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The Power of Empowerment
Jan. 15th, 2025 08:12 amI have a somewhat reluctant piano student. She is 8 or maybe 9; she enjoys music, and likes working with me, but she is even more than usually resistant to doing any actual practice or study. She's well past the level where I expect students to be able to identify all the notes on the staff, so I've been having her do flashcards with me every week, with an incentive for motivation-- she would get my special pink pen for completing the set of 24 cards in 2 1/2 minutes.
Recently I realized that doing the whole set of cards was dragging her down, so I brought in 3 dice; she could roll all three, and the total was how many cards she had to do that day. The first time she didn't roll, but set the dice by hand to a total of 10; I laughed and told her I could live with that. Yesterday she rolled, and got 14, and went through them more quickly than usual. Turns out she's playing recorder at school, and that has finally pushed her to master the treble clef. I praised her, and said that in coming weeks we'd focus on bass clef so she could finally get the pen.
To my surprise, she asked if she could try for the pen! So I shuffled, and set a timer, and she plugged away with much better attention-- and came up just 2 cards short, so I gave her the pen. That lit her up so much that we had a fabulous lesson, and spent some time discussing her progress towards the next level of books (more empowerment as she gets some choices).
Recently I realized that doing the whole set of cards was dragging her down, so I brought in 3 dice; she could roll all three, and the total was how many cards she had to do that day. The first time she didn't roll, but set the dice by hand to a total of 10; I laughed and told her I could live with that. Yesterday she rolled, and got 14, and went through them more quickly than usual. Turns out she's playing recorder at school, and that has finally pushed her to master the treble clef. I praised her, and said that in coming weeks we'd focus on bass clef so she could finally get the pen.
To my surprise, she asked if she could try for the pen! So I shuffled, and set a timer, and she plugged away with much better attention-- and came up just 2 cards short, so I gave her the pen. That lit her up so much that we had a fabulous lesson, and spent some time discussing her progress towards the next level of books (more empowerment as she gets some choices).
