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What am I blabbing on about?
This article is meant for parents who are thinking about signing a child or teenager up for lessons. Before you do that, I want to explain what I do, how I approach teaching, and so you can learn a little about me, and why I love doing this. In this article Ill be describing:
Three major skills that will be developed during lessons, other than the obvious goal of improving their ability to play an instrument.
My personal style of teaching, how I relate to my student, and how a kid's particular personality plays a major role in the student-teacher dynamic.
Why I think its great to expose your child to a variety of instruments, and activities.
Three Big Skills Learned in Music Lessons
I've found that over the years of teaching, we as teachers have much more of a responsibility to our students than we might think. We are not just there to just flip through a method book and be routine in our teaching. The three skills I will go in depth about are: Interpersonal and Intrapersonal skills, the ability to think critically and solve problems, and the development of musical intelligence.
Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Skills
Interpersonal skills are how we relate to other human beings. Its how we communicate our wants, needs, likes, and dislikes. In life its important to be able to communicate clearly. To have the courage to express what we believe even if others around us disagree, and to have the confidence to express our sincere appreciation of others, and the vulnerability to be ourselves, express love, address conflict, and all-around be effective with others.
Intrapersonal skills are more about our relationship with ourselves, which I find to be an area that is greatly challenged to the student. In lessons I teach students how to practice, and as an extension of that, how to develop qualities like resilience, patience with oneself, persistence, time management, self discipline, the ability to overcome distractions, and self-confidence.
How these two sets of skills play out in the dynamic of lessons is sort of entwined in a knot- the student and I relate to one another, and establish a relationship that is somewhat complicated. I am a reliable friend first, always. But I am not a friend who lets you get away with everything. I strive to be like this one special teacher I had growing up in high school - Susan Lawson. She fostered potential in me, she was a friend that I felt free to be myself around, and she didn't treat me like a helpless fool even though I absolutely acted like one. She treated me with this sort of respect like I had already done something great, but she didn't lie to me. She saw potential in me even though I was that pain in the ass student who wouldn't listen. But she treated me with respect, as she did all of her students who remember her.
She really saw us, each of us for our beautiful uniqueness and what we could potentially bring to this world, which is perhaps what anyone remembers the most about her. She was that one special teacher who had the power to summon greatness from her students, instead of nagging them to death, and she is likely the reason I ultimately demanded more of myself in this life.
I strive to be anything but the do as I say, not as I do teacher. Kids are way more perceptive than we think. Even when I was a kid, I can look back and remember having a vague feeling of not trusting certain teachers. Because I simply didn't believe them, and why should I? They were just trying to get through the work day. It takes a tremendous sense of responsibility to feel exhausted, to feel uninspired, but at all costs be a trustworthy and reliable force in student's lives. It takes ENERGY to require of ourselves, as teachers, to do more than just default to being a "do this because its expected of you" teacher . Why would I treat a student like that when I absolutely hated it when teachers treated me like that?
I understand the temptation to be passive, but I think about where my life could have gone had it not been for special human beings like Susan Lawson, and that's usually enough to shake me out of my complacency and see what is sitting in front of me: a student with unlimited potential.
The Ability to Think Critically and Solve Problems
Parents and friends often describe me as being patient, which I used to shrug off but now I sort of understand. I'm not interested in forcing a student to learn. I'm more interested in finding what excites them, getting to know them, and forming a unique connection with them that provides the catalyst for our lessons to come alive. I've taught for years, and I learned over time its not fun to be the droning and moaning teacher. Its not enjoyable or productive for the student or me. So we don't go down that road. We create a new one.
When we approach a challenge in the music we are playing, the next logical step is to use that challenge as an opportunity to improve our playing, to fill the gap in our knowledge or technique so we can play the music. I see it as my job to be there to explain what they need to do to accomplish this.
However, that doesn't mean I need to be a broken record. I say what needs to be said once, maybe twice. If they are ready to challenge themselves, they will meet me in the middle and we will attack the problem together. Sometimes, the student isn't quite ready to get to the serious work of problem solving, and this goes for plenty of my adult students too. But when they are ready, however, they will know where to start. Lets not forget that what we are doing in lessons is going to be challenging at times, and I'm here to help reassure them of their work and remind them of their goals.
There are few things more rewarding than overcoming ourselves. Where we were impatient, now we understand why disciplined practice can be worth the effort. We see the small improvements in our playing and that reminds us to sometimes do what isn't fun for a little. Instead of throwing our hands up immediately and deciding "I can't do it", wanting to throw the ukulele in the trash at the first real challenge, we break the problem down into smaller, more manageable pieces, and attack those pieces first because we can indeed handle those. Then, the momentum of accomplishing those smaller pieces drives us accomplish the bigger one.
