The Clavier Companion “Teaching the Pressured Student” April 2012
This article focused what to do when you have a piano student involved in many extracurricular activities or other time-commitment pressures. Teachers have a tendency to either be too demanding or too understanding. Demanding teachers punish for tardiness or expect too much of an already busy student, thus burning them out. On the other hand, teachers who are too understanding will expect very little progress from one piano lesson to the next because the student would be fitting in practice only when they have the time, which leads to the student losing interest. Both of these scenarios eventually cause the student to quit piano. The solution is to find a balance between understanding and demanding so the student will still be motivated but not under a harsh amount of pressure.
The author of this article developed two options for her busy students to choose from. One, the student will practice a half hour every day for a consecutive one hundred days. Or two, the student will spend as many hours a week practicing as they do spending time on extracurricular activities every week. Only ten of her 45 students committed to one of the options, but those ten saw the most improvement and gained the understanding that in order to be good at piano, one has to devote the time, just like if one wants to be good at soccer, one has to devote the time.
Even in the choral department I can use this technique to encourage practicing, especially if I have a children’s choir or children’s honor choir of upper elementary school students (4th-6th grades). Their musical reading skills may not be the best but I can provide practice CDs for each student, a folder with all of their music in it that they are allowed to take home, and even create a practice log that has a parent’s signature column. I would only ever require a parent’s signature at the elementary level; I would have higher expectations and standards for my older students. Then I would ask they devote the same amount of time to practicing as they do for sports or other activities. At the elementary level, a half hour a day may be taxing on the voice. I would limit it to 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week. This will help begin to build practicing habits at an early level, and ideally, before they start their beginning band classes. This way, they already have the practicing habit being developed and will have a better idea of how to manage their practicing when they are in band.
