... Depends what you mean by "progress": the potential for artistry in average young performers.

I had a young student once who, having learned that I got goose bumps on my arms when she played her very best, would check to see and say, "Are you goose bumpy yet?" I often was, because there was a certain integrity about her tone, expression and relationship of oneness with the piano, that most certainly moved me in a physical way.

I have thought many times about the pleasures and the frustrations of a given teaching year and how I assess my students' progress, or movement through the curriculum I want them to have. Like everyone else, I mark occasions for new music and ratings given by adjudicators in festivals and competitions and celebrate advancement in musical skills. In fact, when a student finishes whatever pieces we have decided to learn in a collection or method book, the last assignment is to pick and play five favorites for the following week, thereby necessitating going back through the collection and taking note of what has been accomplished--our progress.

In our society, we measure progress as forward movement, usually the accumulation of new skills and information. One of the things I like about Guild auditions every spring is the chance to review pieces learned over a long period of time as well as in the current semester. And most, if not all, of the parents of our students measure progress by how complicated or "big" the next project piece appears to be.

I had an occasion this year to rethink all that. A young high school student who had experienced a rather "flat" year was all set to play just two or three pieces she had learned during the year. "No," she said, "I want to play 10 pieces again this year because I just loved ..." and she named half a dozen more pieces she had played over the period of two or three years before. So we began to line up the repertoire she would revive or polish for the occasion, really a mini-recital.

What followed "blew me away" because in the reworking of not one, but quite a few old pieces, this 16-year-old became an artist. Her intuitive musicality flourished as she poured herself into what she loved to play, finding new musical meaning at every turn because she was so secure with the music. This is an average student who has little time to practice and for whom beginning a new piece, especially a challenging one, is very, very difficult. And this is the kind of young person whose potential to be an outstanding student is a source of some frustration to her teacher. But by pushing her along, doing all the right things about providing her with practice strategies and so forth, I might have missed the depth of magical expression she so clearly enjoys.

I am not saying we don't need to challenge our students and constantly help them develop independent strategies for both technical and musical learning, I am saying that flexibility is called for when we are confronted with the magical qualities of musical playing even when the maturity to take responsibility for one's potential is not yet there. The development of vital, artistic performance can be a special kind of progress and is on its own continuum, regardless of increasing difficulty of student repertoire. Another topic, of course, is communicating with parents. We need to be certain that they understand a broader definition of progress than is usually the case.

Nancy Kaesler, NCTM, is president of the Colorado State MTA. She is an independent piano teacher in Golden, Colorado.