good teaching
Alan Stancliff
>
>Here's a post from the lute group by Christopher Berg concerning good
>teaching. I think it is worth discussing.
>
>Kent
>
>
>>So what makes a truly good teacher?
>
>Good teachers have the ability to meet their students where they are and
>THEN to lead them forward into the unknown. Good students are willing to
>go.
>
>Good teachers help students deepen and refine their physical, intellectual,
>emotional and spiritual responses to music.
>
>Good teachers understand that we are "the instrument we use to play our
>instrument" and can help students use themselves more effectively.
>
>Good teachers can function both as musical and technical "trainers" AND as
>musical and technical coaches, and they know when one is needed and one is
>not.
>
>Good teachers can offer their students clear and reliable technical and
>musical information, and ways of applying that information that can help
>their students transform it into knowledge.
>
>Good teachers can clearly see the relationship between one area of
>technique to another, AND to one's ability to play music.
>
>Good teachers can provide their students with a series of increasingly
>difficult challenges while making sure students have the means to succeed
>at those challenges. Self-taught students usually learn by "trial and
>error", good teachers help students learn through "trial and success."
>
>Good teachers know the difference between "directives" (i.e. Move your
>finger this way) and principles (i.e. True virtuosity lies in the ability
>of the central nervous system to quickly replace a muscular contraction
>with a relaxation).
>
>Good teachers know the difference between "mindful repetition" and rote
>learning.
>
>Good teachers know that the often profferred advice, "Whatever works must
>be right" is often accompanied by the prosaic rationale, "It seems to get
>the job done." But students may not have a proper appreciation of what the
>"job" actually is, or how the "job" needs to change as one progresses. At
>first the job may be merely getting the notes. Later it means investing
>them with a meaningful musical presence. Still later, it may mean being
>able to do that before an audience of 500 people. Better advice is that an
>action must be performed in such a way that IT WILL BE EASIER the next time
>around. So, good teachers teach short term goals in a way that will not
>sabotoge a student's chances to succeed at the long term goals.
>
>Finally, good teachers know that different things are needed at different
>levels. For example, a master player may think he or she is offering
>profound and meaningful advice by saying "Technique comes from the music"
>or "Do what feels (or sounds) right." But both of this statements, while
>absolutely true for the virtuoso, tend to have a circular quality to those
>in need of training. One of the hidden causes of technical problems (and
>the resulting musical problems) is that one's sensations (aural and
>physical) can become "contaminated" by excess tension and past habits and
>can become unreliable as a guide to a new direction. What "feels right" is
>often conditioned by past habits. The student then becomes locked into a
>cycle from which it is hard to escape WITHOUT SOMETHING CHANGING. What is
>needed at this level is a way of "purifying" one's sensations so they can
>emerge as a reliable guide.
>
>There certainly could be more to this list - including things I've neither
>learned nor can articulate, but I hope it is interesting and stimulating to
>both the student and the teacher in all of us.
>
>Christopher Berg
>
>
>
>
I think this is a very good statement about teaching and learning.
Regards,
Alan
