I’m back! I ended up taking two weeks off instead of one, I know. :) But it felt great. It feels great to be back too. At the MTNA National Conference in NYC this year, one of the sessions I attended encouraged teachers to do yearly or quarterly assessments/evaluations of their students. Some teachers accompany [...]
The last Forum Q&A post was about assignment notebooks/pages for students. It was wonderful to read all the great responses! Click here to read the comments, and click here to read my follow-up where I share my method of tracking assignments. Being able to attend state and national-level conferences is one of the many benefits [...]
Last Thursday, we started a Forum Q&A discussion about assignment notebooks/pages for students. Today, I thought I’d share my own method of tracking assignments — and, of course, also announce the winner of the giveaway! The winner of the sheet music decorative balls is commenter #5… LaDona! Congrats!! (By the way, if you haven’t seen LaDona’s [...]
Today’s post brings a new Forum Q&A topic, and another GIVEAWAY! Our last Forum Q&A discussion was about perfectionism. It’s never too late to add your thoughts to the comments, so feel free to hop over there and join in the conversation! I plan to follow up with an article on perfectionism to discuss this topic [...]
Have you ever have a student play a piece with frequent hesitations throughout, even though you know they can play much better than that? This phenomenon can occur with all ages/levels of students. Why does this happen? What is going on when this happens? This article will examine possible causes of and solutions for a lack [...]
I recently started to do some in-depth planning for the summer camps I plan to offer this summer! My studio policies provide students with two options for the summer months (June-August): Students ages 6-12 may participate in a camp each month plus take 5 lessons scheduled approximately every other week around family vacations, or… Students [...]
I’ve already blogged a bit about my New Year’s Resolution. Now it’s your turn! Our previous Q&A Forum brought about a great discussion about whether or not to lesson plan for piano lessons (and if so, how to feasibly do so even if you have a large studio). Today, let’s start a discussion about what change you’d [...]
The new year always brings about a time of reflection for me. I find myself thinking back over the past year and looking forward to the future, wondering what the new year might bring. This year was a time of great change for my husband and me. In May, I graduated with my Master of [...]
It’s been a while since we had a Forum Q&A! Sometimes I run out of ideas for discussion topics, so if you ever have a question you’d like to see addressed here to get other teachers’ input, please let me know. :) Last time, we discussed the role of the parent in private lessons. We [...]
As piano teachers, we wear many hats. School teachers often teach only one age group, or a few age groups. Piano teachers are usually expected to be able to teach from age 5 to 95! But as we all know, teaching a 5-year-old is much different from teaching a 15-year-old, or a 55-year-old. :) In [...]
Here’s another session given by the well-loved pedagogue Marvin Blickenstaff from the 2011 OhioMTA Conference: Piano Pedagogy 101: Reviewing the Basics Mr. Blickenstaff introduced this session by commenting that at conferences and workshops, we often hear ideas for teaching intermediate and advanced students, but we don’t very often hear ideas for teaching beginners during that [...]
The next session at the OhioMTA Conference was given by Dr. Nicole Biggs, the new piano professor at Bowling Green State University in my town: Toxic or Terrific Teaching: Exploring the Strategies that Bring out the Best in our Students Dr. Biggs began by pointing out that our goal as teachers is to inspire and [...]
Joy is a pianist and teacher in Ohio with great passion for helping students experience the wonders of music making!
