The first major change I decided to make was to put off the students' learning of songs. I forbade them from learning any of the music of their assigned songs at first. Since I knew that I had to hold them accountable for something, I decided to ask them to study and memorize the texts of the songs and we would work on them in studio class. In lessons and in their daily practice, I was asking them to focus on practicing technique by singing along with lesson recordings. In essence, I asked my students to "wait for the bus" as well!
One of the difficulties this was sure to present was the tendency of my students to not practice at all. (for a variety of reasons) I was a little fearful for how this new approach would go over with that in mind. But I decided to treat it with a positive outlook. (Note: “positive” in this sense neither refers to a Polly-Anna attitude nor an “I am positive you will not do this” attitude.) I expected that they would follow the practice recommendations and acted according to that expectation. I told them specifically what to do and expected that they would do it. I must confess that this is not the usual approach at my school so I am swimming upstream in a certain sense.
One of my concerns about teaching in a grade-able situation is the inability to accurately assess whether or not a student is practicing. So far, all I have had to go on was whether or not they had learned their songs. And even then, once the song was learned, there was little opportunity to accurately assess improvement. I wondered if this approach would simply encourage the lackluster students to put off practicing even longer.
My other concerns were:
Would I be able to hold a student’s interest for an entire lesson while only working only on technique?
Would I be able to hold my OWN interest?
Will I really be able to tell if they are improving?
Will they actually improve? If so, how quickly?
This “waiting for the bus” business is a little scary.
