Rethinking our Firing Practices

It’s never the easy students who keep me up at night, questioning my work in the world. It’s not the ones who earn the proverbial gold star just by walking through the door, the ones who are eager and bright, and who sail through their Hanon and Clementi without a whimper. It’s not the ones like Max, who, when I asked him to pick his favorite piece to review, sighed with pleasure, “But Miss Amy, how do you choose?” 

Instead, it is students like ten-year-old Devon. The challenge with Devon isn’t his lesson attendance or his practice habits. Week in and week out, he comes to lessons having dutifully filled out his practice boxes. He is always well-behaved and cooperative in our work together. But despite of his consistent practicing and good efforts, Devon struggles far more than most students. He has such extreme difficulty with multi-tasking that the requirements of two hands reading and responding to two different clefs elude him. He doesn't seem to hear music in his inner ear, which means that his tunes don't "stick" without a great deal of effort. While in most areas of his life he is absolutely on par for his age, in the three years since he began, we have made little progress with piano skills.     

With Devon, I don’t teach specific musical techniques as much as coach general practice habits, trying to guide him into learning strategies necessary to gain basic skills. Eager to please, he tries hard but gets quickly frustrated by his unresponsive hands and fingers. Often he gets locked in a mental or physical loop that he can’t break; over and over again he’ll hit the same spot and repeatedly play the same wrong notes or rhythms, simply reinforcing incorrect patterns. When this happens we have learned to stop and take a break, change tactics, or let our conversation meander aimlessly a bit. We talk about school or soccer, an upcoming birthday party or studio class. Sometimes we return to the problem; sometimes we don’t, and just let it go for the day.         

Every year, Devon grows older, taller, but no more musical. Still we press on, inching forward, floating back, each adrift in our own balloon of hope.

Last weekend I was having lunch with a friend, a fellow piano teacher, and inevitably we began to talk shop, circling through our studios and our challenges. I started bemoaning my recent problems with Carla, a fourth grader who began lessons with me several years ago. Carla is plenty smart and practices her assignments as required, but her attention and effort are marginal. Her work lacks focus and discipline. As a result, her rate of progress is hardly spectacular.   

Unlike Devon—who has dedication, but little aptitude—Carla has aptitude, but many days it comes with attitude. Last week when Carla came to her lesson, it was clear she was once again in a bad mood. "What's up, Carla?" I asked.

"I hate piano. I'm bored and I hate it," she said.         

"All right, Carla. Let's talk about this."

Questioning her further, she repeated the claim that she hated piano, and no, there was nothing she had ever liked about it. I mentioned several pieces that she had played with great enthusiasm and flair; no, she hated those too. I reminded her of good recital performances, a superior rating at festival, fun things we do in studio classes, duets she had played with a friend. Nope, she hated all that as well. Clearly, we were getting nowhere.  

At this point in my narrative, my friend interrupted me, "Amy, you don't need this. You are too good a teacher to put up with this. Fire her." In the heat of the moment, I don't want to disagree, because this reasoning strokes my ego. Furthermore, professional opinion has always discouraged “putting up” with students who waste our time, who aren’t enthusiastically on the road to musical greatness and success. We should maintain high standards in our studios, we are told, and from time to time this means “firing” students who don’t measure up. 

Right now, adopting this stern and righteous teaching philosophy is tempting, because my level of frustration with Carla is high. I’m tired of bad attitudes and students who use the piano as a tool of rebellion. But, as is often the case, there are other things at work here. Carla's younger brother is seriously ill; she has little contact with her father; I have heard from other studio parents that she has trouble getting along with kids at school. The outburst in her lesson last week was that of a girl crying out for attention. This isn't about piano, or me, or music lessons at all. This is a child who is hurting and confused and piano is a safe place to act out. I understand that, which makes me think seriously about my friend's comment. Am I too good a teacher to put up with less than stellar behavior? Or am I too good a teacher not to?

There is no easy place to draw the line. There are all kinds of legitimate reasons some student/teacher relationships don't work, even with the best of intentions. I certainly have my own list of what I call non-negotiables. This is a hard-won list of things that I have decided I won't put up with, that offend my sensibilities and principles, things that aren't a good match for my personality and talents, or things that I won't compromise on, like daily practicing or regular lesson attendance. I won't baby every bad attitude that might come my way.         

Staying true to my non-negotiables is an important thing. This is my true north in teaching, and it is likely to help me find the place where I do my best work. But if it is important to articulate my non-negotiables, then it is equally crucial to know what isn't on my list. I didn't say students had to be talented. I didn't say they had to practice three hours a day. I like to think that I am willing teach anyone who is willing to work hard and fall in line with my pedagogical sequence of musical and practice requirements.

But even those lines are hard to draw. What about the diligent student like Devon who practices faithfully and is a wonderful kid, but lacks obvious talent? What if, like Carla, they are consistent, but put in minimal effort? What about kids who come with unpleasant parents? Or students who don't love the same music I want to teach? Are these legitimate non-negotiables?

For me, usually not. But I wrestle with this question constantly, especially when taunted with the "Amy, you don't need this. You are too good a teacher...." voices in my head. Lately, however, I am growing uncomfortable with the assumptions that the best teachers have the most permission to fire students and not at all sure I can live with them anymore. As hard as it is to challenge the conventional attitudes, I am afraid they are backwards. I am not sure that having high standards means being rigid or inflexible. It seems to me that teachers ought to take a low turnover rate as a point of pride in their studio, as proof that they are successful in nurturing person after person into becoming whole musicians and creative thinkers. I should not be so proud of that superstar kid (who, quite frankly, is going to do well no matter what), and be prouder of making a difference in the lives and musical education of the ones that require my sweat and tears and keep me up at night.

And, with a flash of insight, I realized I wasn’t ready to fire a troubled nine-year-old girl. At least not this week.

Almost from the beginning, I recognized many of Devon’s problems. After the first year of piano lessons, I called his parents and had one of those dreaded conversations. I explained that I wasn't sure that Devon was going to ever make much progress and, as kindly as I could, I explained the challenges as I saw them. I suggested that they stop lessons and find another activity that might be more successful for their son. I even added hopefully that maybe a different instrument might be a better match. Basically, short of firing the kid, I encouraged them to stop piano lessons.

To my surprise, the parents argued the point. "But this is exactly why we think Devon needs to do this," his mother said to me, "because it is hard for him and we think therapeutically it will help him in the long run. We don't care if he never achieves much in piano, we think there's something basically good about this work that he needs. Besides,” she continued, "Devon isn't asking to quit."

Devon’s mother was right, of course. But no one said this practice was simple: staying the course with the children who pass through our lives, not walking away when things get tough, holding ourselves to a high standard. “Courage doesn’t always soar,” goes a favorite quote, “Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”

It's not glamorous, but constancy is an art form too. Somehow the world keeps turning on the small, seemingly insignificant choices we each make every day. Maybe in the end all that matters is that we keep trying.