Polyphony: reflection and renewal. (Professional Resources).

Something Different

Summer is a time when we all seek opportunity for refreshment and rejuvenation. With some of the stress and urgency of the spring semester removed, we have time to reflect and replenish, to renew ourselves. Many teachers elect to continue teaching private or group lessons during the summer. Others take a break from teaching for the entire term, claiming their own personal time and space for renewal. Many attend workshops, practice and refresh.

Whatever your custom for summer study, I suggest that this summer you might plan for yourself one different event or activity from those before--just to see how it feels and how it works! If you are accustomed to attending workshops, keep that custom, but add something to it. If you have not taken a real vacation for years, take a short one that is perhaps non-musically related. If you have not practiced for a long time, plan and learn a four-hand program with a fellow teacher. Perform for your students in the fall. Sign up for private (applied) piano lessons for the summer. Read through all the Haydn piano sonatas during the summer. Or ... take a yoga class and stick with it! Go on a hike or nature walk in the wilderness two hours from your hometown. If you say to yourself, "This isn't me," it might be just what you really need.

It can help to sit back and listen to an intuitive voice that tells you what you need to replenish your life at this point. It may be that a less hurried fall schedule can fit the bill, with one entire weekday where you actually do not teach. Since we are at a unique time with the after-effects of September 11 impacting our lives profoundly, I sense that many teachers may have dealt not only with our own reactions and feelings surrounding the event, but also in part with those of our students, noted especially toward the end of the semester in recital/performance preparations. If students seemed usually intense or uneasy, or patterns were somewhat different from before, or stress a bit more pronounced than in the past, it could have come as a reaction to the stress from the entire year. This is all the more reason to step aside and replenish yourself after experiencing an unusually difficult spring term in teaching. Perhaps we have dealt knowingly or unknowingly with our students' stress relayed to us in ways unknown to us.

A Mirror of My Teaching

The following is offered as food for thought as you plan for the fall semester. It occurs to me that we can set up and establish what others will say about our teaching and playing. At times, I will suggest to students that they should decide ahead of time, and then work toward, what they want someone to say afterward about their performance or recital. What would be the ultimate compliments you might want to receive? That you didn't miss any notes? That you "played well"? That you have a terrific technique? Some other choices could be that you communicated with someone, that an audience member was moved by your performance, that another pianist now wants to play this piece and so on.

I also turn it on myself to examine what I am really about in teaching. For me, some of the ultimate goals would be for students to say that their music has new meaning for them, that they will continue to play long after they discontinue lessons or that they can't wait to play a particular piece. I hope very much that my former precollege students would say the following is important to them: playing with profound character (musical personality), voicing and projecting sound clearly, and phrasing and shading/coloring the music meaningfully. When students begin finding pieces they want to play on their own, when they begin arranging their own performances ... then I believe I am communicating, since they are becoming involved in the process and the music. Make your own list and then teach toward it during the fall semester. What do you want your students to say about your teaching? Make a pact with yourself to teach in that way.

Technical Question

In a different light, someone wrote and asked about students playing piano with exceptionally low wrists, continuing by asking what they could do to help alleviate this issue. One reason, and certainly not the only one, for extended playing with low wrists (wrists below the keys) is weakness in the hand and in the fingers, along with poor hand position. If you are teaching young students with wrists that are quite low, a guide might be not to extend the difficulty of the pieces assigned, but rather to back up somewhat in terms of difficulty and build from that point. Then the teacher can build the hand position and finger strength (playing the finger from the knuckle). In extreme cases, students who practice too long and for extended periods of time with very low wrists could become predisposed toward a repetitive stress injury. In any case, playing piano with low wrists is a sign that some careful technical attention to the problem of hand position is needed.

