The following is from an article in the K-State News Insider (online).

By playing the video game Rock Band for an hour, K-State students were able to help a pair of psychology professors with their research to understand how people can achieve flow while at work or while performing skilled tasks.

Clive Fullagar, a professor, and Patrick Knight, an associate professor, found that — like Goldilocks — most people achieve flow with work that is neither too easy nor too hard but just right.

“For those students who have a moderate level of skill at Rock Band, the song has to be moderately challenging and match his or her skill level for optimal enjoyment to occur,” Fullagar said. “That has broad implications for teaching. It means that if we want students to enjoy or get a lot of satisfaction out of classes, we need to assign them challenging tasks but make sure that they have the skills necessary to meet the challenges of those tasks.”  [Emphasis added]

The researchers wanted to see how people achieve flow — a state of mind that occurs when people become totally immersed in what they are doing and lose all sense of time. It’s an intrinsically motivating state, which means that people are engaged in the task for the pure enjoyment of performing the task and not for some extrinsic reward.

Posted in Research

This is “RESEARCH”??   News-worthy research??  Please show me one teacher for whom the above is news. 

The difficult part for every teacher is of course to find “challenging tasks” while making sure that the student has “the skills necessary to meet the challenges” - and that’s where even the most experienced teachers once in a while fail.  Perhaps not because they weren’t paying attention but because students have a habit of learning not in a straight line but in phases:  it is perfectly possible for a student to struggle with a concept for quite a while, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, they get it.  Sudden change of skill level.

Or, your beginning piano student suddenly doesn’t even remember where Middle C is because “we got a new puppy!!” …  Sudden, if temporary, change of skill level.  

But, please, do we really need “research” to prove what every teacher already knows and aims to incorporate in his/her teaching??

The Art of Teaching is different from, say, the art of painting, or the art of playing an instrument, different from the art of tuning a piano, or the art of making a beautiful home.

If you mess up your painting, you’ve got a messed up painting. If you mess up on your instrument, you messed up a piece of music. If you don’t do a good job tuning that piano, then you’ve got a messed up piano which is annoying and can be expensive to fix.

When you mess up in your teaching, you are messing with a human being.

So, why is it that people who know how to play their instrument but have NO training in regard to teaching are let loose on pupils?

Recently, I had the opportunity to observe some poor and inexperienced teaching. One of the two teachers had a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching, in addition to a frenetic and somewhat chaotic personality (and teaching style). While this teacher was without a doubt very experienced, the lesson itself was not a very promising sign of things to come: it was crammed full with irrelevant information (way too much theory that would not be applicable/useful for several weeks), redundant information (without checking with the student what he already knew, this teacher “taught” concepts with which the student was thoroughly familiar already), and way too little actual instruction on the instrument. The student was not given sufficient time to try out the new concept and then make sure that it was sufficiently understood to be taken home and practiced for a week.

The other teacher had a much more pleasant personality and some day will probably be a good teacher. At the moment, however, this one has neither the experience nor the training to teach a beginning student. After grousing about how inexperienced this teacher was, I came to the realization that it was not inexperience but the obvious lack of pedagogical training which made the lesson unsuccessful.

We all start out “inexperienced”. None of us are born with experience. There’s a first time for everything. There’s a first time a physician performs an exam or a surgery. There’s the race car driver’s first race.

What sets these people apart is the fact that before their first “real” thing they did spend time, usually a very long time, observing their masters, and then learning to practice their craft, usually under the guidance of their masters.

For some reason, people think that as long as you can play an instrument, you can teach. I actually once overheard the wife of the head of a music department at a university tell one of the professors something to the effect of “I don’t understand what there is to learn about teaching: you gotta love kids and you gotta love what you do.” There. She said it. What more could there possibly be to it?

There are, of course, “natural” teachers, just like there are “natural” psychologists, people who have an instinctive, intuitive, “feel” for people. But think of the training a psychologist has to undergo before she is allowed to practice her craft!

My wish list for pedagogical training of any future teacher of musical instruments includes:

•mandatory lesson observations of different masters in their field, more than just once or twice please;

•study the art of teaching their particular instrument: while there is some flexibility, there is usually a certain order in which things need to be learned (master addition before you attempt multiplication) or else you end up with an unreliable foundation;

•study the teaching literature for their instrument: just because you grew up with a certain method doesn’t mean it’s the best;

•teach many, many lessons under the supervision of your teacher/master. In the beginning, this should take the form of observing your teacher’s lesson (of another student) and taking over for 5 minutes to teach a certain concept. Over time, you grow into teaching an entire lesson, more time and you’ll be creating your own lesson plans.

