Have you ever asked them? Sometimes students of all ages merely put up with what is offered, even though some aspects of it might be disagreeable.

I only ask because I would never have dreamed of using stickers with adult students before reading this thread. I assumed they would find it condescending. Clearly, many do not. Equally clearly, some do.

How do you resolve this apparent dilemma?

I DID ask a group of 15 adult students this afternoon - and they were unanimous in wanting stickers!

I have to say I feel really quite upset that something I do in a spirit of fun and encouragement (and most of you don't know me, so you don't know my manner with students) is now being taken to task, as something that my students may have to 'put up with'.

GAH.

I think stickers are just 'a nice thing to give/receive'. For me, they give me a little glow (no, not like the Ready Brek person)

I am not taking you to task. As you say, I do not know you. Mine was a genuine enquiry. Other posters here indicated that stickers were not altogether popular. I was merely asking how you resolved this.

My apologies for causing upset. This was not my intention.

this wasn't my intention either - i'm not one of your students, and i'm sure you wouldn't do something like that unless they were okay with it. i'm just saying it's not something that, i, personally, would particularly like.

I need to add what I did not say in my previous post: clearly, you resolve the difficulty that some will appreciate using stickers whilst others will not, by asking who will and who will not appreciate their use, and adjusting your use accordingly.

This is using the principle of reward according to the perception of the individual student at its finest, and I salute you for this. Not all teachers are so sensitive to their students' needs.

Goodness - high praise indeed, thank you.

Do I get a sticker?

I just had a conversation with an adult pupil - just out of interest - and the following was the response:

What do you see as your ultimate goal?
"Making this thing sound like I want it to. To hear from the instrument what I hear in my head."

Where does motivation come from?
"From not wanting to come along and put you in a position of not having something positive to say - so I try to make sure that scenario never arises."

I don't know if this is consructive in any way with regard to what to do when a pupil doesn't practise! I just thought it would be interesting!

Yeah, to be fair, my adult students are there because they just want to play really well, I hadn't thought of giving them stickers because they don't need the motivation.

I wonder what it is that makes children different then? Are they not interested enough, and is it therefore are job to make them interested as well as teaching them per se? But then how do we get over the mutlitudinous timetables that they have during the week, plus the fact that children are so very spontaneous? If xxx from next door called to see if yyy wanted to go out on his new go-cart when yyy was just thinking about his practice, well. ..yyy is going to go out on the go-cart!

Which is where the parents come in, I suppose. It might be cruel not to let yyy out at this precise moment, but parents can create a certain amount of structure that the child will be incapable of creating alone.


PianoDoodler beat me to it with his sticker for Cyrilla, but this was meant to be a reply to the post above that!

Yes, it is our job to make practice interesting, by providing exercises/pieces etc that the child finds appealing - whether because of the musical content, or the presentation of the material or the reward to be gained. They also need to feel that they CAN do it - things that appear too daunting tend to be ignored. A little bit of a challenge for those who can handle it is good, but many kids lack the confidence to persevere through difficulties (judicious parental input helpful here..)

I think children should be allowed to be spontaneous, but parents should build in a sense of responsibility - yes, its fine for you to go and play with Johnny from next door, but you will have to do your piano practice later, before you have the TV on etc. The last thing I want is for my students to have a regimented enforced practice timetable - they will hardly come to love it that way!

How about offering musical rewards for good practice - more of an activity the student enjoys, part of a new piece to learn, a new riff/lick etc? And the explicit statement that "Great, now that you have practised x and can do that really well, you will be able to do y" - move on to next step in process of what student is learning. They need to feel that practising makes a real difference to what happens in the next lesson.

No practice - "Oh dear, you can't play that yet, well we can't move on then, we'll have to work on that now" - spend time demonstrating how to practice (maybe they weren't sure how to do it before) and do some supervised practice - "Wow, that's getting better already..."

Personally I think it's because they can't see ahead and they can't see that with the practice, they'll get better, they just live in the present.

