Music Ed Lounge

[This is part 3 in a series of conversations about issues related to practice. Previous posts are here and here.]

We’ve all seen students walk into music class or private lessons with that sheepish look. They signal to us that they’re unprepared because they haven’t practiced. Then we as teachers are faced with the question of what to do about it. Do we reprimand the student? Do we pretend like they did practice?

Getting more assertive with students who don’t practice is effective with some students, but might backfire with others. I have had students quit because they didn’t feel like they were meeting my expectations. This is where the whole art of motivation comes into play.

Here are a few thoughts about what to do with chronic non-practicers:

1. Prioritize teaching about practicing. Make the word “practice” part of the vocabulary of music lessons. Teach students how to practice and what to practice. (More about this in a future post!)

2. Talk about what you’ve assigned for next week’s lesson. I don’t just mean tell them to practice the next page in the book; talk with them about specific measures to focus on. “In your next piece, there are some tricky leaps here, and a lot of accidentals there. Let’s see how you’ll do!”

3. Talk to parents about the lack of practice. I think there’s a way to do this without sounding like you’re tattling on the student. “Michael has so much natural talent. I get the feeling, though, that he has been coming to lessons unprepared. He could really be an amazing musician if he spent a little more time on our lesson material at home.”

4. In some cases, I’ve found that some students just won’t practice, but they’re sincere about their desire to keep music in their lives. With these students, I’ve usually found it best to just make the lessons enjoyable and not sweat it. When there has been an understanding among me, the student, and the parent that the student is not destined for a career in music, then I’ve taken a more relaxed approach. To get more assertive would just burn everyone out, including me.

What do you think? Have any suggestions to share?

The power cord to my laptop doesn’t work any more. It will take at least a week to get a new one. This is the computer I take from school to school and contains all my most important documents, like attendance rosters, Finale and Sibelius files, etc., not to mention my access to the internet. As of today, the battery icon tells me I have about an hour of juice left.

Whenever I run into technological pitfalls like this, I am unimpressed with my own fatalistic reaction. “How can I do my job without my computer?” Then, after about 20 minutes of jiggling the power cord in futility, it dawns on me that my job is not about that computer; it is about, well, teaching and influencing children.

If you’re like me (and by the very fact that you’re sitting there reading a blog instead of mountain climbing or scuba diving, you might be a little like me), you’re instinctively drawn to your computer to “get work done.” Not having a working computer at school always forces me to consider all the work I can get done without it. And almost always, I realize that some of the most important work doesn’t really involve the computer as much as I believe.

The district in which I teach recently had two junior high teachers leave their positions (for all the right reasons, on very good terms). I found myself faced with the decision about whether or not to apply for one of the vacancies and make the shift from elementary to junior high. This prompted a lot of soul searching for me about my career goals and future.

A bit of personal background, briefly: when I originally decided to pursue teaching, I intended to teach at the junior high level and to lead a jazz band. Ironically, I have taught high school and elementary, marching band, concert band, strings and orchestra, but I still have yet to fulfill either of my two original intentions. Meanwhile, I have been quite happy teaching at the elementary level.

So I am curious to hear from those of you who may have purposefully made a career modification in the past, like shifting between elementary, junior high, or high school. What factors played into your decision? Are you happy with your decision?

Today I had a few of my brass players perform for my 3rd grade general music class. I do this every year as a recruiting tool. There were two very good 2nd year trumpet players and a trombone player who is no better than average for a first year player and is generally a goofball.

After we had performed a couple short pieces, I asked the 3rd graders if they had any questions for the brass students. A girl asked if it was difficult to learn to play the trombone. Suddenly, my trombone student morphed into this expert on trombone technique, and started a lecture on the proper way to play. “You have to hold the slide with your first two fingers, and not too tightly, because you have to move the slide freely. You have to buzz your lips differently in each register, because you don’t want to play an F when you want a Bb…” My jaw just about hit the floor. His former 3rd grade teacher was in the room, and even she was amazed to hear him speak so eloquently.

I guess all my constant nagging finally paid off.

The district I teach in requires all elementary students to turn in a monthly practice record. It’s a simplified version of a weekly practice record and progress report we used to use several years ago. I’ve had extremely mixed results and reactions from my students, and I’m guessing you may have experience the same thing.

Some students use the practice records exactly as they’re intended: Students keep truthful records of the number of minutes they’ve practiced, and the visualization of these numbers often motivates them to practice more. Many students totally blow off these practice records and have never turned one in. Other students are somewhere in the middle. I always get a kick out of seeing the practice records with outrageously high numbers turned in by students who can’t play their way out of a paper bag.

So what do we do about this? Do we let students get away with being dishonest (or maybe delusional!) about their report? Do we let students get away with not turning the sheets in every month?

