Simpedia

Kevin M., California

I want to share something I’ve learned that has really helped my teaching.

I love working with kids, but when I first started teaching, I had never really been around kids much. I am not a parent, and most of my time had been spent in gyms working with adults. When I first started teaching, I have to admit that kids WALKED all over me; they were the boss of the lesson. It took me years and plenty of coaching conversations with Neil to get some sort of handle on that. Of course, most of the issues had a lot to do with having weak set-up conversations and follow-through. Once I had a handle on that, I still found it difficult to get the kids (not all, but a lot of them) to do their work, keep up their Playlists, and behave in the class. It took a lot of my energy, and I could feel myself getting burned out.

I had the opportunity to work with a young boy who had ADD. I was having a lot of trouble managing the class. He was getting good results (we still managed about a song a lesson), but I did not get a lot of help/support from his parents. I think they were having problems of their own managing him at home and were more than overwhelmed. I happened to mention my situation to the parent of another one of my students. I was impressed with how she worked with her son in the lessons, but I did not know that she worked with “special” kids for a living. She recommended a book called “Setting Limits” by a local author, Robert J. Mackenzie. It has really helped me in managing my kids, and I have been getting GREAT results with practice, playing, and Playlists. I want to share a little of what I have been doing.

I put up a large poster board in my studio. It has each of the kids’ names on it. I also went to the $ tree (in the U.S.A, a store where everything is only one dollar) and bought a bunch of toys and candy, which sit in a big barrel in the back of the studio. I have thirty-five kids currently on the board. Each week, if they read their Notes (Reference) books and do EVERYTHING it says, correctly do their play list, behave themselves and have a good lesson, they get to put a star on the board. If they get one star every week, at the end of the month they get to pick a toy/candy out of the barrel.

Here are the benefits so far that weren’t there before, regardless of how much talking, pleading, and bargaining I did with the students and parents. The good kids were just more excited to do well, but the “problem” children didn’t do so well the first week. However, they did see other kids or siblings getting stars, and you could see the wheels turning in their little heads. I still continued to have a discussion to find out not only why they didn’t do their work, but to get the parents to become more involved and committed in helping their kids. The next week every kid came in and looked at the board. When the “problem” students saw they were the only ones not getting stars, their attitudes started to change. The parents became more involved in setting up practice schedules, accountability, and consequences. The following week (I started mid-month, so it was the end of the month and prize time), the kids that didn’t get a prize saw their peers and sometimes siblings walking out of their lesson with a toy/candy and a big proud smile. They were now ready to turn things around. Their practice changed dramatically.

The kids that played everything fast were now going slowly; the kids who lied about practicing or didn’t mark their play list were now following it to the tee; kids started reading all their Notes books and following it. It has been GREAT – hardly any stress for me. Now the students and parents have to deal with the consequences of their choices. The parents have stepped up and helped their kids (through our coaching conversations) follow through on their practicing. Yes, it has been a lot more than a barrel of toys and names and stars.

The tools I learned from the book helped me to understand what I was doing wrong and what changes I needed to make to turn things around and it worked.