| Author |
Subject |
Liz
Schneider
Registered User
(7/30/00 10:45:46 pm)
Reply |
Freedom
at a price
Hoping to awaken sleeping giants on
this board, I ask some rhetorical questions. Please pardon in
advance for the bombast. I'm really very gentle natured. Here
goes:
I'm libertarian as regards teacher certification. Let's
not get the government camel's nose in the tent. Regulation=$being
exchaged, authority being bandied about, admin types calling the
shots on standards and certification and price fixing and - well,
you can't set up a hair-braiding salon anymore without kissing the
backsides of everybody from FDA to EEOC to OSHA, so please don't
start regulating instrumental private music
studios.
HOWEVER.
Why does this happen over and again: An
intelligent adult student comes to me having studied with teacher X
for a year, and lacks so many basics I'm really saddened. Can scrape
through a song in Suzuki Bk 1 but doesn't know what notes the
fingers are touching, not even sure of open string names, holds the
bow all funny, afraid to try to tune the instrument with the pegs,
etc.
A bright kid tranfers from teacher Y with more background,
but has never played a scale or used any of the adequate method
books to lay out hand positions, present keys other than D major,
etc. Even college kids at smaller music departments whose teacher
thinks they're ready for concerti, but who don't know how to read
tenor clef.
Increasingly more people have more spare income for
lessons. More lessons are taught for exposing the masses than for
nurturing the rare virtuoso (and if Suzuki wants credit, then OK, I
applaud). But what's to be done when - not from arrogance but from
these kinds of experiences - I feel alone as a good holistic teacher
of "basics?" Sure, I'd love to coach high level repertoire all day;
my talent and training and very hard work have earned me the right
to address this repertoire and I keep up my own chops with recitals.
But what proportion of teachers out there are just turning the next
page in Suzuki I or All For Strings? How can students be better
educated consumers? Where is our collective pride as teachers? Where
is our pedagogy headed?
|
Bob
Registered User
(7/31/00 6:57:04 am)
Reply |
Re:
Freedom at a price
{yawn} Good morning. Hmm, you do
have some issues there. We've all had students like you describe.
And we all have colleagues whose qualifications are suspect. But it
is a fact that some students are just plain untalented. Think of the
worst student you ever had; would Starker himself have made much of
a difference in that student's progress? There are certainly
students who have aptitude and are being shortchanged by
lackadaisical teaching. But now that I've grown up a little, I'm
less quick to blame a previous teacher for all the "holes" I see in
a transfer student; some kids (and adults) just don't absorb very
much very fast. Yet they may derive some sort of enjoyment from the
instrument, and SOMEONE'S going to help them creep along. Maybe a
not-so-good teacher. Maybe you. I'm glad I'm no longer doing this
for a living, because these kinds of issues troubled me a lot. My
only advice is to plug as many holes as you can, starting with
assumption (which may well change) that it's not the student's
fault. Just tell yourself (and him/her) "better late than
never."
|
zambocello
Registered User
(7/31/00 6:49:55 pm)
Reply |
Re:
Freedom at a price
I've always thought teacher
certification was a joke. Worse, a power grab by self-appointed
experts. MTNA has a teacher certification program ("You too can be a
Master Teacher!) which, well, I don't want to be a part of.
Is it any more possible to measure how well one teaches than
to quantify how well one plays? I don't think so. In this regard I
think an open market works better than a regulated system.
(Musing) But what if you COULD measure teaching. Which would
be the best schools and teachers? For example, Julliard turns out a
lot of fine cellists, primarily because they take in a lot of fine
cello students. But do the cello students at Julliard improve more
than the students at U of Texas or USC or U of Anyplace?
|
BA
Registered User
(8/1/00 4:38:43 am)
Reply |
Juilliard/USC/etc... (slightly off topic, sorry)
Well actually I've been to both
Juilliard and(previously) USC. I went to Juilliard for the teacher
but I found a lot of the progress I made came from my increased
motivation from being around extremely talented and motivated
musicians.I didn't expect being at a "Top School" to make any
difference, but for me it did, because of what I got from my fellow
students, (some of)the faculty and the entire atmosphere.
It
might not be the right thing for all kids at age 18, but at some
point I now believe that every musician should spend some time
around the very best peopleone can find. And of course it can be a
big help in career development as well.
|
sarah
schenkman
Registered User
(8/1/00 5:47:13 pm)
Reply |
teaching
I don't think it's necessarily fair
to blame the former teacher when a student is lacking. I know I've
had students that I couldn't get to just hold the bow properly and I
hate to think that someone might think I taught them to hold it that
way.
