Practice is not the end result.
It is one step of many toward mastery.
Many teachers ask their students, “Did you practice this week?”
I have never asked that question.
Instead, I ask, “What’re you working on?”
The reason I don’t ask “Did you practice this week?” is sometimes my students didn’t practice, and I don’t want them to feel defensive about what they did with their time on earth that they cannot get back.
Every single person who wants to learn an instrument wants to do something cool, like just be able to sit down and play the piano, or suddenly bust out a riff on the sax, or play doo-dee-doo-dee-doos on the flute for their newborn.
But sometimes they do not sit down and work on this particular set of finger exercises and this particular song.
Instead of “practicing”, they may have:
- Jammed with their friends
- Improvised a song at a wedding
- Wrote a little ditty for a video for work
- Noodled around and learned a video game song
Every single one of these things is the exact reason why a person studies an instrument, and, in my book, it all counts because the purpose of practice is to step toward mastery.
If they are creating like that, then they’re doing the work, and I am here for it.
The thing is, if you don’t ask what they are working on, you will never know what your students are doing.
If my students are applying the principles of their instrument so well that they can perform it in front of another at a wedding or do it well enough to play a piece from Tom Clancy’s The Division 3 from memory, then they’re advancing.
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This is an excerpt from the course I taught on February 11, 2025 which is now available on Teachers Pay Teachers.
The Faculty Handbook is my actual handbook that I developed over the years while running my own studio. It is also available at Teachers Pay Teachers. This serves as an excellent primer to my consulting.
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