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!
[Read more →]

I firmly believe that the best work is done with a positive attitude. Although this is a good lesson for our students, I’m really talking to the teacher here. As I get ready to teach, I think about each student that I will meet with later that afternoon or evening. My thoughts include what I’m excited to hear them play, or what progress I expect they have made over the week, or the new lesson I am eager to teach them.

Try this method of gearing up for your lessons. I think you will find yourself in a positive place for the evening, which will in turn promote some quality teaching on your part. Can you share some ideas that you have about how to prepare for the day’s work?

From teacher, to student, to teacher, to student.  Have you ever thought about your former piano teacher’s pedagogical lineage?  If you are a teacher, then you had a teacher, who also had a teacher, who had a teacher, and so on.  My most recent piano teacher is a fourth generation student of Beethoven!  I had another teacher during my undergrad years who could trace her teacher’s lineage back to Liszt!  Its amazing what legacies can be passed down through generations of teachers.  Whether your lineage is famous or not, there are certain ways that you teach because you had a teacher who taught you the same way.  Recognizing how to transfer this information can be a powerful teaching technique. [Read more →]