An 8 year old beginner came to her lesson today with ALL notes marked with fingerings.... IN INK....

Managed to restrain myself and politely suggest that it was not a good thing to do.
Then had to convince the child that she really can manage without.

Excellent piece of self-restraint there. I am impressed.

Especially since I've been having a bad week....

Well done. At least it was a 'helpful parent' who wrote in names of all notes and every single finger in ink - I know teachers who do that and then they wonder why their children can't read music.

I have been fighting with this type of parent too - I have tippexed out loads of fingering written in ink only to find some of it marked back in the following week. Unfortunately it's at the school I teach at where we don't actuallt often have direct contact with the parents so I've been trying to teach daughter pieces without a single fingering to show her she doesn't need them. It definitely stops them learning the notes properly. I quite like Hal Leonard and the Piano Adventures series early books as they teach the pupil to use different fingers on middle C so that they never think middle C is called 1, D is called 2 etc.!! (Which I had with one pupil whose TEACHER had always written in the fingerings!)

What a cheek - to write it back in after it's been tippex'd out!

I found some chords written out (in note-names, eg B major, B D#F#) in one pupil's notebook last week. Given that this is a near-beginner who is lacking in confidence, and who has difficulty not confusing F and G - I was a bit annoyed. She said her dad had tried to show her but she'd got confused - I'm not surprised!

Sbhoa - in ink is really wrong I think. Even as a teacher I don't use ink in a pupil's book. I like them to feel that books are theirs, to be taken care of, and that markings can always be removed later if they wish.

Unbelievable. I would never write on a book in ink. My students are taught from their first lesson that they should always write in pencil on their books and do their theory in pencil too.

I think one of the main reasons why some chidlren find sight-reading hard is due to the lack of fingering when they have been used to reading 'the numbers'. I started with a new pupil a while ago but the books she was using had a large number of fingering sin and I said to her and the mother to either tippex the majority out or use a new book. Of course, the fingerings for the start or hand position changes are very useful but not for every note!

I always find it funny to see three notes in a row, accompanied by '1,2,3' - surely this isn't helping the develpoment of independent thinking!!!!

The 'over helpful' parent bit also reminds of a situation I had where I'd gone through and carefully corrected a couple of notes or so in a piece, pupil had dutifully got them right by the end of the lesson-had gone away and faithfully practiced the piece, and came to the next lesson playing them wrong again! It turned out on questionning that they'd changed it back again because'Daddy told me to do it like that'- I think Daddy's music reading skills were a bit rusty!

I think that's what this thread is all about!

Sorry very late post i know, but I can't help myself.
-That isn't the worst! I had a student who drew a monster on his exam pieces book IN INK, on the page his piece was!!! Ahhhhhhh... (btw, it's not the monster that scared me )

Why is ink so bad?

I use lots of it, very often bright pink, in the kids music to point stuff out.

I encourage them to write things in during lessons too.

Have you ever had a kid rub out your pencil markings later on? Ever??

And I LOVE the monster pictures on the exam pieces!

I sometimes rub out marks on my own music.
I also need to change them sometimes if I discover a better fingering or way of phrasing than I statred out with.
Also if the marks stand out more than the notes it takes your eye and mind in the wrong direction.

I don't think I would mind monsters too much so long as they are not in the way of the notes. Kids are more likely to have decorated something they enjoy aren't they?.....

I agree how irritating it is to have the note names marked in, but one solution which I have found to the problem, depending on the age of the child, is to explain that by being a musician they are very special people who can communicate with a secret code i.e. notation.
If you can afford to take the time in the lesson to discuss secret messages with them and perhaps even give them a message using a very basic code eg A = 1, B = 2 etc then let them read it back they can get the idea that notation is a secret code and that there is no point in writing a message out (ie marking the note names under the notes) so that others can read it.
The final part is for them to decide if they want their parents to be able to communicate with them by this secret code and send them off with some manuscript paper to write coded words (obviously limited to the letters A - G) for you for the next lesson.

I think it is a matter of letting the parent teach the child as they obviously know how to teach music better than the teacher!

Oh yes....I have a fair share of obviously Very Clever parents. Including one whose rather nice daughter regularly reports "Daddy says I'm useless at this piece" and "Daddy said I sounded terrible when I played this"

Well ink isn't so good because you can't rub it out and you tend to put more and more notes on your music, then you can't rub out the old ones, the page gets so absolutely cluttered that the student can't even be bothered to read the writing on it!!

Monsters would be fine if the piece was say creepy crawly, but then it was something like Sonatina in C And he drew it because he wanted to show me how the monster in his playstation game looked like!

Oh lovely. Now theres a confidence booster for the kiddie.

haha..i once had a student who circled ALL the notes on the page i taught her when she went home after the first lesson. the next lesson she opened the book and proudly (she seriously thought she was doing something very impressive)said 'see? i circled the notes'. it was on a book that i had lended her..but at least it was in pencil