By the way, I really like Ken’s concept of outcome based practice rather than time based. I plan to revise the practice record format and add a few questions at the bottom of the sheet, like “What did you accomplish this month?” and “What are your musical goals for next month?”

Music teachers have always debated about copyright and fair use issues. The blogosphere and recent podcasts have created new forums for this debate. Technology has certainly changed the framework of many copyright issues, but at its core, the debate continues.

My take on the whole thing involves a little of the golden rule, recognition of the law, a little hypocracy, and hopefully a lot of common sense.

It seems to me that there are a few principles which play into this issue.

Principle #1: Writers and publishers should profit from their work. I have no doubt we all understand that already.

Principle #2: Students will lose and destroy sheet music. I’ll never forget when one of my students brought me his music folder which his dog had peed all over. I very willingly replaced the whole thing, including the method book he had bought.

Principle #3: Teachers are caught in the middle. Our budgets sometimes don’t allow for frequent purchases of sheet music, yet we want to provide the best possible musical experience for our students. I also believe many of us sincerely want to support the writers and publishers whose music we enjoy.

With these principles in mind, here are a few of my own opinions about particular dilemmas.

Opinion #1: Sheet music purchases deserve a bigger percentage of our budget than we often allow. We are willing to spend $2,000 on a new instrument, but are we willing to spend $50 to buy a legal edition of a publication? We spend thousands more on band uniforms and dry cleaning, busses and hotels, instrument maintenance, but are we willing to spend money on our music? We wouldn’t shoplift reeds, valve oil, strings, or instruments from a music store, so why should we do effectively the same to publishers and writers?

Opinion #2: I recently heard a discussion about prodiving original scores to adjudicators at music festivals. One teacher felt it was unfair to expect teachers to pay the publisher again for copies of scores they had already purchased simply to provide originals to adjudicators. My feeling is that if the teacher has a high enough opinion of the work to use it as a festival selection or even a concert selection, the few extra dollars for legal scores are worth the price.

Opinion #3: Publishers need to come up with some sort of provision for teachers to distribute sheet music. This is where things get tricky, of course. Consider the format of various classroom publications: You’ve probably heard of “blackline masters” and “reproducibles.” Publishers of curriculum recognize that classroom teachers will need to photocopy the material, and it’s not cost effective to sell sets of 30-40 sheets of each page for students’ use. What about some sort of equivalent for sheet music?

What do you think? Does anyone here have experience with getting permission to make photocopies? Do you buy the required extra scores and parts when necessary? I don’t expect anyone here to confess to copying huge volumes of music, but what are your thoughts and practices?

After a number of years of experimentation and revision, this is the sequence of books and materials I use with my jazz saxophone students.

Essential Elements for Jazz by Mike Steinel*. This book provides an excellent transition from traditional music into jazz. It’s presented in typical method book format, with lots of short exercises and clear definitions of new concepts. Emphasis is on jazz articulation and swing style. It has some brief improvisation excercises, but not so much as to intimidate young players. There are brief biographies of important jazz players like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Charlie Parker, and some discussion of different forms of jazz (swing, bebop, fusion, etc.).

Jazz Conception for Saxophone by Lennie Niehaus. This series of books is a great next step. The first section of each book is made up one-page exercises which help the student master jazz articulation, rhythm and phrasing. The second section of each book has 10 etudes which resemble bebop solo transcriptions. There is no explanatory material other than a brief preface, so a student would need a good jazz playing teacher to model the style.

How to Play Jazz and Improvise: Vol. 1 in Jamey Aebersold’s Play Along series. This is great entry level material with simple chord progressions and moderate tempos. Some improvisation teachers feel this material caters only to left brain thinkers and is overly academic in its approach. However, I’ve felt that a good teacher can balance that by keeping the lessons fun, with plenty of positive reinforcement.

Maiden Voyage: Vol. 54 in Jamey Aebersold’s Play Along series. A good next step for young improvisation students. I like that it uses real tunes, not artificial exercises. I’ve been playing the original recordings for my students to introduce them to the important jazz artists.

Charlie Parker Omnibook. Call me crazy, but it’s taken me a while to accept the fact that it’s pretty futile to attempt these solo transcriptions until until a sax student has had plenty of experience with easier material like the Niehaus books. Just be sure to buy only the Eb edition. The Bb edition might be okay for trumpet players, but it would be totally unrealistic to have a saxophonist play from the Bb edition.

*Mike Steinel was one of my professors at the University of North Texas, where he continues to teach. He has also written Building a Jazz Vocabulary which I would definitely recommend for experienced improvisation students who are capable of dealing with more advanced music theory concepts.

