Piano+Pedagogy

====TOPIC ONE: Reflection: Write about your thoughts on teaching piano: what you think it entails, what you think it is, what you think it should be, what you think you need to know in order to create an active and professional teaching studio.====

READINGS: I'll be sharing some of my books with you; please bring a binder in 2-3 weeks and what you will be doing is 1) glancing through them, reading what interests you or what I may assign; 2) I'll photocopy the cover page, publishing info page, and the table of contents which you put into your binder to create a resources/references library.

READINGS from "Dynamic Studio" text: Please read the first three chapters by the middle of February; for each chapter, write up a short summary paragraph about each, what you agree and disagree with, and why.

TOPIC TWO: LET'S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS. Here are some professional musicians' organizations that most private teachers belong to: [|MTNA] [|PMTA] [|LVMT] [|MENC] [|National Federation of Music Study Clubs] See what you can find out about studio policies: what they should include Recently, the FTC attacked MTNA for their code of ethics--see if you can find out what this was all about on the MTNA site; what are your thoughts about this? How would you react/what would you do, if anything? Please read the chapter on "Dynamic Scheduling" for this topic. What would your studio policy look like? Write one.

TOPIC THREE: Creating a concept/strategies book. First, look through various beginner methods books and pick one. Next, you will go through each page and list the concepts being taught. Finally, you will list strategies you would use to teach that concept and that particular piece on that particular page.

TOPIC FOUR: Education/psychology theory as it applies to teaching. I will be giving you a number of theories to read about and have you create a concept map of your understanding. It is important to know how we learn, at various stages of life, in order to individualize the teaching we do. I will be showing you the Inspiration website where you can create a cmap, or if you want to use good old pencil and paper, that's fine too! Remember, pencil and paper is technology, too! Next, I want you to 1) pick a composition that fits each level of Bloom's taxonomy total of 6) 2) pick one upper level composition and go through it with Bloom's taxonomy

DIARY TOPIC ONE: Create a diary in which to discuss what you are learning from observing lessons with me and Betsy, and anyone else you've been able to observe. Compare and contrast to your own piano lesson experiences. Start to think about how you can link learning theory to lesson preparation.

TOPIC FIVE: Create your own piano studio.

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