Wednesday, October 17, 2007

How to: Teach the Bagpipes

There are two key pillars in my strategy for teaching children to play the bagpipes:

1) Be so incredibly awesome that they cannot fail to be inspired to learn.

2) Show them new things, and expect them to learn them, at a rate that is just within their ability to keep up.

It seems to work.

Last Thursday, I had a couple of my students complaining that I kept showing them new things and moving them onto new tunes before they had fully mastered the older material. (This is intentional - mastery of the old material comes with repeated practice, and I make sure to provide that, but also with the pressure of having to play with the band, or on parade, which is provided by other means.)

On Monday, I told my student that I wasn't going to show him any more tunes until after the Armistice Parade (Nov 11th), because I want him to focus on perfecting the ones he does know for said parade. Naturally, he complained at that.

It seems I can't win.

1 comment:

Kezzie said...

Is a well-known fact, kids are rat bags! I find, that they can remember IN DETAIL anything that they have done well, "Miss miss, you haven't put my point up yet", "Miss, you said you would give us the stickers". But can they remember why on earth I am keeping them in at playtime for having had a hissy hit, sworn at another kid and scribbled all over their books? Nope!