My piano teacher used to have a chart that had the name of all her pupils for everything she taught (about 50 names!) and if you did something well in the lesson, and have obviously practiced well, you got a little sticker stuck above your name. Gold was technical work, Silver was peices, and there were others. It was good, because you got certificates when you reached certain points, and the person with the most at the end of the term got a prize. You could see everyone elses score as well and it was rather competitive! Alas, they moved house and it is yet to emerge from a box!

I miss it., and im nearly 16, haha.

If somone really wants to achieve something then they will practice, if they are given the tools then they should be able to practice effectively. that will certainly speed up progress. Having a routine is really important and my role as a parent is to give my child the space to mauntain the routine.

I think the goal and understanding how it fits into the bigger learning picture is crucial. To learn more than one instrument there has to be someone in the background that is organised, even at 13 my youngest isn't able to organise herself totally (she is getting there. That doesn't mean she's ever forced to practice but generally it needs to be identified which instrument needs work on it in the time available. There are no rewards along the way achieving the goal is the reward.

The child who has 3 instruments will need parental guidance to progress more than thos ewith only one.

I try to give my pupils methods and ways of practising/tackling new pieces etc, but they often don't practise or if they do, they don't do what I've suggested, resulting in the all too familiar careless errors etc which then have to be patiently unpicked in the next lesson..........

So yes, we have to teach our pupils how to practise, but exactly what they get up to at home is out of our hands.......

You're right. I remind most of my students at almost every lesson about how to practise (and often tell parents, too) but just yesterday a 14 year old came to his lesson with practice recorded for every day, varying from 10 mins to 30 mins, and then could hardly get anywhere with his main piece.
I found myself wondering just what he'd been practising...

We could suggest that all practice sessions be recorded on an mp3 player and submitted for the teacher's perusal after each lesson.

Seriously, though, when I first started I had no piano at home and borrowed my teacher's (a neighbour) while he was out. His mother let me in on week days and told me when it was time to go. Because I knew she could hear from the other room I always did exactly what I was suppose to and never dithered around just putting in the time.

We'd probably all be horrified at what is actually done in pupils' practice time...

Yes, and when our pupils are children we know what they will do.

When they are adults, we can be pretty sure what they will do.

They will play the piece over and over in the hope that it will improve, eventually. It does, of course.

Merely persuading them not to restart every time they make a mistake is a major achievement.

That is before we even begin to consider trying to teach them the difference between practise and learning.

When I practise, I go over and over the same well-honed physical action to make sure it remains grooved, confident and accurate. When a child 'practices' that child waves its fingers at the instrument until there is a reasonable degree of fluency, after which said child is ready to move on to pastures new. Actually, the same is true of most adult learners too.

They have a point, do these pupils. After all, they play for fun. I practise because playing and teaching is my living. I am not sure I want my pupils to 'practise' as I do. I am sure not many have the ability or the insanity to do so.

Of course, all this has got rather a long way away from the original discussion about what to do when pupils do not even wander into the same room as that housing their instrument. It is interesting, nonetheless.

I have to confess to there having been occasions when I've despaired so much about practice that I've actually told pupils, quite prescriptively, to "play through this one three times a day and then play through the last two lines of that one four times. It should take about 20 minutes to do that at the minute; by the end of the week the time will be shorter." I know it's not exactly a wonderful thing to do and there might be an outcry of 'OMG surely nots', but at times it has been either that or nothing at all. If I'm this specific, at least mum will see this written in the notebook and there's a remote chance of it being enforced if she's able to hear the practice occurring. And it can work in that it can kick-start or remind the child that it's 'good to be able to play things with confidence' and then he/she might actually listen to how to practise more efficiently for better results.

Actually, that is better than my bland acceptance of the way kids do things. It does at least set them a target. Those that follow your advice will be able to give themselves a ' tick, vg' because they have done what Miss told them to do.

It does not really matter whether kids 'practise' properly. It does not matter that much if they 'practice' what we tell them to do.

What really counts is that they spend some time playing. If your prescriptive method helps some of them to do just this, then all to the good.

An impressive number of my former pupils are earning a living from music. Not a single one came to their first lesson announcing, "I want to be a famous concert pianist." Good thing, mind, as none of them ever became one. Nor has one of them ever come to a first lesson demanding to know how to practise properly. Those that are now earning their living from music first became hooked by playing the piano in whatever way suited them. Their early practise regimes were pretty chaotic.

