Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum What happened creative exchange of ideas here?

Sure...and those are questions I always ask my students.

Perhaps I misread yours and others focus...teachers do need much input as to what a student wants to learn, what their time commitment is, and certainly what teaching approach works.

That is all very different from having the student tell the teacher what and how much to study regarding scales, theory, technique, etc, which I thought some were advocating.

The idea was to promote open communication. The student doesn't have to be always the passive clueless recipient of someone else arbitrary instructions. The learning path can be discussed and developed openly together.

I see what you're saying, Rocket. I think it's more that many want these things, while some teachers seem to assume the opposite. I have some other thoughts, but it would be too long. Suffice it to say that I have seen the role of a student who is doing well acting as a kind of bridge, allowing a less experience student to understand this new world and then be able to mesh with lessons and his teacher. It is like initially we speak a different language and come from different planets and another adult or teen student is more - um - biworldly? This has seemed to work well. I'll leave it at that.

Ultimately we have to learn the language of the studio and the teacher, even if a teacher tries to adjust to us.

(Um, back to Gary's original question - which was teacher to teacher?)

Danny, I think you like to incite riots!

When you say: "The student doesn't have to be always the passive clueless recipient of someone else arbitrary instructions", are you saying there is a victim and a perpretrator involved?

I'd like to think that we, as teachers, are more civilized than that.

Can't people just be themselves at their piano lessons, no issues, no hidden agendas, no personality conflicts - having a good time collaborating together, getting some work done, empowering each other, enjoying a musical experience together.

We're not supposed to warp them, and they are not supposed to allow themselves to be warped, and vice versa. Can't we all play nice to each other whether we are teachers or piano students, we are all human being.

A little bit of manners and self respect goes a long way toward avoiding disturbances, anyone's aggressive behavior, and embarrasing our mutual reputations.

I really like people! I think friends are former strangers.

Piano teachers are not beasts.

And, what is this...."even if the teacher tries to adjust us" about? I'm afraid to keep reading! And all this in the Piano Teacher's Forum!

Tell me again, please, how badly I misunderstand things. I can't wait to be told.

Not so, so not so!

I have seen posts here and there by students of different ages telling how their teachers helped them, and what "clicked".

The problem in this medium is that communication is limited to text, with some graphics now and then and links to sound files.
I do the same thing, but I would extend this idea to high school students.

However, there are degrees of "lack of practice". For some it turns into no practice at all, most weeks. I'm not willing to continue teaching anyone when that happens.

When I joined PW I thought if any good is to come it would be through videos. I'm still of that persuasion.

I'm saying "there could be".
My tense was hypothetical.
I wanted to elaborate on the fact that no one has ever claimed the student should tell the teacher what and how to teach. What has been claimed is that there can be collaboration between the students and teacher, so that many choices are made or discussed together. This would avoid the "hypothesis" of being a passive recipient of the teacher arbitrary instruction.

This has happened to me, this has happened to others. There are "teachers" of every flavour and you shouldn't feel belittled just because that is acknowledge. You is you, other teachers are other teachers.

You're lumping teacher together and getting personally offended by association. But being a teacher doesn't say much about someone's personality and humanity. Believe it or not there are very cruel, imcompetent, inhumane teachers out there. Like there are very cruel, inhumane, incompetent lawyers. Like there are vert cruel, incompetent, inhumane doctors. And so on. Your job doesn't say anytning about the person you are. You know for example that they found out a dentist who used to abuse his female patients while they were sedated for a teeth operation?
He also filmed them. A friend of my mother was literally killed in a clinic. She was beaten, tied and negated her medications for asthma. She suffucated while begging for water. Everyone knows what happened there, but it was impossible to find an unbiased coroner and an unbiased doctor, that would admit the sin of a collegue. They protect each other, just because the reputation of one might decrease the reputation of the whole category. This is sick and insane, in my opinion.



Some are and some aren't. Why do you want so strongly to lump everything into one category and make broad judgement about it? I had teachers who were not civilized at all. And I had teachers who were fantastic people with an extra-human kindness.



But it happens. ("it happens" means that such scenario do happens, not that it happens in every teacher-student relationship) And so people here are entitled to talk hypothetically about how they envision a better teacher-student relationship. Why you take offense from this it's what I don't understand. You're Betty and you represent your teaching and your ethics. You don't represent all the teachers and the huge variety of competence, respect, humanity and even sanity there's among them.



You're taking it personally, that's your misunderstanding. People here are talking about a category which encompass every flavour of human behaviors (including abusive ones). That's why being a teacher is nothing but a label, it doesn't define anything else about the person.

That would be very nice indeed. In fact, that is how I see music lessons. It is how I have experienced music lessons.

The bottom line is trust. Trust of the teacher. And also trust of the student!

Danny,

This is just too much information, and it seems to me that you post these kinds of things telling us how piano teachers and the world is to you. Are you not a young man who has seen about 2 decades of life so far? Why are you consumed with talking about the worst of situations and being the bearer of doom?

It's sad to me that this is your opinion through experiences you have had, and things that capture your attention, making drama of these things goes against my taste. It might be tolerable if it were an occasional happening, but to me, your perception is that you are in the know about "how the world turns", or maybe I should say "how the stomach turns". Diabolical. Negative to extremes. Focusing on the downside, too much explanations, too many details!

