Simpedia

Kerry H., Australia

Like others that have responded, I don’t mention about shared lessons in my advertising, but I do address it at my Free Introductory Session (FIS), or over the phone, if that is my primary enrolment conversation. In my experience, few parents, once they understand the value of shared lessons, have objections or concerns. I believe that many of the challenges we as teachers experience, with regards to the objections of parents or students, or the non-compliance of students or parents, can in many cases be traced back to a set-up conversation. I don’t mean ‘The Set-up Conversation’ that we have in the very first lesson, but I believe everything we do and every new idea and concept that we raise with students/parents, has its own set-up conversation. How strong we are with these conversations, I believe has a direct relationship on the type of response we get from students and parents with regard to that issue. I believe that if we are uncertain of the reasons or benefits of something, it will come across at some unconscious level and before we know it, we find that we are getting objections or concerns from parents or students. Additionally, if we don’t justify our reasons for doing something sufficiently or strongly enough, it can create objective responses.

I tell parents/students that I am mostly teaching where students learn with others, because I think it is better. The following are the reasons I give to justify this position:

• Traditionally, piano lessons are a very solitary experience – students come to lessons on their own, and then go home and practice on their own. Yet music is to be shared. The shared lessons allow for and encourage this.

• Students get comfortable with playing in front of others, even when they don’t have it down perfectly or something is still in the process of being learned.

• Most things we learn to do in life, we learn with others.

• Private lessons underestimate or undervalue the importance of observatory learning.

• Private lessons can be a little intimidating – the student has to come up with all the answers on their own for the whole lesson – this means they can be nervous for the whole lesson. In the case of shared lessons, the students get a chance to sit back and observe, allowing them to be in a relaxed state and just take in what they are watching. The students take turns at being the volunteer at the piano. The students are not nervous when they are observing.

When parents have a question about how much time their child will actually spend playing the piano during the lesson, I explain the following points:

SM teaches students a way of learning, therefore the lesson time is not about the student being able to process everything into their fingers perfectly during the lesson – otherwise what would they do at home?! – it’s about understanding what to practice and how to go about it at home. They do not have to do/play everything in the lesson, in order to know what to practice and to make extraordinary progress. In addition, the Student Home Materials provide an excellent tool that ensures such a result.

At the beginning of each lesson, every student gets to play a little bit of what they’ve been working on at home – the coaching they receive is heard by everyone.

The shared lessons are very dynamic, interactive and fun and the students learn so much from each other. Questions come up that another student may not have thought of themselves if they were on their own in a private lesson.

There are teaching strategies that can be used in a shared setting, that are not available when there is only one student in the room. For example, when teaching a blues song – we commonly have students drum the rhythm. By hearing several other students do the same thing, it is much easier to hear any inaccuracies and thereby learn from each other.

There are more opportunities for ensemble playing – they gain practical experience of playing duets and in playing accompaniments for sing-a-longs.

Students who may not ordinarily be so apt to experiment with music, get to see others doing so. In this way students commonly receive ideas and inspiration from their class-mates and develop the courage to be creative with it themselves.

The students develop a camaraderie, in which they encourage and support each other in the process. I have adult students who get together from time to time outside of the class, to practice together and help each other.

Often when adults first come to lessons, they have a belief that perhaps they are too old to be learning – when they’re in a class with other adults, it helps them to see it’s fine to learn at any age.

Once students have learned in a shared environment, they commonly prefer to continue learning with others – some students have even expressed that they can’t understand how it would be possible to learn SM in private lessons.

While private lessons do allow the progress to be tailored for a specific student, the benefits of learning with others, I believe, outweigh this disadvantage.

I have had students with prior experience of so-called ‘group keyboard lessons’, in which there were approximately 10 students each with a keyboard and a set of headphones. The teacher wandered around checking, so that each student got a few minutes of the teacher’s time. To me, this is not a ‘group’ lesson, but is 10 private lessons happening at the same time – the students miss out on the benefits of learning with others. A SM shared lesson is totally different from this and has every student involved in the whole process, making much more effective use of the time. One lot of coaching doesn’t need to be repeated for every student, as they are all hearing the coaching for each other and can apply it to their own situation.

Teaching shared lessons allows us as SM teachers, to reach more students and make this method available to more students, thereby furthering the vision of having a world where everyone can express themselves musically.

Shared lessons are considerably less expensive for students.

I find that after giving them such a strong case for learning with others, I very rarely get any objections. However, in the few cases where I do, I just ask them what their concerns are. Usually it comes down to being concerned about what happens when a student progresses either much more quickly or much more slowly than the rest of the group. I tell them that I have a way of managing that, and because SM is about learning a way of learning, it doesn’t matter if one student has something down fluently, while another student takes a few more weeks to have that happen. As long as the student knows how to practice it, we can still move on to new material. The earlier songs, with continued practice, start to fall into place further down the track. We also have extra materials that we can give a student who is moving more quickly than the rest of the class. I explain to them however, that if a student was moving much faster or much slower than the rest of the students in their class, then it may be necessary for me to move them to a more appropriate class for their rate of progress.

Having said all this, I do have some private students, but I have limited availability for any more. If parents/students ask me at an FIS about whether they can do private lessons, I give the following answer:

‘You would have to give me a very compelling reason as to why you wanted to do private lessons, because of all the benefits of shared lessons. I am really only doing private lessons under very specific circumstances – such as if I had a very advanced student and didn’t have others at the same level. But availability for private lessons is very limited. If you feel that you, or your child have specific circumstances that you think would require private lessons, you would need to talk to me about it separately.’

The following are other reasons I would take on private students, and while I don’t go into these examples when explaining or justifying it to students/parents during the FIS, I may discuss point 3 in a separate conversation with someone afterwards if relevant.

If I had a small class where several students had to discontinue and I was left with only one student in the class and I didn’t have anyone else with the same availability and at the same approximate level with whom to amalgamate the student, then I might convert that student to private lessons.

If I had a student that I was catching up to an existing shared class (temporary situation).

If I had any student that required me to slow down the program much more than most students would need, for example for a very young student, a very old student, or a student with specific learning difficulties or challenges.

This comes down to a personal choice on the part of the teacher. These days my after school and evening times are pretty full already, but even if I had a time available, in most cases I’d be reluctant to take on new private students during those peak times, because those students would take up times that would prevent me from accommodating several other students in that time-slot.

I recommend that teachers interested in this topic, watch the SM Training video on Leading Group Lessons. Some of the definitions of shared lessons has now changed a little, but there is still a multitude of information about setting up and justifying and running what we will now call ‘shared lessons’. About 22 minutes into the first video, Neil and the teachers discuss all the benefits of teaching where students learn with others.

My responses mostly tend to be detailed and therefore lengthy, and this one is no exception, but I hope it clear and that it has been useful.