I am a piano teacher who works with around a dozen students per week, giving them weekly private piano lessons. I generally spend thirty minutes with them, and try to keep their curriculum as organized as possible (i.e. I write down a list of what I want them to practice, warm-up excersizes, etc). A big part of my own teaching technique stems from what I felt what effective for me. I know this won’t apply to everyone, but I’m a flexible guy- I’ll take something that is generally effective, and ‘tweak’ it for each pupil to tailor it to specific needs. I put a lot of effort into helping them learn how to play the piano. But I can only do so much in the thirty minutes I am teaching them. It is their responsibility to practice and have an understanding of the material I have assigned for them that week.
As a teacher, I have become very keen on whether or not a student has practiced. I can’t really describe what it is that tips me off, its kind of a ‘spider sense’ when it comes to piano students. Since most of my students are young, six to eleven years of age, their parents are fairly involved in their day-to-day lives. However, some students still struggle. While some don’t do well because they don’t practice enough (parents dont enforce it strictly enough, or parents are making their child do far too many activities at a time) many of them practice enough, but simply aren’t learning anything because they spend 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week playing something incorrectly, with no one correcting them/asking them about it.
When I was first taking piano lessons, both of my parents knew enough about piano/music theory to help make sure I practiced properly. One of them would always be around to remind me to practice, and they could tell when I was goofing off/procrastinating/not practicing. Thus, I did fairly well thanks to their help. But I wonder if other parents take the same amount of effort my parents did in making sure their children practice.
So my question is this- how involved are you in your child’s music lessons? Do you understand it enough to make sure they are practicing? How much responsibility to you place in the hands of your child’s music instructor? As a piano teacher, I put a lot of the child’s performance, good or bad into my own hands, since I am the teacher. But I have no control over whether or not they practice enough, or whether they are even practicing correctly. Thus sometimes I have a difficult time being able to tell how much of it was beyond my control.