I really appreciate it when I have dilligent, hard working pupils who always complete the work set and are ready to 'move on' each lesson. However, in many cases, these pupils are just motivated and hard working by nature and are happy to do as they are told. We all love these pupils. However, I sometimes get frustrated with them because I want to see a sparkle of interest beyond the tasks that have been set. I find it hard to define, and hard to put into words when trying to encourage the pupils to think 'outside the box'. For example, the pupil who practises because they really want to sort something out, they love the music (or at least can talk about the music they prefer), are inquisitive about how it is written, how it will end, what else does this composer write, plays through old tunes for fun, learns tunes by heart (not because they have been asked to), hears a piece of music from somewhere and tries to find out what it is. What am I trying to say? How would you describe this latter pupil over the first one, and how would you begin to encourage someone to develop in this way, which quite often is seen as something you either have or don't have.

Does this make sense?

To me, only pupils like those you've just described should be studying music... how lucky you are if you have one!!!

But, of course, I think we ourselves can develop a good part of that kind of passion to what they're doing.

I agree. I'm lucky to have 2 such students at the moment and I look forward to their lessons so much!

It makes SUCH a huge difference when they're like that. Apart from anything else, it means that the lesson isn't entirely led by the teacher and is much more stimulating for the teacher for that reason. I have a few like that that I can honestly say I've learnt from myself. I've been forced to look into things that hadn't occured to me, and I've had to question my own methods of teaching too. I've tried to analyse sometimes why some perfectly nice, hard-working pupils can still be a drag, and this is why; they don't think outside the box! When it's all totally teacher-led it can become stagnant. Teaching needs a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing.