Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum How to deal with teen "I am superb" attitude???

I know that teen attitude is very generalized, and it is not piano teaching issue. However, I need advice, please!

I have a few teen students who were transferred to me. They are both intermediately level. I have tried asking them to some some drill and exercises to improve their dexiterity, for they don't play 16th notes evenly and have a hard time playing running notes with awkward fingerings. However, they have never done what I said. They just want to play the pieces they prefer and not practice any drills I assigned. Of course it is my fault that I did not insist, but I thought that I shouldn't force them to do anything they don't want to.

However, the problem is that they never improve their performance with the way they insist to do or not do, while expecting to play more difficult music. One of them mocked the music from Les Petites Images by Jennifer Linn (3 NFMC pieces there for 2010-13), when I showed it to him yesterday. He opened the book up and saw the first page of the first piece. He immediately interrogated me, "Is this a joke!" with a green face. That attitude again!!!! I got his facial expression and tone of voice; he thought that I belittled him by asking him to play a easy piece like that.... I said, "you only looked at the first page. It indeed starts simple, yet it gets more complex later. Plus, I think you will play this one much better than trying a difficult piece and struggling with it." He is a picky and difficult teen who does not play anything I choose for him, unless he picks something up himself. He never played any piece I assigned him well. Hos excuses were that he even did not want to practice because he did not like them. That's why I let him choose music on his own. Before he starts a piece he likes, I have to check it to see if it is his level. However he always chooses something grand, big, much more difficult than his level. I did not like him to play them, yet he had the enthusiasm for them. O.K. so we tried...

The most recent one he has played, we have spent more than 9 or 10 months on this single piece "The Lord's Prayer" by Malotte. He loves Christian music, which is fine, but he often ignores classic music I would like him to learn for some specific techniques. Anyhow... I said to him yesterday that he took 9 months to play The Lord's Prayer. We don't have that much time for the NFMC festival which takes place in March, which he wants to attend. He answered me "It took me that long because I did not really put time into practice." O.K. he was telling me that he had a great ability to play it, and I should not have misjudged him by giving him a simpler piece. I replied, "If you cannot put time into practice even for the piece you like, hoe can I risk another piece with the same difficulty and expect you to practice within 4 months?"

Although he was not convinced by what I said and still thought he should played something much more difficult and grand, he accepted what I said about the timing.

Well.... this was not the first time... Even though he would work on one of the Linn's piece, this problem still exists. Any suggestion for me, please!

Thanks

I would be very hesitant to send him to a Festival. Maybe he will have to prove himself to you before he can enter?
Also - you might ask him what his goals are for piano.

I know what this is like, and I think it can be difficult for teens to get enough practicing time.

I feel that he (not only he but also most other teens) plays the piano to PROVE that he is capable of something. I am sensing that learning and studying the piano is not his goal at all, but he just wants to SHOW OFF and IMPRESS people of what he can do and how good he is. Of course, he wants trophies on top of that from any kind of festival.... It makes me sick to hear, "Superior has been the only rating he has ever gotten," in front everyone including the teen himself. SIGH......

I think piano2 and chueh have some good points. You need to find out why he's taking piano, and then tailor his lessons accordingly. He is in most cases an adult (he can technically father a child, afterall), and so I have always done better when I treat my teens students as adults. Sometimes they can't really handle this so I gradually get them into it.

But you can start him out by first of all asking if he wants to do the festival. A lot of times kids do want to do these because they play in front of their peers and get accolades from them. Perhaps it wasn't necessarily that the music was easy, but perhaps it wasn't his style. What kind of music does he usually choose? There are lots of intermediate pieces out there that look hard and sound hard but really aren't that difficult.

You have to walk a fine line between finding a piece he can play, and finding one where he is excited to learn it and will actually practice. I think once you find a piece he wants to do that sounds impressive, then get him to agree to practice as you tell him. Not just play through it, but to actually try to do the things you tell him. He will actually learn it faster and better if he does it your way. But if he never tries your way, how will he ever know?

Once he agrees (assuming he does, if not, recommend he not participate in the festival), then hold him accountable. Tell him that how he does will determine if he actually participates or not.