Just get them playing, D. Doesn't matter how.

I think you're quite right !
Once a term I write out a whole sheet for each pupil with everything broken down into the tiniest segment - 4 days of practise with 'line 1: play l.h. five times, play hands together 2 times slowly, 2 times slightly faster' etc.etc. It takes a while to do (hence once a term) but it shows them what's 'expected/possible' and gives pupils and parents alike a blueprint.

I don't get involved in daughter's Piano practice and I know she listens to her Piano teacher but she often slips into bad habits and plays through the whole of the piece. I always feel guilty when she's reminded yet again to break it down into small chunks. In her logic she needs to have time playing through before she can identify where the work needs to be done, but without being reminded she can spend too long getting the piece to a point where she can make the diagnosis.

I don't think it annoys her Piano teacher too much as she does work and generally make progress between lessons, usually the weak areas have improved. He thinks she would progress faster if she broke it down in managable chunks a bit more. I suspect her method has become a bit of a habit, maybe she'll break it soon.

At the moment she's on a bit of a mission to take G5 in April (didn't start learning it properly until end of December). Teacher and I are both sceptical and she won't be entered if she is a long way off by the closing date (special visit). She's so determind that I don't think either of us will be suprised if she pulls it off. Perhaps it'll give her the incentive to break things down a bit more for quicker progress.

My elder daughter is in a class with a music option, in which all the children play an instrument and have five hours of music timetabled into their week's classes. Interestingly, the French teacher said that she likes these classes. On average these children are no better than her other classes at French (classes are not streamed in France) but all the instrument-playing children have realised that there is a link between the work you put in and the end result and are consequently more organised and more hard-working.


Between the ages of about 8 and 14 I never practised my piano pieces at all because I knew I would be able to sight-read them in my lessons. (In between lessons I merely reinforced my sight-reading skills by attempting to play through anything I could lay my hands on ).

Only as an adult have I approached practising in a systematic way and explictely ask my teacher how to practise things I have been having trouble with.

There is, however, a danger of over-practising short passages; I occasionally turn up at lessons with the difficult few bars in the middle mastered and the "easy" parts either side leaving a lot to be desired. Recently my teacher has started telling me to play the whole piece through at least once a day (ignoring mistakes) to try and improve stamina.

I tell you what I hate. Pupils who lie about the amount of practice they've done. It's got to the point where I had to say to one lad, "Look, I don't care if you've only done one day of practice, what I do care about is you lying to me about how much you've done because when you do, and you've actually not done a lot of practice, it makes me worry that I'm not teaching you well enough. I mean, I'd prefer it if you did more practice because you know, I really like to see you get better, but at the moment, we're just having to repeat the same things over and over again, it's not that fun for you, and it's not that fun for me."

Oh it makes my blood boil!

I've had that! Don't know if I've actually verbalised it to a pupil, but I know where you're coming from. I have an 8-year-old at the minute who was flying for the first few months, but who seems to have come to stand-still. I've been questioning myself at every turn - Did we move away from Middle C too soon? Was I asking her to remember too many lines and spaces in too short a time? Why was it taking her so long to remember where to start? - and then I established that she was now only practising for 5 minutes a day about three days a week.

And yes, what annoyed me was that I'd thought it was entirely down to me! Mum knows I ask for 15 minutes at least 5 days per week, and started out by writing various (constructive) comments in the notebook about what the child had enjoyed, what she struggled with, and so on. In this sort of scenario where a child becomes 'too busy to do more practice' (ballet, swimming lessons, xxx, xxx, you know the story...) I would really rather see a little note in the notebook to tell me that it had been 'hard to fit much in this week', rather than be left wondering where I was going wrong - trying to keep giving praise at all costs, digging to find positive things to say, etc, etc, truly believing that I was getting the child's best!

Ah yes, and when they try to justify it, "Oh! I had basketball that evening!" "So why didn't you practice in the morning?" "Not got any time!" "Then wake up 15 minutes earlier!" I tell them it's like going to the toilet, they don't have to plan it, whenever they have 15 minutes spare, just do some practice!

Yes, yes, yes!!!!