My string quartet once went in to play at a school and the
general music teacher there told us a quartet had been there the
week before so "don't bore them with easy stuff like the difference
between the violin and viola, they know that already" so we didn't,
and got to question time and the first thing we were asked
was:"What's the difference between a violin and viola?"
|
Liz
Schneider
Registered User
(8/8/00 11:04:11 pm)
Reply |
Letting
students go
Thanks for great answers so far -
Bob, you're just Mr. Compassion. Love ya. But I think if someone's
not going to progress, it's part of good teaching to let them go.
This is awfully hard!!! Yes, I've sometimes let a student go too
long before they realized or I pointed out that cello just wasn't
for them! And in that case, someone else someday might assume I
didn't teach them well when it was really the student to blame. But
I'm growing more backbone and screening more, because I don't have a
Juilliard audition committee to protect my reputation. Screening
beginners just for motivation, expectations, aptitude, family
supportiveness etc. And when recently a teenage boy played more
Nintendo that cello, and Mom admitted it, I did let him go. Maybe
our next thread can be about that . . .
|
ICS
Director 
Registered User
(8/9/00 6:16:57 am)
Reply |
Letting
go!
After more than a decade of
teaching, I still retain some unrealistic belief that if I teach
really well everyone will succeed and noone will want to quit. Well,
once again someone quit, and I cannot take all the blame.
I
have always tried to encourage my college students to become more
and more self-motivated rather than depending on the praise of
others and glory of external recognition. Over the years, I believe
that most students do not easily develop this internal drive. It is
the power and beauty of the music that ultimately motivates them to
practice or not to practice consistently. This may sound obvious,
but as teachers we have so many priorities that this fundamental
truth is crowded out of the lesson. This fall my hope is to share
with my students the emotional depth and aesthetic power of what
they are playing, and encourage my students to have the music be
their primary motivator.
Sorry for ramblin on a
bit...
John Michel
|
Liz
Schneider
Registered User
(8/9/00 9:49:48 am)
Reply |
Letting
students go
I'm sorry I said, earlier, "to
protect my reputation." That was the wrong priority. When lessons
aren't working, no matter the reason (and there are many), it IS
part of good teaching to be able to end the lessons - someway,
somehow. The teacher then turns that time and energy into teaching
those who really get more out of it. As an independent private
teacher, I get my share of students who'll never fully master
things. I always keep these less talented ones if, as is now the
case with a few, they really love lessons and practice and get a lot
from the cello.
But. . . . I have to occasionally let those go
who are clearly wasting time. Otherwise my work gets less rewarding
- I'm not proud of them - I get a bad feeling about taking the
lesson fee - there are fewer successes to encourage the others and
for sharing church and chamber music - and other reasons. Having
done this, I can hold up my head and say, "my students all CAN read,
CAN play in tune, CAN perform a few things in public, DO have a
healthy basic technique, DO enjoy lessons and make progress . . . "
This will help me avoid taking any blame for the kind of result I
was complaining about in the first post.
However well justified,
it's still hard to turn people away. Kids quit soccer or ballet or
art classes in the spirit of exploring something, finding out about
it, and moving on. Quit music lessons, and you've "Failed" somehow.
Sometimes it's not possible to "fire" someone without hurting
feelings, but I've bent over backwards to accomplish it. One time
when a youngun was just disrespectful to me and I tired of teaching
behavior rather than cello - the mom wasn't going to believe this
about her angel from me. So I said things along the lines of, "I'm
just not the best teacher for every student . . . I haven't been
able to bring out his best . . . " It was a squishy, sticky and
touchy-feely conversation when what I most wanted to say was, "Take
zees child to ze mountaintop and leave it, mwahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!"
But even though I took a weak, self-effacing way out, I felt so
STRONG and wonderful afterwards. I immediately signed on a very
bright, thoughtful, motivated teenager in the place of the
disrespectful twit. This time slot is now a joy, not a drain. It
wasn't the first and won't be the last. Still, it's difficult.
|
Kasey
Registered User
(8/9/00 11:52:05 am)
Reply |
Letting
students go
When I first started out many years
ago, I found a private teacher via the recommendation of a teacher
at my private school. I took lessons from him for a couple of years,
and it just wasn't working out, so he dropped me and recommended a
different teacher and it has turned out to be the best thing that he
could have done. My next teacher was wonderful, although I only had
her for a few months before she went to Germany, and she found me an
absolutely incredible teacher for after she left. The problems that
I was having playing at the time weren't necessarily because of me,
or the teacher, it's just that the combination didn't seem to work
very well and left us both frustrated. I never had a problem with
any teacher after that either. It really is a matter of having the
right fit, somethings work, and some don't.
Kasey
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