I will not condemn a student for not being entirely ready to adopt this level of discipline. I always try to keep one thing in the forefront of lessons: joy. The ability to give students something to be excited about is what I am most proud of.
The Development of Musical Intelligence
Whether we read standard notation music, tablature, or leads sheets for our music, not one of these methods of reading will totally capture the big picture of music all the time. While I do believe standard notation is more beneficial for rhythm, even so there will come times where we have to ultimately be able to "feel" the rhythm, to understand nuances of playing an instrument that aren't always available in the music.
I find myself talking about nuance quite a bit in lessons. Those subtle differences in playing that are hard to describe but make a huge difference in the sounds one creates. Whether that is articulating a line in such a way that it has more of an energetic feel, or how we accomplish certain bend-vibratos in the style of Angus Young. Nuance is style, and I think many of the amazing things we hear instrumentalists do is a result of a feeling. It originates as a feeling - and it transfers from our hearts, to our hands, to the instrument.
While its helpful and important to reverse engineer some of these subtle things instrumentalists do, I find that ultimately we must know what the feeling and character of the music is first, to be an actor of sorts, to convey what the intention of the music is about. Musical intelligence is about understanding the context for when the music was written, who wrote it, what their goal was and what they were aiming to convey. Its also about understanding the style itself, and even a band as seemingly simple as Rage Against the Machine embodies an emotional undertone for most of their music (middle fingers, anyone?)
My Teaching Style & the Student's Personality
In general, my goal is to help a student reach their goals with music. Once we have decided on a specific goal (a bit of a challenge in and of itself, sometimes), most of what we do in our lessons is geared toward reaching that goal. Its the most effective way we can use our time and stay on track. For example, if I have 10 year old student who wants to learn how to cover Taylor Swift songs, I wouldn't spend the lesson only giving her scales, arpeggios, and power chords, all equally useful but unrelated. I would instead show her how to play some basic chords, and show her the basics of strumming with a pick. I would equip her, to the best of my ability, with everything she would need in order to accomplish her goal. I'd still offer general things for guitar lessons like scales, but most of the lesson is organized with her particular musical tastes and goals in mind.
This is the core of my teaching style. However, plenty of students I teach don't know what their goals are, and don't know where to start. So I also expose students to as much different music as I can, and give them a lesson plan where they can experiment with playing various types of music until they find a style that really intrigues them. I've had a girl who played covers of pop songs for years until one day we discovered she gets down more with Alice in Chains and System of a Down!
All students have different interests, goals, and personalities. I don't define a student's personality based on what they do as much, but more on how they do anything. Some students are agreeable, and will take my suggestions with an open mind and a willingness to try just about anything, while some students will object to just about anything! I find that both extremes of bring too agreeable and too disagreeable can present problems down the road, and I never dismiss a student based on a convenient judgment on my part.
Being agreeable is useful because you can really receive what the teacher is intending to teach you, and get the most out of lessons. However being too agreeable can be a sign that the student is simply going along with everything the teacher says without honestly asserting their true opinions and wants, which can rob both them and their teacher of the opportunity to get closer to what they really want to do with music.
Being a little disagreeable is actually healthy when its genuine disagreement, and a teacher does needs to be challenged at times in order to improve. Disagreement offers an opportunity for the student or the teacher to learn, and while the student is obviously there to learn something new, the teacher must be open to learning new things because no teacher knows everything. Being too disagreeable, however, is often a lack of trust on the student's part, and perhaps needs a friend more than a teacher in that particular moment.
Importance of exposing child to many activities
I believe in moderation. There are so many short-term gratification activities absolutely everywhere within a child's reach these days, and in excess they aren't really the best thing for someone's overall development as a human being. Video games, Tik Tok, Disney Plus and Instagram are cool things on their own, but if that is where person spends most of their time, these things become not so cool.
I like when I see parents exposing their kid to a variety of activities. Martial arts, scouts, all these kinds of things are communities that can improve a child's interpersonal skills, competitiveness, resourcefulness, and sense of community, which are all great things. Music lessons are but another choice for parents to consider for their son or daughter. I've seen student's confidence skyrocket with their involvement in martial arts or dance classes, sometimes even more so than guitar lessons with me. So I believe its a good thing to expose the child to a variety of disciplines.
I think music lessons offer an emotional outlet, a creative hobby, and a sense of community for themselves with their potential bandmates, guitar ensemble partners or their guitar instructor. My goal is to build a community that is an extension of what I believe, a real and authentic group of students and musicians where they can be themselves fearlessly and create awesome music and memories.
Yorumlar