So true. Finding the right music at the right time isn't always easy but worth the effort. I've used pieces by Robert Vandall and Dennis Alexander with teenage boys with much success. They have very cool sounds that often sound harder than they are to play. I'd also be careful not to choose music that has the word "elementary" on the cover for a teen.

Find out what kind of music he likes and find a few great pieces and play bits of them for him. Then let him decide which he wants to learn. Maybe some jazz?

All excellent suggestions. I will ask the student what his goals are.

His taste in music is very specific. He does not like anything staccato, fast speed, Baroque period, classical period, contemporary that is not tonal, jazzy, and etc. He likes Romantic period music with many notes and big chords with very low bass. It is hard to find a piece he likes really. He even changes the octave in The Lord's Prayer. He said that he likes the very low octave much better than what the composer wrote. However, I told him that he could write anything he likes and plays it, but please not change a composer's notes. He refused to play the right octave.

Every time there is some kind of festival going on, I spend a lot of time searching for his music. I am kind of out of resources. This festival, he is required to play his choice piece by a non-American composer. Many of his level pieces written by non-American composers are Russians, Hungarian, and etc.. He does not like any pieces by these composers

I play hymns with the bass in octaves or the melody in octaves all the time during church. Playing them the way it's written bores the heck out of me. I love that bass sound ... so fun! I understand the type of music he likes - but that sort of music is difficult to read and difficult to play ...

Have you ever played the pieces for him or showed him videos of famous pianists playing certain pieces?

You aren't able to get him to do specific drills WITHIN the piece itself? There are so many different things you can do within a piece to teach him technique. You don't necessarily need to rely on outside drills - just make the drills from the piece itself so he can still hear the melody and harmony but still learn technique with it.

I'd scrap the outside studies / drills - I'd focus more on getting his fingers to work within the piece and PROVE to him that certain drills work like magic and can help tremendously to learn the piece faster and better.

+1

Technical exercises created within the repertoire are the best way to get a student to increase their technical ability with doing what appears to be something more practical. He probably doesn't see the purpose for the outside drills and so he won't do them. But doing a drill on a trouble area in the music, well, the point is obvious. Still, he only might do it under your supervision, so don't just tell him, "Practice m.13-15 in rhythms," but also show him and go through it thoroughly in his lesson, even if that's the only thing you get accomplished.

Why not have him work on an easier Chopin prelude? I am a firm believer that even if there's a piece that is slightly beyond a student, you give that to them and they will work harder than something they don't love at their level. I had a very talented student of mine come in one day wanting to do the Moonlight sonata first movement. I said OK and pulled out the score and showed him the challenges that he'd have to overcome. The reading was very hard for him (he's more of an ear person) but he was able to do it to some degree of success. I never had him play it for a competition (I may have had him play it in a recital though, I don't recall). But he loved it, loves Beethoven, and now he's always bringing music he's listened to and wants to play. And he's always bringing in new music he wants to work on.

I think it's important to honor his tastes and let him be creative. This means choosing music - for now- that he enjoys. Perhaps later you can compromise once he trusts that you are listening to what he wants and you can request that if he works on this one piece he really wants to learn, that he'll work equally hard on this piece that you choose.

Are you my old teacher having a flashback?

I went through a period of only wanting to play church music. Do you know what happened then? Church music changed. Very seldom do I get to play my beloved hymns. Our music reflects many styles out there and I am so grateful my old teacher didn't cave to my wants and made me learn that stuff.

Who are the church musicians in his life? Can you contact one or more of them so they can maybe show him how church music seesaws back and forth with other music? Can you show the relation of ABC in your music to XYZ in his? He is not seeing the connection right now.

I see all of your points. Very true. Thank you all. Will work on it

chueh, I have a 14 year old who likes "Stutting About" by Christopher Norton. It's in Connections bk 5. Lots of great pieces in that series.

Recording their playing and playing it back could be a revelation to them.

HUGE for that idea!!!

I call it "let's make a deal".

When students are dying to play things, we can be MORE demanding about HOW they play them, AND we have their attention as we play these pieces. For me that is a win-win situation.

