Bonnie's Blog

Saturday I had a lovely masters flute student from the University of Washington sit in on 4 lessons to observe my teaching.  Donna Shin, the flute professor at the UW uses my book Making Music and Enriching Lives : A Guide For All Music Teachers as the textbook for her pedagogy classes and requires her students to observe some teachers in real life lessons.

It was fun “showing off” my students and sharing my techniques. During the lessons I pointed out several concepts I use:

* Fill each lesson with questions. Sneak extra learning into each lesson with questions such as  “What period is this composer from? Tell me everything you know about him. What does animato mean? Where do you think the breath should be? What is the climax of the phrase?  If you know that note is an appoggiatura then what does that tell you about the dynamics for the whole phrase? What chord is this? What form of the minor was that phrase in? ”

When the student makes a mistake, I stop and let them figure out what the problem was. It would be easier for me to correct every mistake but then they would only be learning to follow directions, not to become their own teacher. In addition, if something needs to be marked in the music, the student, not the teacher, should do the marking.

I use fun props to get the point across and the squealing chicken reminded one student to use good vibrato while another “got his finger cut off with a giant ax” because of a repeated wrong fingering. We all laughed but hopefully the fun prop made a real impression- better than me yelling!

If you are a new teacher starting out or even just thinking about starting a studio, I encourage you to find someone whose teaching you admire who will let you observe and give you some real world tips. And you experienced teachers, be generous with your time and support so we can have a world of better teachers and better students.