Makes me feel so much better to read this. I've a G4 pupil who I believed was doing its (sorry don't want to reveal gender) best to practise. Got a bit suspicious when I saw Mum give it a nudge when we had our brief exchange of words at the end of the lesson. Anyway, I know where I am now and managed to sort it out when I said that we would have a "Target Piece" for a week and max attention on that piece. Significant progress - which makes me cross when I think of all the mental contortions I go through so as not to offend sensibilities.

The trouble is that you don't always know whether it's their best effort or not, and some of them are otherwise nice kids that you don't want to come down on like a ton of bricks. That's the trouble with instrumental lessons - they're supposed to enjoy them too. Sometimes I wish I taught Maths - you've just got to get on with it, like it or not.

Exactly! I often tell mine about a student I once had who was very busy with all sorts of activities, so used to get up at 7 am to practise piano.

As a slight aside, I wondered how/why a pupil goes from "I'm never going to get this right so I might as well give up now" to the "I'll just play this one more time (and one more time and one more time etc.) until I get it right."

As an adult I'm definintely in the never-ending "one more time" group. My younger daughter oscillates wildly between the two and my elder daughter has (until last week and I'm still wondering what has made her change) been firmly in the "I'm never going to get it right" group.

I had a student today who's working on Allegro Grazioso for Grade 2, and was supposed to have been practising the first page with both hands together. I asked how it had gone during the week and she was very negative, saying that she hadn't been able to do it. We talked about what she meant by this and how she could have tried various things at home and then I asked her to play just the first phrase, which went so well that we kept going. With a bit of help and encouragement, she actually played the whole piece with both hands.
This girl is definitely in the "I'm never going to get it right" group, and although I could see she was very pleased with what she'd done, I'm fairly sure that it won't change her attitude too much. I just wish I could give her a bit of confidence in herself!

I'm not sure that confidence is the only thing that comes into it. Playing something over and over again can also stem from a lack of confidence.

I've found that when it's like that it can help to set much less but with the option to do more 'if you want to'.
For me I do what I can and I think that having a set amount to do in a given time on a regular basis might make me feel overfaced unless I was constantly asked to do too little.

I have a pupil like this - perhaps I should rephrase that. I have a pupil who behaved like this when she was in primary school. A very able girl, she would see little difficulties as major obstacles. We persevered (as you do) and for each of her exams she achieved a merit. She is now working on grade 4, and has been in senior school for 2 years.

The change is remarkable and I don't really know why it happened. Nor can I pinpoint when it happened. But I just think that she spends quite a bit of time at home playing other music and has found that she can do it. Quite simply the obstacles are now viewed as little challenges and she is making good progress with the grade 4 work and I would say that she is one of my best pupils.

When speaking to parent, in front of child sometimes, I used to say that she needed to view things she could not do as challenges rather than obstacles, so whether that kind of sank in to her subconscious mind I don't know.

I haven't read all the posts, so sleepy

I just find it funny, one of my pupils, she's about 10, every week before she even sits down at the piano she starts a list of reasons and classes she's been to and that's the reason she can't practice. Apparently she was doing homework Saturday AND Sunday, a lot of homework for a 10 year old, ey?

xx

I do that a lot. It often works wonders.

I also do that. In fact, I had said to the girl in question to try as much as she could with both hands and suggested that she might manage the first page, as there is a big repeated section.
I always tell my students to practise in phrases and to make sure they feel the first phrase is okay before going on to the next one.
This girl has had many problems and has been a real challenge to me, in fact I've written about her here in the past. I'm really pleased that she's still playing and is now up to Grade 2 level, but she has a very negative attitude and I would love to see her more confident in herself and her abilities. Her lessons are often a struggle for me and I'm exhausted at the end!

I agree ... but haven't thought up any alternatives yet (apart from 'having fun on the piano at home' which is a little wordy) ... got any suggestions?!

In French there is no real word to translate "practice" (or practise) and they just use the verb "faire" or "do" (as in "Have you done any piano today?" "How much oboe do you do each week?" etc.)

'Playing'? It means the same thing.

"I play the piano" is a common phrase.

and also conjures up some different images for me (maybe that's just me though... )