Lisa,

I have been teaching piano for about 16 years now. My philosophy has always been to never force students to learn anything they don't want to. But the reality is, that when you are taking lessons there will be requirements. Piano is a discipline and to do it well takes discipline.This is a skill for scholar phase. I have used TJED in my home for about 4 years and I truly believe in the phases of learning. Traditional piano lessons (in my opinion) don't really fit in with core phase. They could fit in with LOL phase, but only if the student really loves to learn it. Some children do and some don't. They are inspired by what they like and enjoy. My 16 year old daughter started learning piano when she was 8 years old. She played at the piano for a while and then I taught her to read the notes and count the music, because she wanted to. Once she learned the basics, she played what she liked. I also played the piano all of the time and we always have recordings of classical symphonic music and comtemporary piano music (Jim Brickman is my favorite) going. When she turned 13, she started begging for "real" piano lessons. I let her beg for a year and then I found an incredible Piano mentor for her. She is now seriously studying piano in the proper scholar phase of her life. She had to "catch up" in theory and technic, but after about a year she was doing beautifully. She would have hated lessons like this if she had started too early.

I am in a funny situation. I teach mostly public schooled children with parents who do not understand the phases of learning. I let parents know that I do not force the children to practice and I believe that they should play what they enjoy. I teach them basics and I give group lessons once a month to inspire them with composers and listening to beautiful music and learning some basic theory through games and application. Theory is just like Math, In fact it is math! I believe Dr. DeMille said Math could be learned in 80 hours? Basics are helpful and a teacher can make learning them really interesting. In my experience, I have taught theory over and over and they do not learn it until they want to. I watch for the zpd and then back off. Sometimes this means just skipping something or doing something else. If they hate it, I suggest that it isn't time for lessons or talk to the parent about finding new ways to inspire them.

I'm still revising and addressing this. I love the suggestions that have been given. Celestia, I will look into that resource in our libraries here! That is sooo interesting. In fact, I have decided to make this my educational application project for my 5 pillar certification.

Thank you
Melissa
Centerville, Ut

I wondered about this for a couple of years and then came up with a solution that has really blessed my family. My children are 10, 8, 5 and 2 right now. The oldest started piano a few years ago with an excellent teacher. That teacher had to move on to other things and we found another and then my two oldest tried lessons with the new teacher. Not good. Talk about killing all desire and interest in piano, it lasted three months. Wow. I had to rethink how I was going to inspire, not require. Over last summer our favorite teacher was available to do something again. I gave her a copy of A Thomas Jefferson Education and a copy of The Spiritual Lives of Great Composers. I asked her to read them and create a class that was sharing her love and passion for music with my three oldest. I didn't want any assignments. The things we, but specifically she, have come up with are amazing. We had until August, but since she has enjoyed teaching the class we are still going strong. Just recently we met without the children and discussed what direction to go with the class. They meet every other week as a group to do an ongoing musical project and the other weeks she is teaching piano and flute to the oldest two children. However, we are not going through a book and learning piano the usual way. Because my oldest likes to plunk out melodies on the piano from ear, our teacher is going to teach her some chords to complement the melodies. Then she will teach her how to write the notation.

The other thing that has made an impact is me. I started teaching myself how to play the guitar a few months ago. I am really not good and can play three songs (at least they think I 'play' three songs). My kids think I am incredibly talented and think they can pick up any instrument and play too. It is funny, but also wonderful. They feel inspired greatly by my feeble attempts at learning to play an instrument.

So, with all that said. Maybe try finding someone you think would be a great music mentor for your kids. Have them read about the style of teaching you would like them to use. If they are open to it you might find some fabulous things happening. It's nice to have someone else involved with education in the family. I can't teach them how to play an instrument, but even if I could I think I would do it this way again. My word of caution is...if you expect to attend quarterly recitals and see weekly progress in proficiency in playing the piano you may have to readjust your expectations. For me it is about really loving music first, then loving the instrument, then loving to express with it. We are all about participatory music rather than performance music right now. None of my children are in the scholar phase around music, so I just have to keep that in mind when I write the checks .

If you listen to the Core and Love of Learning CDs (not in the written article), Rachel talks about how her kids do piano lessons. Rachel is a pianist herself- quite an excellent one- but she doesn't teach her kids piano. I thought that was interesting. I'll have to go back and listen to what she says, but I do know that they found someone (a George Wythe student I think) who would teach with a TJEd philosophy.

I've been teaching my kids as they ask. It's pretty haphazard right now. I think eventually I will find someone else to teach them so that they have someone to be accountable to besides me. I love playing the piano. BUT, I definitely had that phase in my life where I wasn't sure I wanted to continue. I knew my Mom expected me to continue so I didn't quit - and I'm grateful now. I had seasons where the only practice I got was my weekly half hour lesson...but both my mom and piano teacher perservered and I can now call myself a halfway decent pianist. With that background, I struggle finding a TJEd method that has accountability built in so that kids can't just be quitters when it gets a little rough. It's definitely a challenge!

I never learned all the theory involved because my piano teacher didn't know much theory. I took lessons for 6 years and my dad took them for one. But he studied the theory and I learned to play - we have different strengths. It's pretty interesting. NOW I'm much more interested in theory. I think theory can wait. You can learn to play without learning theory. I have enough of a love of music that I'll never stop playing - but am considering finding my own teacher to help me learn the music theory part and better my skills. THAT is probably very TJEd - I'm getting to it when it is important for me to know it.