I meant to write "Strutting" not "stutting". Seemed like a good match for a kid with an "I am superb" attitude.

+1, Ann! I remember being at my wits end with a couple of students before a friend turned me on to that series.

True. However, most of the time these kids want to play stuff way, way over their heads. It's always those Level 2 kids wanting to play Level 8 pieces that they OBVIOUSLY can't.

When I had this student who wanted to play a work which was WAY above her level I just offered her a trial: "Get me bars 20-24 to perfection in a weeks time and you're fine to grab the work". Of course that part was the most difficult and technical demanding of the whole work and... she didn't make it! Thus she got the message quite clearly that she won't be able to complete the whole work just yet.

I have also provided a very solid insight that playing through the whole works is a MUST! I've had another student who just wanted to play the first page of Mozart A minor Sonata (that with the left hand in repeated chords. Not sure the number right now). Not much else... She was very satisfied with that! Until I finally convinced her that we do need to conclude what we do and finish off everything we start: I started putting film music tracks and shutting them off midways! LOL!

____________________

My guess is that this specific student is not eager to learn music the way that most of us teachers mean it. It's up to the teachers to decide if they wants to bend the rules and follow the student or not I think...

My deal is this: they get to play what they want IF they are good enough to get more than 50% of it on their own AND they agree to do it *my* way.

Also, as others have said, we start on the hardest parts. If they can't play those, I simply tell them that they are not good enough yet--and they have to earn the skills to play those hard things.

I've been thinking a while about this:

If I was given that kind of assignment, I would want my teacher to guide me in HOW to practice it. This would be so for any piece since the teacher knows the challenges, the best approaches, what technical things have to be approached how and in what order etc. If that is so for a piece at my level, then it would definitely be so for one beyond my level. So I assume that you give that type of advice along with those instructions, and spend time in the lesson working on the approaches first? But it takes a lot of self-discipline to follow through with the kind of thing we need to do for harder pieces. Therefore she probably didn't follow what she was told to do, and decided to give up the piece, right?

But the other thing that I imagined is again along the lines of what needs to be practised how. Certain skills would have to be in place, and maybe certain knowledge. So the approach actually involves getting those skills first. And then as you go through it with your student, seeing what things she needs to be able to do first, you might plan to do other things first that would allow her eventually to be able to play the piece. In that way she would be motivated to practice what you want, because of the piece she eventually wants to play.

I did not understand this part. How does playing through an entire work allow you to be able to play a smaller section of that work? I would think that being able to play a smaller section might allow you to eventually be able to play the whole work (other way around)? I had an instant thought of the sonatinas that I started off with. Often the music starts relatively straightforward, but then as it gets "developed" it can get complex. Or - variations - same thing. So wouldn't it make sense to learn to play the simpler part, and then later build on that? If we're trying to get skills, and build on patterns we can recognize and play, I wo uld think that playing part of something (a big enough part) might have a role.


That is the type of everyday experience that induces us to play from beginning to end when we practice, because it is disconcerting to approach music in fragments. And yet working on fragments, and working on difficult parts, is exactly what we need to do.

Each student is different. There are some I will never give anything to without going over it first, in some way. But sometimes you give certain students a one-week "challenge". It's a judgment call. Of course they could go hog-wild, practice something like a demon, then nail it WRONG, which is a disaster. But if they look over a couple really hard parts and get close, whatever they did NOT get becomes a part of my lessons.

When I tell students to try something, I have in mind those students' skills. There is a difference between giving a little nudge and pushing someone off a cliff! I like giving challenges. I do not like making people feel like fools, and sending people home with ANYTHING new when it might crush their confidence is destructive in every way.

I HOPE the meaning was that mastering the hardest parts provide the opportunity to eventually play all the way through.

That's how I present it. Easy parts can still go wrong, if they are not practiced, but getting the hard parts first is the only way I know to master anything. If a student is eager to show me that s/he can play something that I'm not sure about, if it is "pushing the envelope", I will ask the student to prove to me that s/he is capable of playing this harder thing, but I won't do it in a gotcha way. For instance, I will point out a hard part, say why it is hard (in a general way), and give a few tips.