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Episode 254: Cheers to Trusting New Skillsets

Well hello there, studio teacher friends!  Welcome to the Beyond Measure Podcast: your space for music teacher solidarity. Christina Whitlock here, your host and self-appointed Anytime Piano Teacher Friend.

Special thanks today to my SuperFriends on Patreon who support this show and keep it happening. Artists supporting artists is one of my favorite things in this life and I am grateful to my SuperFriends for partnering with me in this work. If you would like to learn more about supporting Beyond Measure AND get some great bonus opportunities in return, head to ChristinaWhitlock.com/superfriends and we’ll get you all set up.

And now, friends, on with the show. You are listening to Episode 254 of the Beyond Measure Podcast: Cheers to Trusting New Skillsets.

Every once in awhile I find myself in a position where I’m giving the same speech to student after student. I often bring those conversations to you here on Beyond Measure because I figure – if my students need to hear something – maybe yours do, too.

Lately, I have this crop of mid to late elementary students who have the same problem: they haven’t accepted the fact that they know more now than they used to. You could say they don’t know what they know… except, it’s more a matter of them not knowing how to put their newfound skills to use properly.

Spoiler alert: as teachers, we often have the same problem. We’re going to get to that in a few minutes. But for now, let’s talk about our students.

There are a handful of standard growing pains that seem to come for everyone at certain stages of learning their instrument. The first one that comes to mind is how, by the time students get to the intermediate levels of study, playing the correct notes and rhythms is pretty much a given. Practice time begins to involve a lot more difficulty in that intermediate stage because there is so much more expected. The demands of phrasing and balance and tone and articulation are much more complex, and helping students understand how to LISTEN to their playing, how to apply historical style, how to discern which practice techniques to employ… when to practice in small sections and when to piece it all together… those are all BIG practice decisions that have major impact on their success at the intermediate stage.

Again, that’s one major growing pain we experience with our students….

….but today I want to focus on something that routinely happens earlier in a students’ study.

Let’s think about the beginner mindset for a moment: we have these students who come to us with very little knowledge about playing this instrument. Everything is new. They depend on us to show them EVERYTHING.

My hope is that we are introducing concepts to our students through lots of exploration, discovery, trial, and error. There are ways to help beginner students approach the piano with some ownership of their learning process. That’s really important.

But even still – obviously – our students count on us to provide them with guidance. That’s why we’re here. They count on us to help them navigate new pieces. To ask the right questions or point out when their hand is in the wrong place. If we’re not careful, they begin to depend on us to tell them everything they need to know… rather than utilizing their new knowledge.

As a beginner student, it’s easy to get used to this process where you lay eyes on a new piece and wait for your teacher to help you dissect it.

But there comes a point – often in that mid-to-late elementary stage – where it’s especially important that students practice putting their knowledge to use. In fact, I would argue this needs to happen continually – at every stage of study – but there are some moments where it stands out to me more than others.

For example: this often comes up in piano study when students have to figure out their starting hand positions for new pieces.

Even students who have accumulated decent reading skills will sometimes get stuck and say, “I can play it, but I just don’t know where my hands go to start!”.

You and I both know: there are basically two things a student needs to find their hand position. They need to be able to identify the letter name of the note on the staff, and they need to know which finger number goes on it (which should be indicated in the score itself). I often tell my students: Okay. Left Hand: I need a letter and a number. Okay. Right Hand. I need a letter and a number.

In this scenario, I’m assuming your student really IS equipped with the skills to identify those two things. And when this happens, many teachers are baffled when students effortlessly rattle off the correct answers. They’ll say, “Left hand 4 on C and Right hand 5 on G” (or whatever).

In that case, they’ve done all the hard work themselves. They had the knowledge; they just didn’t know how to use it.

Even more than finding hand positions, I just happen to have several students right now in this stage where they navigate new pieces well during the lesson, but when they go home, they are met with immediate panic. That is typically followed by avoidance; the dreaded, “I’ll do that piece tomorrow”. Which, of course, never happens.

*I* know they are equipped with the knowledge to figure it out, but if they don’t know how to use that knowledge, or if they are not yet confident in their ability to use that knowledge, we’re not where we need to be yet.

So, friends: please take this as a reminder that we have many roles in teaching our students. We know that. On one hand, we are here to introduce them to concepts and techniques and all the wonderful musical elements that go into playing our instruments.

But it’s easy to miss the fact that we are ALSO responsible for teaching them how to apply that information independently. And that only happens when we provide opportunities for them to do it without us. This means there comes a point when we must stop coming to our students’ rescue in the lesson all the time. Our students need to build a body of evidence in their own minds that proves to them they can trust the new skillsets they’ve built.

For me, yes, this realization comes with some verbal reminders from me. I straight-up tell them they don’t NEED me to tell them the names of notes on the staff anymore, or to remind them that they do, actually, understand how to play in 9/8 time. I’m happy to be the voice of reassurance…

Again, I’ve been giving a very specific pep-talk to students these last few weeks, and it’s all about reminding them to trust the new knowledge they’ve acquired over their months and years of study.

…but the verbal reminders only go so far, friends. Our students need ample opportunities to prove to themselves that they know how to solve whatever musical dilemma is in front of them.

