Team teaching.

"Two teachers may jointly enter a duet team. Both teachers must be listed on the application and must pay current active MTNA dues or the Nonmember Teacher Entry Fee."

These two sentences are the second bullet in the rules and regulations for our new 2007-2008 MTNA Competition for Senior Piano Duet, one-Piano/Four Hands.

We expect that most duet teams will come from the same studio, but having the possibility of a duet team coming from two different studios may be one of the most positive pedagogical outcomes of our new competition. The concept of team teaching has been a part of public educational philosophy for many years and is also practiced, in various forms, by some independent music teachers. I would like to encourage more MTNA members to take advantage of the benefits that come from joining with other teachers in pursuit of pedagogical objectives. Bringing teachers together is what MTNA does best.

The most common form of team teaching is sharing our students with an artist teacher in a master class. The future may be a master class using Internet2. The bandwidth of Internet2 allows for real-time bi-directional, full-motion, broadcast-quality video on a television monitor with CD-quality stereo audio. This technology allows for the use of videoconferencing for music teaching. Think of the present and future possibilities: your pre-college student could take a lesson from a music professor 600 miles away and even audition for college scholarships and program admittance without leaving his or her hometown.

A more accessible and practical form of team teaching would be to exchange master classes with an independent music teacher colleague. Additional perspectives might be especially useful before a student competition, recital or audition. To do this would require mutual respect, shared goals and a unique combination of humility and self-confidence. I propose the experience could be both enlightening and confirming.

Another form of the traditional master class concept might be labeled "interactive team teaching." I recently walked past my colleague John Salmon's studio door and saw an intriguing invitation. In large Print were the words "Haydn Seek." Under these words was the invitation to attend a lesson in Andrew Willis's studio Friday at 1:00 P.M. Lis Malcolm, a senior student of John Salmon's, would be playing a Haydn Sonata and Professors Salmon and Willis would be coaching Lis on performance practice issues. Luckily, my schedule allowed me to attend. Lis performed and asked questions and the professors expounded, agreed and disagreed about the realization of ornaments, the use of the pedal, issues of articulation, different editions and historical instruments. Sources were consulted, recorded excerpts were played and everyone, especially Lis, knew more about performing Haydn at the end of the session. For me, this was a consummate example of team teaching for performance studies. Their next session might be on a work by Franz Liszt with the title, "A Liszt of Musical Ideas."

Are we trapped in an old conservatory model that restricts students to one performance teacher for their entire university experience? Would it really be detrimental and confusing to the student to be exposed to a variety of technical and interpretative approaches? Are there other pedagogical models that might better serve the student's developmental needs?

After the September Leadership Summit in Cincinnati, I was riding to the airport with Wisconsin State MTA President Gail Heywood. As always, when two or more piano teachers are together, we talked about teaching ideas. Gall shared the details of a "Music and Geography" recital she did last year. Her team teacher was her husband, Neil Heywood, an associate professor member of the geography faculty at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. The title of the recital was "Around the World on 88 Keys." Some of the students wore ethnic costumes and the musical tour program backdrops incorporated the flag and actual photographs of landscapes from the various countries. The music enhanced the photos and the photos similarly enhanced the music. According to Gall, she realized that the students enjoyed repertoire from a variety of world cultures but rarely knew where to find the source country on the globe. A few local elementary school teachers attended this recital because of Gail's news article publicizing the recital's theme.

This year Gail is planning to team teach with the UW biology department for collaboration on animals and plants. Will the final recital include Faber and Faber's arrangement of "The Lion Sleeps tonight," Alfred's Basic Library's "Cockles and Mussels," Ravel's "Sad Birds," Grieg's "Butterfly," Debussy's "Dead Leaves," Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag," McDowell's "To a Wild Rose," or maybe even selections from Saint-Saens's "Carnival of the Animals." The possibilities are unlimited. The study of music most definitely makes the student smarter, especially when they are involved in multi-disciplinary learning.

Remember, "None of us are as smart as all of us" and "Few burdens are heavy when everyone lifts."

National Conferences

March 23-27, 2007

Toronto, Canada

March 29-April 2, 2008

Denver, Colorado

Paul Stewart 

MTNA President