“Nearly all academic and social activities require interpersonal interactions; therefore, a behavioral disorder can affect every area of a student’s development: intellectual, educational, and social.”* Please read that again, and let it sink in a little deeper. What’s being said is that a behavioral disorder literally affects every aspect of a child’s life. I don’t …
Resource Roundup: Rote Learning
Why rote learning? There have been long time arguments about the validity of rote learning, and whether or not it is considered “cheating”. I have no intention of beating around the bush, and due to the fact that I’m writing a resource roundup on this, I will come right out and say that done correctly, …
Adaptive Piano Lessons Domain: Socio-Emotional
Music is an integral part of society. Here in America, our musical experience has been described as being a part of our lives from birth to death, experienced from the lowest to highest cognitive functioning, and enjoyed by one person at a time to thousands of people together*. So it is little wonder that we …
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Adaptive Piano Lessons Domain: Communication
Imagine that you greet a new student at the door. Although mom looks at you and politely says hello and begins a normal conversation, the student is clearly distracted. Your kind and genuine welcome do nothing to put him at ease. He never looks at you when he speaks, and doesn’t say much more than …
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Play Dough and Music
Since switching to online lessons, I will ask my students to have various household items on hand. The excitement of wondering how we will use them is usually evident the moment we start video chatting! They always hold their items up proudly, making sure I haven’t forgotten about their mystery assignment 🙂 I am married, …
Adaptive Piano Lessons Domain: Cognitive
The cognitive domain can range from exceptional cognitive ability to severe cognitive and learning disabilities. For our purposes today, we will be focusing on the side of the spectrum where we find disabilities. Students with learning disabilities do not necessarily have a cognitive disability. But we will be looking at strategies for teaching a student …
Resource Roundup: Lead Sheets
Do you ever look back and realize how drastically your teaching has changed? One of the ways I see this in my own teaching is with lead sheets! I don’t remember ever being specifically taught lead sheets. The methods I grew up in didn’t make them a priority (and rarely do today’s methods). And they …
Adaptive Piano Lessons: Intro
According to dictionary.com, to adapt means “to adjust, or modify fittingly to requirements of conditions.” And at this point, I’m sure your mind is racing. It seems as though the whole world is on some form of stay-at-home restrictions. And due to the coronavirus, we are all learning to adapt our piano lessons into the …
“Do as I say, not as I do.”
“Do as I say, not as I do.” The old adage rang in my ears as I was talking to a colleague and friend of mine. She had been lamenting over the fact that her students (a lot of them transfers, others lazy), could not play their scales well. She’s very passionate about foundation and …
Living Life Well
We are deep in the thick of a COVID-19 world. And I don’t know about you, but my Facebook feed, the blogs I follow, and just about every other email that has arrived is pinging me on new ways to teach, how to communicate with parents in the midst of the chaos, and how to …
