Special - build on what you know

Many years ago I attended a week-long piano master class at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. One of the presenters was Tinka Knopf, who was leading the Preparatory Program at Peabody and  becoming increasingly interested in working with special needs learners.  She told the story of helping design a prosthetic left hand for one of her students. She didn't know anything about constructing prosthetics, but she knew a lot about what a left hand does in piano literature. When the engineer asked her how wide the hand would need to open, she simply opened her left hand on his desk to the span of octave. When he later double-checked this distance on an actual piano, he discovered that she was 100 percent accurate. She was literally helping him build on what she knew.

As I stated in the first of the Special posts, I'm not an expert on special education, but I can build on what I know. As both an Alexander Technique Teacher and a piano teacher, I have worked with students with a variety of challenges. Here they are, in alphabetical order:  allergies, arthritis, asthma, Asperger's syndrome, attention deficit disorder, auditory processing challenges, Bell's palsy, blindness, broken bones, congenital eye muscle problems requiring surgeries, cystic fibrosis, epilepsy, fibromyalgia with lesions, focal dystonia, Irlen syndrome, leukemia, loss of fingers, Lyme's disease, Meniere's disease, muscular/skeletal injuries, obsessive compulsive disorder, Parkinson's disease,  profound hearing impairment, scoliosis, sliced tendons, symbol recognition challenges, and tendinitis.  Time to hang out my medical shingle, right?

Some of these students were in my studio for a very short time or were students that came to workshops where I was teaching. Some of them were in my studio for extended periods of time. I think in particular of Amy, a bright and talented young woman with cystic fibrosis who played piano and flute well. When she came for a lesson I never thought, "here comes cystic fibrosis," but "here comes Amy, that delightful student." She rarely missed a lesson, and I loved working with her all through her public school career. I did not love sitting in the pew at her funeral, a potential piece of working with students dealing with serious health conditions.

Some of these conditions, dire as they may sound, did not require any adaptations out of the normal. Amy would occasionally cough due to the build up in her lungs, but I knew that it wasn't contagious. She also had slightly clubbed fingertips, but that did not stop her from moving her fingers well. Even though she had a life-threatening illness, she functioned extremely well in her lessons and practice.

Students with symbol recognition challenges are more than likely to live a full, healthy life, but they require accommodations for score reading and hand-eye coordination development. This is the sort of thing you will recognize rather quickly, even if you have no idea what axons and dendrites and neurons and grey matter actually are. Have courage! You will build on that discovery in the best way you know how.

If you are a public school teacher, you will have access to private records about your students that will reveal challenges. Legally you are required to make accommodations for identified students. A private teacher does not have that access, and some parents will not tell you that their children have been identified in the hope that music lessons will somehow be easier than other learning situations. If you are noticing learning patterns that are not close to normal, you may need to go the parent and get more information to make proper adaptations. Or you may decide that you don't have the skills and/or tools to work with that student, which is also fair to all.

The best way to guide your decisions is to place the well-being of the student first. Decide what goals are appropriate and what tools and common sense you can access to reach those goals. Build on what you know as well as what you are willing to learn.

The next part of this series of blogs will be devoted to some of the common challenges you may find in your students and some basic suggestions for each of these. Keep in mind that flexibility is key.

Special - the ground rules

If teaching special needs students is something you are considering, it is best to start with some very basic ground rules:

1. Abandon perfectionism. Embrace creativity.
Most independent teachers have figured this out already and do this with all of their students,  but it is a mindset that is required when working with special needs students.  This doesn't mean they can't be successful. It does means that the road to success is likely to be a little different, taking more time and more twists and turns. If your studio goals center on competitive settings with high-level performers, maybe special needs students will not fit your agenda. If you like to encourage students to get just a little better, and then a little better, go for it.

2. Student first, label second.
One of my wonderful and wise friends taught a student with Asperger's syndrome (usually defined as high-functioning autism)  to become a fine pianist. The student developed excellent listening and improvisatory skills.  I was not alone in begging her to give a presentation on the teaching techniques she used.  She refused, explaining that this was the only Asperger's student she had ever worked with, and that she couldn't possibly generalize.  Right. Like I said, wise. Every student is different, no matter the diagnostic label. The labels give you a general outline of what you may experience, and that is all.

3. You are a teacher, not a diagnostician or therapist, unless, of course, you are.
I know one person who gave up a career as an MD to become an independent piano teacher. This person is legally allowed to diagnose. If you are a person with some kind of legal authority to diagnose or provide therapy, you will know this. If you don't know this, you can't. However, you may recognize certain traits in students that could benefit from further exploration by people who can diagnose. Likewise, you are not a magician or healer. You are a facilitator.

4. Throw a wide net.
Be open to a large number of resources because you will need them. Your best help may come from someone you already know, or from recently printed resources, or from information-rich websites. Parent involvement is a must in order for you to get information about your students that will allow you to plan a course of action.

My resources include Dr. Kimberly Councill, music education specialist, and Kathy Morris, retired special education teacher and supervisor. The text they suggest is Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs: A Label-Free Approach, by Alice M. Hammel and Ryan M. Hourigan, published by Oxford University Press.

