Catherine Shefski, a piano teacher, performer, and fellow blogger has created a fantastic new ebook called Go Play that every teacher must read! Catherine cites statistics about today’s youth that should be very influential to how we teach. She explains how technology is affecting our youth and how we as teachers can capitalize on our student’s interests and nature to keep them playing!
Here is what Catherine says about the book:
“Go practice.”
These words no longer mean anything to our piano students. They are growing up in a world where instant feedback is the norm and random access to information has replaced sequential learning. Our students prefer learning that is relevant, useful and fun. For some, the idea of sitting alone at a piano for an hour a day is sheer torture.
“Go play.”
Now these are words that resonate with today’s generation of young musicians. Between social media, unlimited downloads, video games and all the rest of digital technology they have an abundance of “toys” to encourage musical creativity and a world of “friends” with whom to play.
Music has always been at the forefront of the technological revolution. Our students know this, but unfortunately, for many of them, attending the weekly piano lesson is like stepping back in time.
My goal with this e-book is to present a few ideas to parents and piano teachers on how they can make music lessons more relevant to the digital generation and keep them playing!
Cool idea for a read. Speaking of digital age, and practicing alone = no fun… I just started using SmartMusic with a few of my private piano students. Anyone else using this for Piano? It’s geared towards band and orchestra students right now, but I’ve found a lot of the stuff for piano is a ton of fun, and I’d love to hear from other piano teachers who may be toying with it.
http://www.smartmusic.com
I appreciate what the author is saying here, and I can defintely see the value in applying what she’s saying with students who have at least a basic skill set from which to work (students beyond the basic elementary level). However, what about the beginner-elementary level students who are still in the process of developing the needed skill sets to be able to participate in these “outside the box” ways. I mean, young students in school still need to learn their ABC’s and basic math concepts, etc. If their primary education and what they learned was left mostly up to them based on what they “wanted” to learn, they might never learn some of these essential skills (multiplication for instance) because they’re “hard” and take lots and lots of repetition. Sure, they can play computer math games, etc. to reinforce them, but at some point they first have to learn them. Just like at the piano, at some point a student has to sit down at the instrument and spend “time” putting their fingers to the keys properly to create the automatic response needed to “own” their skills. Just my thoughts…
Hi Cecilly,
It’s always good to hear from you. I think you have a good point that it is important not to forget the importance of the foundational basics. But, I don’t think that Catherine would disagree with that. I think she wanted to encourage teachers to think about ways to connect with this generation of students. There are a lot of teachers (I know you are not one of them!) that still just sit in their chair and say, “This is a quarter note. It gets 1 beat. Let’s clap some quarter notes…” and that’s it. So, I think that even in the presentation of the most basic concepts, teachers need to be aware of what connects with students, what students are interested in, how creativity motivates students, etc. I think that was one of her points.
But…I certainly don’t speak for her. I know that she would love to hear your feedback, so please contact her on her website. Perhaps she’ll even share here. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
This is a good question, Cecilly, and one that I’ve been thinking about recently since I suddenly have 7 new beginners this summer!
I always start my beginners with what I hope is a good foundation in basic technique and I emphasize sightreading. I usually go through lots of beginner books quickly..not spending a lot of time “perfecting” the pieces – but reinforcing note-reading skills.
I always tell my students that when they learn how to read in school they don’t necessarily read the same book over and over. In our school system they have something they call the 100-book challenge, which I use as an example.
It all depends on the student, but I’m finding more and more that the “tween” students have definite ideas about what they want to learn. If they want to learn to play pop music from fake books, our lessons are mostly theory. I’m always surprised at how interested they are in learning about 7th and 9th chords and inversions when they know they’ll be able to play a Taylor Swift song that week!
BTW, I just posted a bit about quick and easy technique for reluctant students on my blog if you’d like to take a glance.
Thanks for taking a look at Go Play!
– Cathy