Teachers, unlimit your improvement

I recently rediscovered the best resource to improved teaching. This past week I went to several of my lessons armed with my video camera. Have you ever thought about who is most critical of you? Maybe its not universal, but I’m pretty sure that I’m more critical of myself than anyone else has ever been. Watching myself do anything in retrospect is simply torture. During grad school I spent many hours evaluating my own teaching demonstrations, and never became fully comfortable with the task. But nonetheless, who better to criticize your work than yourself?

This week I dusted off my camera, and when all was said and done, I had a few great revelations about teaching. Read on to share what I discovered!

Here’s the skinny… effective teaching is quite simple.

I’ll be honest, I encountered both scenarios this week. And I didn’t even have to watch my video to figure that out! Its simply frustrating when I’m working with a student on a piece, from one end to the other, and the clock shows only 15 minutes left to teach. That’s about the time reality sets in. Little Janie has little to no significant lessons to take home for practice. This usually happens to me when I get carried away with my need to fix every little detail in one lesson.

Teachers – resist that temptation!! For most students, millions of details will lead to a chaotic week of practice. Either they’ll remember everything and try to fix it all. And with too much on their plate, no one problem will take on significant progress. Or on the flip side, the student won’t remember anything from the lesson since the concepts covered were not properly enforced.

Stay on point. That’s how we teachers can always expect to get to rule #1.

Wouldn’t it be sublime if every moment of the lesson was executed with purpose and precision?

Despite my moments of weakness in teaching this week, I was happy to find a few gems to take pride in. These clips showed a great sense of direction on my part. I knew exactly what I wanted to fix, I used all the right tools to communicate with my student, and in the end saw results. I was amazed that most of those things took so little time.

My mission is clear: cut the excess, and actively teach from a more simplified approach.

If you’ve never taken the time to self-evaluate your teaching, go for it! A recorded lesson is to a piano teacher as a mirror is to a ballerina. Without fail, all flaws are revealed. Recognizing the flaws will lead to unlimited improvement. Just remember that less is more. Focus on refining one consistent weakness in your own teaching before taking on every little flaw.