I’ll just say it like it is: too many of us are out there framing the lesson as a chance for students to prove their knowledge to their teachers… but that’s not, actually, the point of music study. We want students to prove their knowledge to themselves.  Our students need to feel equipped to tackle the challenges in front of them, and that only comes through a steady routine of repetition over time.

I know I’ve said it 8 million times on this show, but if your students are leaving your studio with ANY looming question marks over their practice assignments? They’re not set up for success. They are set up to go home and feel confused or intimidated or discouraged… and nothing poisons the water of music study more than those three emotions.

So, I guess the reminder today is to encourage students to recognize their skillsets have grown over time. Once your students can identify notes on the staff and they can read by intervals and can identify rhythmic patterns and place them in the context of meter… I mean, those are ENORMOUS accomplishments to celebrate. And the way to celebrate them is to get your students using them in as many different scenarios as possible.

I promised you I’d address the Teacher Spin on this topic, so here goes…

Just like your students, YOU, my friend, are gaining new skillsets in every season of life. We all have areas we perceive as weaknesses in our teaching, and, hopefully, we take steps to strengthen whatever those shortcomings may be.

But once you acquire new knowledge, it’s up to you to change the narrative. You need to trust your new skillsets.

Maybe you don’t think of yourself as a performer and that bothers you. Take some lessons. Find a gig playing for a retirement community or elementary school music program. Start with something small stakes, ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR GROWTH in that area, and then continue seeking out scenarios to repeat and build your body of supporting evidence. Repeated action is the only way to prove yourself changed.

Perhaps you don’t think you communicate well with studio families. Guess what: the more you communicate, the better you’ll get at it.  The more you do it, the easier it will become. Acknowledge the points of growth, and keep repeating to build your body of evidence that you can, indeed, communicate well.

Maybe you don’t think you teach rhythm well. Seek out some professional development: you have many opportunities in today’s world. Put what you learn into practice, acknowledge your growth, and…. you guess it: continue emphasizing rhythmic skills in your teaching so you build a body of evidence to help you change that narrative.

As teachers, we are ALWAYS learning. We learn to relate better to challenging students over time. We learn more repertoire. We learn more effective ways of teaching technique. We learn SO MUCH. Don’t neglect the importance of reflecting on what you’ve been learning this season so you don’t find yourself holding onto old narratives. Don’t just collect knowledge (I talked about that back in episode 231), but be sure you are putting new skills to work. Over and over again.

Is there an area in teaching – or in life – where you need to acknowledge a new skillset? Are you holding onto an outdated narrative that you’re not great at something? Seek out opportunities to prove your fears wrong. Build your body of supporting evidence.

Okay? Okay.

Before we go, I want to address a lingering question that I know some of you are asking. I know some of you are wondering: How do we get our students to these points where they DO feel confident decoding the musical notation in front of them? How do we get them to understand intervallic reading and feeling confident approaching the staff? Obviously, I mentioned repetition, but it’s more complex than that. We must make sure we are repeating the right things.

To go back to the earlier example of finding hand positions at the start of a piece, a lot of teachers think they are presenting adequate opportunities for students to find starting hand positions because they assign them 2-3 new pieces each week. Obviously, students will have to practice finding those positions and 2-3 pieces should be enough, right?  I beg to differ. Here’s the thing: when a student is assigned a piece, they are met with an onslaught of information. They know the drill: they’re going to be expected to practice these pieces all week. So they’re not JUST thinking about finding their hand position. Their brains are going wild with sorting through the many details in front of them, and the many feelings they are experiencing as a result.

What if, instead, you took all those other expectations off your student and JUST concentrated on finding new hand positions? What if we showed them 6, 7, 8 pieces each lesson for a few weeks so they could develop confidence in THAT very-important skill? They’re not going to play those other pieces; they simply find the hand positions and call it a day. Spending 3 or 4 minutes on this single activity for a few weeks can be an absolute game-changer.

Some of you listening are nodding along because you’ve already heard me say all this. In January, I walked 50 teachers through a trial run of my newest program: Building Better Music Readers.

This program is a 12-week journey spent dissecting the way we teach staff notation. It is full of micro steps like I’m describing here. The idea is to pinpoint every skill necessary to develop competent readers.
Feedback from my first trial group was wildly enthusiastic, and I’m delighted to tell you Building Better Music Readers is now available for purchase. Simply head to ChristinaWhitlock.com/readers for all the information. That link is also in today’s shownotes, along with lots of other relevant links.

SO, friends: that’s a big announcement. Building Better Music Readers has consumed a lot of my brainpower these last few months and I’m ecstatic to know other teachers have found it valuable. There is a $20 coupon code available for the first week; simply enter code podcast20 (all lower case) at purchase.

And – on that celebratory note – Let’s toast our way out of here, shall we?

Studio music teacher friends from all around the world: Today we raise our glasses together, acknowledging the fact that learning new things and knowing how to USE new things we’ve learned are two very different things. We carry a responsibility as teachers to help students do both parts. We introduce them to new skillsets, but we must also equip them to know how to put them to use. May we encourage our students to trust what they know, and may we then look ourselves in the mirror and give ourselves the very same reminder. Cheers to ALL of us who are committed to growing on our Teacher Journeys.  Here, here.

That will do it for Episode 254, friends! Check out today’s shownotes for all kinds of relevant links, including how to purchase Building Better Music Readers.  I’ll be back in your ears next week!  Until then, onward and upward we go!