Teacher Collaboration

In instances where a student may have major technical problems, collaboration with another teacher on what the real issues are and subsequent provision of suggestions for how to rebuild them are in order. Sometimes we miss our best sources of information and collaboration--others close by teaching the same kinds of students as we do and who have a perspective on our work. Another source for an opinion would be an expert interested in the playing of precollege students. Rather than our solving all of our students' problems alone, it can be helpful to ask others for an opinion and for helpful advice. I know, for me, this expands my consciousness in teaching.

Would your students or colleagues say you are an expert in developing a student's hand position? Might they say you are expert in terms of developing an inner pulse in your students? Might they say you are highly skilled in terms of motivating your students, in keeping them excited? Or, might they say your students play exceptionally stylistically and musically? A teacher can turn this to herself to solidify her own teaching goals. Sometimes the most basic goals are appropriate. A teacher who can say her students fully enjoy making music must be quite fulfilled.

When this is the case, and when a teacher can honestly and with appropriate pride acknowledge what they do well, they can go far to share it with others in the community. Each teacher will have his own strengths, and sharing those and helping other teachers build in that direction is consequential. Creating MTNA local association presentations for the 2002-2003 year along these lines can work well. Many associations already hold such presentations.

What is Meaningful in Teaching

While attending the MTNA National Conference in Cincinnati, I was reminded again of a poignant issue in teaching that should not escape us it is the experience that counts for the student. The meaning stays with a student. Many of those experiences take place during the weekly lesson.

Scott Price, NCTM, of the University of South Carolina presented a conference session on his experiences teaching students with blindness, autism and developmental delay. I have known Scott as a major performer and teacher, one who learns the big repertoire quickly and performs at a high level. He is a skilled and effective teacher of college students and teaches a class of precollege students as well. Still, he has undertaken the teaching of students who are blind and autistic or developmentally delayed. In video clips Scott showed of his students in lessons, it became clear, in a powerful way, the lessons were dramatically meaningful to the students and the teacher.

While most of us would have been hesitant to teach lessons to students with needs as special as these, Scott determined on his own what he needed to know to provide extraordinarily meaningful experiences for the students, and in turn found himself also to be one who was rewarded. Five or six times within a sixty-minute session, he said, unaware, "I just love this student," or "That's my boy .." Scott ended his session not by summarizing his own teaching strategies and techniques for these students, but instead by encouraging us to accept into our studios students like these who come to us for lessons. He reminded us of how valuable the lessons would be to the students every lesson for these students is a highly meaningful experience. In addition, he reminded me that not all answers in terms of teaching come from the music community. We can seek out the information and skill enhancement ourselves to accomplish and contribute to human lives in an extraordinary way, without devoting years of study and taking numerous college courses about the teaching of learning disabled students. Of course, we need to be diligent seeking and taking advantage of the help we can provide, and then, with discretion and care, share our skills and knowledge with those who can benefit from them. Scott has brought much hope and joy into his students' lives. Scott's session woke me up in a way. He left us all by saying, "You can do it, too, and these students need you more than you can realize."

Wanted: Teaching Tips

MTNA is launching a new website feature devoted to teaching tips. Please share with us some of your favorite tried-and-true ideas. Send your tips to: MTNA, Attn: Teaching Tips; 441 Vine St., Ste. 505, Cincinnati, OH 45202-2811; fax [phone]; or e-mail to [e-mail].

We Seek Your Input

Please share with us your experiences in teaching--what has given your teaching situation the most meaning or the most connection ... with your students, parents or the music community at large. Send us your questions as well as your suggestions for future topics of exploration. Send us your reflections. Perhaps you'll share your creativity, your curiosity and your candor through questions and writings that can become part of this column. Questions and other items may be sent to: American Music Teacher, Attn: Polyphony; 441 Vine St., Ste. 505, Cincinnati, OH 45202-2811; fax [phone]; or e-mail to [e-mail]. We look forward to hearing from you.

--Jane Magrath
Norman, Oklahoma
She is an internationally known pianist,
author, clinician and teacher, currently on
the University of Oklahoma faculty as
professor and director of piano pedagogy.