In short, some form of apprenticeship.  Think about a physician’s first surgery. Regardless of how simple the surgery, the physician has most likely observed this surgery many, many times, then, with more training (reading about it, studying all aspects of it, passing tests to prove she understands all aspects of it), assisted in this surgery before she ever gets to touch a patient without supervision.

Of course, you say, well, with surgery – you have to be that careful.

But why should a student’s learning process be different from surgery? As a teacher who gets transfer students, I see all the time the damage a teacher with insufficient training can do to a student who doesn’t know any better. (Of course if they knew better, they wouldn’t need a teacher …)

I dream of a world in which we hold (the training of) teachers of musical instruments to the same standards as physicians, psychologists, and other professionals in charge of human development and health.

Mark and I treasure our weekends: I do a bit of teaching on Saturdays, but for the most part Saturdays and then definitely Sundays belong to just us, to do – perhaps not nothing, but very intentionally nothing too structured.

Last Saturday, however, the KMTA State Honors Auditions took place in Lawrence, and while none of my students had participated in the Fall Auditions this year I still wanted to go and listen to as many students in as many different age groups as possible. I learn so much from listening and watching. This year, again, as usual, I saw a few, very few, outstanding performances, and other than that a whole lot of wonderful intentions that due to a lack of technique never were realized.

In order to be there for the little ones who play first thing in the morning (the drive takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes), Mark and I had planned to get up at 6:30 a.m. One of our cats decided, however, to be awake, very awake, and very vocal, at 6 a.m. already, so that’s when we woke up and shortly thereafter got up. Not that that got us to Lawrence any sooner though – my intestines had other plans and kept me in the bathroom longer and more frequently than planned.

Anyway. Once in Lawrence, we listened here and there, Mark took a break from the piano performances and listened to some strings before joining me for piano performances again, and later went to a nearby Panera to get lunch while I listened to yet another group of students. In the early afternoon, we felt we needed a bit of a break (also to get online and check email etc), so we went to Panera for something sweet and something to drink but soon returned to Murphy Hall to listen some more.

We had plans to go straight from Lawrence to Emporia, for dinner with Jonathan whose birthday had been the previous Saturday. Until shortly after 4 p.m., we stayed in Lawrence and then, after a short stop at a Starbucks for a coffee for me, made our way to Emporia. It was getting dark, I was tired, and thanks to Mark’s willingness to do all the driving I was able to doze off for a bit.

In Emporia, we met with Jonathan who showed us his new apartment, and then went out to eat. The Chinese was excellent. We had arranged with Jonathan to rent his cello from him, so after dinner he double-checked quickly to make sure everything was in the case, and then we left, Mark and I and the cello and left-over Chinese.

It was another hour and a half, in the dark, to get back to Manhattan.

The next day, Sunday, we felt old. We didn’t have much energy to do anything. We did manage to go to the Holiday Open House at Wildflower (Yarns and Knitwear) where we bought some yarn for a new scarf for Mark, and later in the afternoon I taught a make-up lesson for two students who had been unable to come to their regular lesson during the week.

In the evening, we were very aware that the weekend was over and that there was not another Sunday the next day, to really recuperate.

Like I said, we are getting old.

Or maybe we are just not used to doing stuff anymore.

The three legs of the trip – Manhattan to Lawrence, Lawrence to Emporia, Emporia to Manhattan – was a total of 260 miles. For the 18 months we lived in Olathe, we used to drive 250 miles every Saturday, from Olathe to Manhattan and then in the evening back again, so I could teach.

How on earth did we do that??

Last Wednesday, the White House welcomed 120 middle and high school music students from all over the country to participate in four different engaging workshops.  From the Blue Room to the Map Room and the East Room to the Diplomatic Reception Room, beautiful music and instructors’ guiding voices echoed through the halls of this historic home.  Aspiring students plucked their bows and strummed the strings of their guitars, while picking up tips and queues from their instructors, renowned classical musicians Awadagin Pratt on the piano, Joshua Bell on violin, Sharon Isbin with classical guitar, and Alisa Weilerstein on cello.

This link takes you to the page with more information as well as links to wonderful videos of the performances!

From The White House:

The greatest joy that this job affords – and there are many – is the chance to throw open the doors and invite Americans into the White House and expose them to the talents of their fellow Americans. One of the ways that the First Lady has been doing is this is through the White House Music Series. This series was conceived as a way to celebrate the arts, demonstrate the importance of arts education and encourage young people who believe in their talent to create a future for themselves in the arts community be it as a hobby or as a profession.

Please read the rest of the article here.