Klarinet Archive - Posting 000270.txt from 1998/04

From: garylsmith@-----.com (Gary L Smith)
Subj: Re: lesson motivation
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 23:00:23 -0400

On Mon, 6 Apr 1998 11:49:13 -0400 (EDT) dap@-----. Paprocki)
writes:
>This is to all the teachers and professors on the list. What
>techniques do
>you use to motivate your students? How do you objectively judge your
>students in order to grade them?

I teach private lessons free-lance, and as such do not grade my students,
but I can discuss the motivation idea. I think the idea of teaching or
installing motivation is very problematic. We can *facilitate*
motivation, i.e. lead the horse to water by suggesting music for
listening, demonstrate what a beautiful tone sounds like (a pox on
teachers who don't (or can't) play!), etc. By showing the way to overcome
technical problems we can hopefully remove frustrations that are
demotivators.

But if someone is really fundamentally not interested, what duty do we
have to somehow *make* them interested? How would we do it in any case?
When a student doesn't practice, we owe it to them to discuss what is
standing in their way, and if it's a technical matter offer advise, but
if they don't practice they can't progress, and we can't make them
practice.