The Art of Teaching Music

11. Design

eleven design One of the crucial decisions we make as musician-teachers is to lay out a plan for how we will teach our students, how we will interact with them, and what we will accomplish together. Confronted with the challenge of students who wish to study with us or classes of students whom we have been assigned to teach, it can be tempting to skip right to the most immediate , urgent, specific, and concrete matters at hand. Among these issues are questions such as “How much time do we have?” “What do important others expect us to do?” “How can we make the best use of the time and opportunities we have available?” After inventorying topics that are important to us we may be tempted to string them together, moving from one to the next in an attempt to get through them all as efficiently as possible. In piano studios, I have encountered those teachers who have only the vaguest commitment to what should be accomplished, on the one hand, and others whose work with students is driven almost entirely by texts and scores that have been selected by others and whose ordering is essentially predetermined .1 Too often, teachers’ instruction might best be characterized either as accidental—that is, it happens in the absence of a pre-determined plan—or as driven by external requirements. When we prepare to teach music and design our instructional plans we exercise our professional judgment. We decide how and when to teach what, and we justify our choice of approach by rationalizing why, what, when, and how we teach. We cannot afford to leave our instruction to accident or to the choices of others. The resources of time, space, money, and 200 • The Art of Teaching Music human effort are simply too expensive and precious to be employed haphazardly , carelessly, indiscriminately, and without sufficient forethought. Rather, this element of our preparation requires carefulness. Why so? Because the medium is (at least partly) the message and what is learned cannot be divorced from the manner in which it is learned. The very fact of our choosing this or that option among the ways in which we go about the instructional process impacts powerfully on our personae as musicianteachers and on our students. It impacts us because we are the sum of the experiences that we have undergone to this point. We live the instruction as well as give and take it. Likewise for our students. If we go with John Dewey to suggest that each experience leaves its residue, we cannot escape the fact that this lived instruction will impact us as well as our students for good or ill.2 Our choices regarding this instruction are made all the more difficult by the sheer wealth of things that we might do. Whether in the private studio lesson or the class setting, we can draw upon rich musical traditions, genres, and specific pieces. The more we know about music and education, the richer and more daunting the options. Educational philosophers such as Israel Scheffler have been at pains to offer teachers ways of working rationally through this treasury and selecting instances of it.3 Seeing that there is no practical way in which we can teach everything of importance in our lifetimes, we need principles on which to rely in the design of our musical instruction. What are these principles? I sketch seven propositions that I have found to be of value in designing my own instruction. I call upon them as guides whenever I am confronted with choices concerning what, how, when, and why I should plan such-and-such for a particular student or group of students . This is not an exhaustive or normative list but is exemplary of the kinds of thinking I do as I plan for musical instruction. It also provides a basis for conversation about what we each need to do that might be extended or amended by teachers with different commitments. Students Are the Reason for This Instruction Most of my life I have been paid for my services as a music teacher. I have worked in accordance with national, state, and local directives. Often, I have been provided with a syllabus for a course of instruction. Even as a private music teacher, I have prepared students for examinations given by Design • 201 national conservatories of music in which certain repertoire and particular theoretical...