It was a really good turnout & I got the chance to speak briefly with both Sally and her daughter Erika during our group break! It was nice to have them both share stories with us with over 30 years of family storytelling experience - definitely not easy to accomplish! During the day at our session I also met a few other teachers from various teaching fields: early childhood music educators, daycare & elementary school teachers and piano teachers.
We broke off into pairs (turned to the person sitting next to us) and re-enacted some rhymes and stories including finger plays and rhythm activities. On top of that, we also received a nice handout of creative rhymes and poetry as examples to experiment with. This was all about finding ways to use your voice - the "oral tradition" - and this workshop was one way to keep the trend alive! I recall when my mum told me she also used to sing little songs to me when I was a baby :) It's also a big part of literacy: developing the ability to use language, learning how to pronounce words, enhancing listening skills, reading (and eventually writing), working with gestures & movement etc... basically using techniques to make you feel "bigger than your body"!
One aspect of the session that really stood out for me is that students must "listen to learn". Throughout my own private piano lessons I've been opening up to include various teaching approaches including auditory, analytical, visual, kinesthetic (especially kin, with my group-style formats at my workplace).
Today, more than ever, I'm finding that with our newer generation of kids (birth to a few years old and even up to 8 years old) it's ideal to include the kinesthetic concept (bodily movements, big dramatic hand motions, expressiveness and actions) to lessons in some kind of way: you learn by doing. Things become easier to remember, to understand and to grasp. A huge step forward, and snowball effect in terms of widening the gap between "traditional" teaching methods vs. contemporary. It's suprising how much things have changed (since I had taken piano when I was little) within only a couple of decades. (Side note: I really support the Montessori method and will try and gather some notes for a post about this in the near future)
I must admit that this was a teaching approach (what I would categorize as "contemporary" versus the "traditional" model in private piano) I had to adjust to. Back in the day when I was 8 (early 90s) I was expected to sit up straight and listen to my teacher no matter how dull and theoretically bland my lessons were... I guess that's what you could call "old school" lol Everything was written with a grey pencil, lessons weren't expected to be "fun", and when something was actually fun then I hadn't taken it "seriously" enough. I remember feeling "challenged" ... to the point where I had to "overcome" it like it was something bad. There was no hiding the fact that I was challenged every time I played the piano or had to study hard to pass an exam. For some kids I can understand now that I'm older that this approach may have a long-term negative effect and be quite detrimental to learning (unless you become mentally capable of handling that type of pressure but that takes time).
That's a huge contrast from today. You can make a piano lesson experience much more "colourful", imaginative and you can encourage your students to be more responsive. In private piano teaching, I use a lot of pencil crayons, cartoon characters, rewarding students with sparkly stickers, getting students to clap and sing out loud much more freely and to not be afraid of making healthy mistakes as part of learning and growing. It's also helpful to find reproducable online activity handouts and sheets that boost musical theoretical knowledge right at your fingertips! With technology & computer software programs, there's much more accessibility to resources.
However, with all of this said, my advice coming from my own experience(s) I could give to students today remains to be this: nothing in life is easy and not everything is going to be a game. Relating back to piano lessons, it's nice when you know you have cool games and activities available to you - but my mentality is that I still think games should be used to a certain extent, and not when they get out of hand. It can be a good thing when students are challenged (not necessarily pressured) in a healthy way. I hope our newer generation of kids understand that when they're faced with a real tough challenge one day in life to ask themselves: would I give up on a task just because it's not making me happy or if something's not fun enough? Should I keep going or give up? The answer is always, NO - you should never give up on a goal or your dream. You should always TRY to reach your goals no matter how unreachable you think they are.
To end things off Sally's workshop was a very mind-opening experience. There were members of all ages at the seminar & it was good to see music teachers from various walks of life contribute to the overall session. Through teaching I feel that I've learned to become a more patient person, and I've already begun to tie in nurturing ways of teaching piano. I'm hoping that by being more "positive" with students it'll give them the chance to appreciate working hard and trying their best in anything they do!
Sally Jaeger: http://www.sallyjaeger.ca/
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