it struck me that three pieces and all of the corresponding technique work was a lot to deal with when crammed into eight minutes.  I stopped making comments when I ran out of room on the judging sheet (sometimes even after I had  only heard half of what was prepared), and I am sure it was plenty for the students and their teachers to think about and wrestle with.  Some kids raced through their playing:  writing furiously, I often had no idea what piece they were  doing or what was coming next. My confusion wasn't a problem in terms of having something to say, but did make the whole thing rather frantic.  I know as a teacher that these kinds of competitions are culminating events, and the the real growth is in the preparation, not in the eight minutes with the judge.  However, I wondered if there wasn't a way of making the whole thing a little more engaging for everyone.  Because I knew I had 35 kids to listen to that day and because I didn't want to make the students (and teachers!) nervous with my questions, I hesitated to go much beyond the cheerful pleasantries of conversation, but I would have loved to have been able to freely ask students about their pieces, the styles they represent, the key signatures of the technique work.  In other words, to check in and make sure the learning was really thorough and more than just notes and rhythms.  As a teacher, I am always aiming for my students to be able to converse comfortably about anything prepared for a performance; I would be thrilled to have my students given the chance to have these conversations with an interested judge. Of course, this requires more in terms of preparation, but if we are already going to this level of effort, it is only a good thing if students can explain the structure and style of their music, and give their opinions (and even their struggles and triumphs!) about their process.  This would also take more time, something always in short supply, but I believe it would result in a more thorough, organic experience for the students.  It would also require the teachers to work differently, and perhaps more holistically.  A good judge would be able to balance the need to have students play their entire prepared work, with the time reserved to talk specifically about one or two things.  I can imagine it might go something like  this:

"Hi Susan.  What do you have to play for me today?"

"I am going to play 'Minuet' by Bach, 'Sonatina' by Clementi, and 'Rhythm Roulette' by Dennis Alexander."

"Wonderful.  What key is the Sonatina in and which movement are you playing?" 

"I am playing the third movement in the key of G major."

"Could I hear a G major scale then?"

....

"'Rhythm Roulette' is one of my favorite pieces.  Do you know Dennis Alexander lives in Albuquerque?" 


...and so on.  This wouldn't have to take a great deal of time, but ideally would make students more learned and more engaged in every part of their work. 

Finally, I know that I participate in these kinds of events because they make me better as a teacher.  I always learn things from thoughtful judges' comments.  I am sometimes taken aback by the same comment on multiple judging sheets, realizing that this must be something I need to work on as a teacher, as it is showing up repeatedly in my students' work.  Requiring multiple styles and music from different musical periods means that I have to work more carefully, making sure my students don't fall into easy ruts of playing all 20th century music, or all sonatinas.  But this very point has got me thinking.  I wonder if we haven't fallen unexpectedly into a new period of piano pedagogy.  In the last 20 years, there has been such an explosion of pedagogical literature (and good music, that kids love and respond to) that I think we have a new category to work with:  modern/contemporary pedagogical pieces.  These would be the Martha Mier, Dennis Alexander, Robert Vandall standards that we all teach and that our students want to play.  Of course, these are in a variety of styles:  neo-classical, neo-romantic, etc. but nevertheless seems to fall into a specific general category of their own.  I wouldn't want to send an intermediate level student into a contest with three of these kinds of pieces, any more than I would want to send them in with three Schumann or Kabalevsky pieces, but teaching this good literature is not only practical, it is  important.  It supports living, working composers, and counters the popular notion that "classical" music training is all about dead white guys.  After all, the history of pedagogical composition is a long one, and there is a good chance that some of this current music on our teaching shelves will make its way into the standard literature in time.  But until then, let's acknowledge and celebrate it by giving it a category of its own, and not lumping it into 20th-century literature.  I don't want to be penalized for teaching Bartok and Alexander, that seems insane and certainly misses the point of using this engaging music.  But under our current system, even though the 20th century has been over for seven years, we classify both Bartok and Alexander as simply "20th century" or "Modern".  I think this group of pedagogical music is different, refreshingly so.  Some of it may make it into standard piano literature, some won't, but for now, I'd like to see it given its own specific and recognized category. 

As always, there is little doubt that I learned more than any of the students I heard.  As I prepare my students over the next few weeks for the same event in our local chapter, I think I'll be braver about not following the rules, about not teaching to the test, about using less familiar, but charming, literature instead of the old war-horses.  I'm still a young teacher, quick to want to obey the system, especially in a new place with unfamiliar rules.  However, events that make us more thorough teachers help all of us, and I know it has to begin in my own studio in the next month.  Just today I told a student that I had decided he could play his favorite Dennis Alexander piece and the Persichetti piece for our upcoming contest next month. "Yeah!"  he told me, eyes glowing, "You know, I love them both!!"  

That's the point, isn't it?