At the Ithaca Talent Education winter workshop this past weekend I logged over 13 hours of observation. A combination of group, master, and enrichment classes filled up Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
I had the privilege to watch and assist Ann Montzka-Smelser, an incredible Suzuki teacher from the Chicago area. After observing hours of her small masterclasses with groups of four students at a time (institute style) I started to pick up on a pattern.
Latching on to, and transforming, an aspect of a student’s playing in 15 minutes or less requires honed teaching skills.
Ann’s efficient routine, obviously refined by years of experience, left parents, observing teachers, and most importantly students, satisfied after just a quarter hour of work.
This is the formula for a satisfying master class lesson, as I observed in Ann’s teaching.
1. BREAK DOWN THE AWKWARDNESS.
Figure out a way to cut through the students’ initial nervousness, either by joking around or asking personal questions. Remind the student this is not a performance, just a lesson.
2. WATCH THE STUDENT PERFORMANCE CLOSELY.
Use this time to gather as much information as possible. Walk around the student to see their posture from behind. See what red flags stand out to you. By the end of the performance pick ONE thing to work on.
3. COMPLIMENT.
Resist the temptation to start working on that point right away. First take time to note to the student what worked very well in their performance. Be extremely genuine, saying what you know to be true. If finding something to genuinely compliment is difficult, consider basic aspects of posture, tone, and musical expression to comment on. Ideally you will also choose something true but that you don’t think they would expect. For example, if it seems a student is very left hand centric make a comment about the beauty of their bow hold or comfort at the frog.
4. SUGGEST A WORKING POINT, CONDITIONALLY.
At this point in master classes I’ve seen teachers dive head first into an uncomfortable technique for the student or smatter the lesson with 25 “suggestions.” Ann on the other hand grounded her working comments by saying, “There is so much already going well, BUT I do need to choose something to work on.” She would often follow the statement up with some sort of guiding question about the working point she decided on during the performance. By starting work in this way, she lay a foundation of good will between her and the student and invited them to take ownership in the working process.
5. WORK ON ONLY ONE THING…
Ann chose just one thing to work on every student with. Sometimes the “one thing” was a giant topic such as tone or relaxed posture, others were incredibly specific such as pinkie pressure for tip support. The key is she chose just one thing, and didn’t let up until the student had success in that arena. Honestly with only 15 minutes, I am often perplexed teachers would dare choose more than one thing anyway.
By the end of the weekend I was often able to guess which aspect of a student’s playing she was going to choose. She strategically worked on THE ONE THING that most affected all other aspects of playing.
For example, she wouldn’t work on developing a particular bow stroke if there were any issues with the bow hold. She would never work on intonation issues before addressing left hand shape. Discussions of musicality could only happen if the student’s resonant tone was in good shape.
Here is a simplified list of teaching priorities in what I perceived to be Ann’s preferred order.
- Body balance
- Left hand and right hand posture
- Tone
- Bowing techniques
- Vibrato
- Musical expressiveness
One more note on Ann’s selection. She would often choose a right hand working point over a left hand working point. I think this is because the bow has the final control over what the audience hears in a student’s playing. By working on the thing that most changes a student’s sound, she could make the most perceptible impact.
6. …. IN AS MANY WAYS AS POSSIBLE.
Though she only chose one thing to work on, it was truly exhilarating to see the breadth of teaching techniques Ann had for each working point.
Take body balance, for example. Over the course of the weekend I saw her teach body balance in over 20 ways. In each lesson she might use 3-7 different exercises to coach her students to successful body posture. If one particular exercise wasn’t working, she wouldn’t dwell, but would approach the same point from a different angle.
This aspect of Ann’s teaching struck me with the image of a clerk confidently flipping through a well-organized file cabinet to find the labeled file most pertaining to a particular skill. I’m sure the contents of this file cabinet, of which I must have only seen a small selection, have been archived over decades of teaching.
7. FINISH ON A HIGH NOTE.
Ann completed each mini-lesson with a performance of some kind. The most common ending was a performance of an excerpt of the student’s original piece with a new skill integrated into the performance, however not all student’s were capable or confident enough to do so.
This didn’t matter, however, because she would set up an opportunity to be 100% successful in an approximate repetition of the original piece.
For example, if the issue was playing with healthy tone, Ann would find a handful of ways to develop the student’s sound on open strings first. Once she found the sound she REALLY wanted she integrated the tone into review pieces and then into appropriate chunks of the piece. If time ran out before making it back to the piece, she used an amazing performance of a review piece (or even the open strings) as the celebration of success in the lesson.
8. SUMMARIZE.
At the conclusion of the lesson Ann would ask the student to name the working point, she would suggest a few practice strategies to the student and parent, and (without fail) would thank the student with a bow.
While this way of ending the lesson is productive — reminding the student of what to do, getting practice points down on paper, and and expressing gratitude — it also lends the lesson a nice touch of finality.
We have all observed master classes that conclude with students being awkwardly rushed off the stage by a consternated time keeper when an instructor has not paced the class well. The rush at the end of such short lessons can leave the student and audience with a sour taste in their mouth. I much prefer Ann’s succinct, yet powerfully positive, endings. She always buffered a few minutes at the end to do so.
The beauty of this formula is that it needn’t only apply to master class teaching.
In fact, at a teacher meeting following the full workshop day on Saturday, I discussed with Ann how practicing teaching in master classes must make lesson teaching more efficient.
Consider how students approach you in a master class one after the other, each with one fundamental skill it would be best to address. Master class teaching requires an extremely efficient ‘working point’ selection process, an organized mental catalog of teaching strategies, and a practiced understanding of what version of success each student can demonstrate within the lesson.
In a sense this is like batting practice in baseball or volleying in tennis. A period of extremely intense, rapid exchanges in a workout prepare a player for consistent performance in the strategic long game of a match.
The skill which master class teaching develops can be directly applied to regular lesson teaching. If you have yet to teach a master class, consider applying this formula right away to a portion of your next lesson. A 15 minute application of Ann’s formulaic approach to demonstrable student change could make a huge impact in your teaching and your students’ learning.
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