Danny said above: "This has happened to me, this has happened to others. There are "teachers" of every flavour and you shouldn't feel belittled just because that is acknowledge. You is you, other teachers are other teachers. You're lumping teacher together and getting personally offended by association. But being a teacher doesn't say much about someone's personality and humanity. Believe it or not there are very cruel, imcompetent, inhumane teachers out there. Like there are very cruel, inhumane, incompetent lawyers. Like there are vert cruel, incompetent, inhumane doctors. And so on. Your job doesn't say anytning about the person you are. You know for example that they found out a dentist who used to abuse his female patients while they were sedated for a teeth operation?
He also filmed them. A friend of my mother was literally killed in a clinic. She was beaten, tied and negated her medications for asthma. She suffucated while begging for water. Everyone knows what happened there, but it was impossible to find an unbiased coroner and an unbiased doctor, that would admit the sin of a collegue. They protect each other, just because the reputation of one might decrease the reputation of the whole category. This is sick and insane, in my opinion."

Danny, do you have students and teach music yourself? Has your education prepared you to teach piano? Do you talk in this authoritative voice in your private life, or is this your "writing style" speaking?

If you don't mind, I'll quote you one more time, as I feel the same way about what I've expressed in this posting: "This is sick and insane, in my opinion."

Enough of the "warp"!

What happened to the "creative exchange of ideas"? It can't exist in the nether world.

We are a composite of what we think, say, and subscribe to, personally and publically. We each have to find our own best way to "be" in this world. We reflect our "being" out into the world, and hopefully, it is for the betterment of both our inner world and the outer world of society.

That's all for now! Sermon over!

Betty Patnude

I don't understand Betty, so I'm not sure what to reply. I just wrote an anecdote, a true fact which can be read on newspapers as well. I don't understand how that makes me negative. It is an important fact to me, because it, more than ever, taught me not to lump people together by their professional categories and also the reality of how people within the same category might protect each other in spite of what they did. My opinion is to judge every person and situation individually, and I can't understand why this is sad to you. I have shared a lot of positive experiences and encouraging words and I'm actually an optimistic person. Diabolic? I can't even watch horror movies! Getting sick to your stomach because of sad and unfair things that happens everyday to people is understandable, hiding the head in the sad and pretending they don't happen or feeling disturbed by someone mentioning them, is not. I post those "kind of things" when they're needed (or I think they are) and I post other kind of things, when other kind of things are needed. I'm not consumed with anything. I respect you Betty and it's unquestionable you love and respect your students (from the wise and tender words you have often used in describing your relationships with them) and I liked your last sentence - I really like people! I think friends are former strangers - because it's what I think too and I agree with.
But I'm politically incorrect and outspoken to the core, and come from a lower class life mentality and I'm afraid I will keep getting on your nerve, no matter what.

Danny,

When you say: "But I'm politically incorrect and outspoken to the core, and come from a lower class life mentality and I'm afraid I will keep getting on your nerve, no matter what", you bring to mind some things of mine that I have spent my life trying to rise above.

I had few privileges in the family I was born into, and I considered myself a financial burden to them. I had a spark of intelligence in a home challenged with every day necessities being too much to handle. Sadly, fear, indifference, and ignorance dominated the minds of the people who raised me from childhood. Things showing me daily what I did not want for myself.

One of the best opportunities in our lives is for us to shape our lives to our own satisfaction. To determine what is worth talking about, how to spend our time on relevant things.
How to forget our pasts that haunt us.

Sometimes the thing that was the biggest handicap to us in our early lives, is the thing that saves us from continuing to behave in the world the way that we were brought up.

Today's habits and truth might be replaced with something better.

You have a lot of potential, Danny, but you can't be truly happy when most of what is your perception has a certain amount of misery to it. Transferred to you by other people, the newspapers you read, the television you watch.

I loved my family dearly, but they were through circumstances trapped into a mindset which was very, very limiting, and from which they could not escape.

I could and did. I think you have to have a dream to aspire to because there are so much mundane distractions that would keep us from our purpose in life.

I've read all four pages of this topic and I still can't figure out what you people are talking about.

:rolleyes:

I think the original idea was along the lines of an exchange of creative, original, innovative, unusual, interesting thought among teachers. It seems to have morphed.

Ditto

Betty,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate it. What you said rings so true and liberating to me. You're right. Rather than regretting the past, we might consider it the best thing that happened to us, making us conscious of the need of a better present, we can build. I'll think about what you said, and will try to wipe away some of that misery in my perception.

Group hug! Now, how about getting back to Gary's important question again?

"Whatever happened to creative exchange of ideas here?"

Apparently, based on this morph/hyjack, that is not what brings and keeps some/many/most (teachers) here. Having a place to vent, argue, find fault or take personal offense is not the same thing as sharing content meaningfully.

Perhaps a sub-forum could be better renamed "The Middle School Teacher's Lounge" and could have these threads as stickies:

"Bitter Coffee", "Smoky Clothes", "Stale Doughnuts", "Personal Vendettas, "Repressed Romances", "Nit Picking" and "B&M" (not standing for Band & Music), etc.
Then the rest of the threads could be reserved for relevant content and posts that go off topic could be moved by the moderators to one of the above named stickies...

roger that

What The Journey said, two posts up. I would love to sit back and lurk, and watch the teachers take off on Gary's idea. I would love to see that happening without a digression on blaming outsiders. I have seen several innovative ideas fall flat in the water. Nobody cared to respond. There was not a non-teacher in sight. In fact, there was nobody in sight. I think that I understand that this is what Gary is talking about. Is it in fact a discussion on "why we aren't posting" or is it a call to post and respond to posts? (Gary?)

With all due respect, being approx. 16 hours difference to most of you, due to time zones, it's quite often hard to be 'present' when ideas are taking off...when I log on...so many threads have gone off-course from their thread title, that I'm overwhelmed as to what to respond to! lol Don't know about you, but when I log on, their are usually only about 7 logged in members.

Anyone else suffer this 'creative exchange' dilemma?

Well, that might answer part of the question that was originally asked. Perhaps it's not lack of interest, then.