In the Music Teacher’s Helper blog, Sarah Luebke wrote a post dealing with the issue of cancellation and make-up policies for private lessons. Some great thoughts and good discussion there.

A few things that have helped me in my current teaching situation vs. the past:

1. I charge for the month up front. If a student (parent!) misses a lesson, they’ve already paid for it, so there’s no uncomfortable conversation the next week like “By the way, you still owe me for last week.”

2. I teach in a rented room in a music store. Doing this has helped keep my business more professional. I make it clear to parents that I have to pay to use the room, and other teachers use it the other days of the week. I try to foster the perception that I only have access to the room for a limited amount of time and can’t just do a make-up any time.

In the past, I have sometimes taught out of my home. This this kind of situation may give some parents a misconception that they’re really not inconveniencing me if they cancel at the last minute or don’t show.

3. When a student cancels in advance, I try to call other students to offer that time slot, even if I don’t owe them a make up lesson. I think parents appreciate that offer even if their schedule doesn’t allow it. I’ll even admit that I know in advance that some families can’t make it at that time, but I call them anyway just as a goodwill gesture.

Teaching private lessons definitely has a business component to it. I think the more we do to demonstrate professionalism and treat our students and their parents as business clients, the more likely we are to make wise decisions about how we handle issues like cancellation, no shows, make-ups and billing.

Your thoughts?

Here’s a reminder that Secretary’s Day is coming up on April 23, 2008.

Any experienced music teacher should already be aware how valuable the school secretary is. A helpful secretary can make your job much easier. A combative one can make your job frustrating.

One of the best ways to stay on your secretary’s good side is to make sure you have paperwork taken care of. Secretaries may not fully appreciate whether your students can play in 5/8, or if they can construct harmonic minor scales. They do, however, appreciate when you’ve properly handled paperwork like purchase orders, field trip forms, facility reservations, and invoices.

If you are relatively new to your school, it might take some time to build your secretary’s trust in you. She might have a bad opinion of music teachers if your predecessors were disorganized. On the other hand, your predecessor may have been God’s gift to that school, and how can a whippersnapper like you think you can fill his shoes? Your goal in either case if to make sure she knows you know how to handle the business aspects of teaching.

Here are a few ideas of what you might give your secretary on her special holiday:
* A card with an appreciative handwritten message
* Bagels, donuts, brownies, cookies, etc.
* A gift certificate to her favorite store or restaurant

Also, not all secretaries are created equal. In my own experience as a traveling teacher working various schools, I can say that some secretaries like to socialize and others are all about getting to business. Some are willing to go the extra step to help you, and some won’t give you the time of day unless you have your i’s dotted and your t’s crossed. The trick is to figure out what makes each person tick and respond accordingly.

I recently had the opportunity to spend some money at J.W. Pepper, and couldn’t be happier with this new music.

Midnight Mission by Brian Balmages/FJH Music. This has been turning out to be a real favorite this season. Read my previous comments here. One warning: If your group has too many alto saxophones or too few flutes, be careful of balance in this piece.

Starfire March by Bruce Pearson from the Standard of Excellence First Performance collection. An easy march my students love to play. It is arranged with too much verbatim repetition, but the melody is catchy. My groups almost always cheer when I call this piece, and I frequently hear complaints when we don’t rehearse it.

Olympia by Brian Balmages/FJH Music. Balmages’ writing here is very harmonically colorful, yet the accidentals are playable by young students. I had really been looking forward to working on this one with my groups, but I have been disappointed with the results so far. My groups’ lack of full instrumentation contributes to the less than ideal outcome, so I would advise anyone considering this wonderful work to consider that factor.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious arranged by Michael Sweeney/Hal Leonard. An easy arrangement of the classic Mary Poppins song. This one has been working well for my groups, but is being overshadowed by some of the other titles this season.

Temple of Darkness by Rob Grice/FJH Music. Another one my students can’t seem to get enough of. It’s one of those pieces that makes a young group sound impressive. It rehearses pretty easily too, so it doesn’t tax the students’ patience… or mine!

Sahara by Roland Barrett/FJH Music. Again, another one which makes a young group sound impressive and rehearses easily. It includes an aleatoric passage which initially intimidated my students. They’ve had a little trouble grasping the concept, and it has been surprising how much time it has taken to rehearse something which is meant to sound improvisatory. But the students love it.

Aunt Rhodie’s Appetite by Joseph Compello/Carl Fischer Music. This arrangement uses actors and a narrator to link several familiar beginning band tunes like Hot Cross Buns and Go Tell Aunt Rhodie. Although it doesn’t necessarily make a young band sound more mature, it does serve to lighten up a concert program. Audience members who are more likely to enjoy drama rather than instrumental music will appreciate this choice.

If you have a comment or would like to suggest a title, by all means do here.