Why Do Kids Pick Sports Over Music? Why is it that the majority of students tend to gravitate towards sports rather than music as they progress through their school years? Despite music being just as fun, if not more fun, than sports, we continue to see this trend around the world. It appears that t… Read More

For a typical music school, 80 percent of students are youths. This means families are involved. Families are invested (in their child's growth but also... financially). They are the ones who pick up, drop off, sit through lessons, figure out the assignments and make sure their kids practice during … Read More

“When you assume that people know what’s expected of them, you are creating an ineffective form of bowling. You put the pins up but when the bowler goes to roll the ball, he notices there is a sheet across the pins. So when he rolls the ball, and it slips under the sheet, he hears a crack but doesn’… Read More

What makes a child prodigy? Does it stem from pure talent or specialized, intensive training at a young age? We’ve all seen the viral videos of 4 year olds playing advanced pieces astonishingly well - and reactions are always mixed. On one hand, we want to applaud the accomplishment, but we also une… Read More

An Interview with Lyndel Kennedy of InnerMusician Many teachers are interested in teaching improv and want to find ways to incorporate it into their curriculum but feel they don't know enough about the topic to teach it. So - we sought an expert in the topic: Lyndel Kennedy, creator of InnerMusicia… Read More

You may have been hearing the term “flipped classrooms” - but what is it exactly? Traditionally, a student goes into the classroom to learn, then practices the newly learned skills at home. With a flipped classroom, just the opposite happens. The student learns the material (to the best of their abi… Read More

A lot of the time, teachers become disorganized. And when we're disorganized, we may do things like forget who’s learning what or what we even taught at the last lesson with this student (what was his name again?). If this has happened to you, there's no shame in raising your hand because we have an… Read More

I often have those “Aha!” moments (or “Duh!” moments) where I think of the perfect assignment for a student to work on, or I realize I forgot to mention a key point - right as they walk out the door, assignment notebook and all. I’ll email the parents about it when the day is done, I note (my next s… Read More

Here comes the 7th and final installment of our Motivating Music Students Series. We’ll be discussing social motivation: what it is, how to identify socially motivated students, and what you can do to help nurture this motivation. Let me start off with addressing one of the biggest issues I have wit… Read More

This is the 6th installment in our motivating music students series. Here, we'll talk about intrinsic motivation and how to nurture it. Intrinsically motivated students are genuinely interested in what they’re learning. I’d say this is one of the ‘best’ types of motivation as it builds on truly good… Read More