Daily archives:April 7, 2015
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9 years ago
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The theme of this post is how my approach as an instructor can make or break a learning moment with a student, and how every day is an opportunity to start over if I take it.
Having begun a new semester, many of the students I am now teaching are having their first experiences with me, and I with them. As a music teacher, I often establish a much more informal environment in my classroom and allow students more autonomy than they are accustomed to in traditional academic classes. I also develop a friendly, and mutually respectful rapport with students over the course of a semester. Sometimes the beginning of a new semester feels like I just switched horses in mid-stream. I often need to remind myself that the new students in front of me are not the same ones I’ve been watching learn and develop. I need to start from the beginning and be patient while a new class takes their first steps toward understanding how music works. Especially challenging is that I need to make known all over again what my expectations of students are and that, although music is ultimately a “fun” class, that there is a lot of earnest hard work involved in successfully learning to do it.
It’s easy to get caught in the trap that arises when someone in the class is reluctant to participate or acts out. Sometimes it takes every bit of cool I’ve ever learned to keep not to take sticky situations personally. When a teacher calls upon a student, it’s often the case that that student was either not payi[...]
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