I am in the learning stage here, so I don't consider myself to be my best resource. I'm keeping my eyes and ears open. I do have some common sense, however, and that is also very important. More on this as the blogs continue.

Special - an introduction

True confession - I could not believe that one of my colleagues had no idea what ADD is. We were discussing a common student whose challenges were in line with what I had read and experienced concerning attention deficit disorders when I casually dropped in the three-letter moniker as an umbrella explanation. I had no idea that he had no idea.

IDEA, by the way, is the abbreviation for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, started in 1975 around the time I was finishing my masters program. I had no idea what IDEA was when studying music education because, well, it wasn't. We were taught in a time of smart, dumb, lazy, responsible, talkative, shy, stubborn - not in the time of OCD, ODD, LD and the increasingly long list of acronyms for manifestations that prevent students from learning the way we think they should.

For my generation, learning about learning differences and challenges had to be done the old-fashioned way, by trial and error, talking to parents, and self-motivated study. As tutors/mentors, independent teachers have the freedom to do this, and we gain a lot from doing so. We also have the opportunity to provide a positive learning experience for students who find traditional learning settings less friendly.

In Pennsylvania students in teacher education programs are now required to complete 9 credits of special education courses. This semester I'm sitting in the back row of one of these classes. I'm quietly linking the research and suggestions to students past and present. I'm keeping up with the reading assignments and asking questions and making mental notes of the ways I could help certain students.

I'm also realizing that a lot of these approaches work with any student, but perhaps in differing proportions. Ways to improve listening through tools and adaptations are not just useful for hearing impaired students, for example. Many of my students enjoy hearing themselves sing into my "elbowphone", which is a PVC elbow pipe purchased for a few bucks at the local hardware store. And students who are identified with particular challenges also have accompanying strengths, exactly like the so-called "normal" students.

With this blog as an introduction, I will follow up with information I'm learning that could be applied in the private lesson situation. There is a lot of information out there, making it a much better time to "specialize" private teaching than when I started decades ago.

The Gift of Healthy Self-Talk

Coal in my brother's Christmas stocking meant one thing - he had been bad that year, or at least in my parents' recent memory.  While the rest of us were unwrapping chocolate coins and peppermint canes, my brother stood in horror, looking at the black lumps in his stocking.  It hadn't been much work to fill his stocking - a quick trip to the coal bin in the cellar.  Maybe that was the insult added to the injury.  It took more time and effort to put brightly-wrapped yummies in the other four stockings than to toss dirty black coal into his.

My parents loved Christmas.  They hid gifts for five children in the neighbor's basement to insure the element of surprise.  My rather introverted dad supervised decorating the front door and the tree, making sure there was Christmas music playing in the background, and Mom's abundant goodies were available during the festivities. Dad's grumpy side came out only when we woke him up before dawn to see what Santa had left for us. With this as a backdrop, the threat of coal instead of candy being realized was, on a kid's level, powerful.

After the effect had been achieved, my parents pulled out goodies for my brother as well. I don't know how, or even if, he remembers this day, but I never forgot it.  It didn't seem like a small thing to me, to be labeled as bad for a WHOLE YEAR, and then somehow to be treated as though the slight had never happened.

There are so many ways we communicate to ourselves and to our students that connect to this story.  How easy it is to say the first words that come out of our mouths, without realizing that the words may be heard as verbal lumps of coal.  We are human, of course, and we get frustrated and tired and impatient and goal-oriented.  And we do it to ourselves as well as to our students.  In fact, we are often more cruel and unforgiving and irrational when we evaluate our own progress.  We match our success against impossible standards, by-passing the signs that our practice is, indeed, paying off.

Maybe we learned this from teachers who were human and frustrated and tired and impatient and goal-oriented.  Maybe we learned this from teachers who believed they had our best interests at heart by mercilessly reminding us of our short-comings, then sending us out to perform in public as though none of the lumps of the lesson would emerge on stage.  All is forgiven - play well!

Reflecting on a new calendar year of teaching, I think of the potential to improve my self-talk as a way to teach my students healthy self-talk.  Not unrealistic self-talk - my brother had been quite impish that year - because that is a false measure of achievement.  Healthy self-talk is about realizing where one is in the process and setting goals for the next level that are attainable.  Healthy self-talk does not self-elevate or self-deprecate irrationally.  It's not coal or candy but a realistic mix of these, coupled with the occasional element of surprise.

What Your Pedagogy Teacher May Not Tell You

Selena's bright blue eyes were rimmed with tears as she made her way into the studio.  I had always looked forward to her lessons. She was bright, industrious and upbeat, but not that night. She dropped onto the bench and said, "My parents just told me they are getting a divorce."

I wavered between compassion and anger.  I wanted to run back into the street and yell to her parents, "What were you thinking, sending this child to me ten minutes after you told her that her world is falling apart?  What did you think I could do for her that you couldn't?  This is not fair!"  That anger is a large part of the memory of this night, even these many, many years later.  Compassion won out, and I let her cry, and I listened.

I have since had many students who have needed to be listened to, and not just during the performance part of their lessons.  They are not all children.  Adults will come in and tell me their families are breaking up or they are suffering from illness and that lessons will stop, at least for a while.  Students will come in with tales of loss of pets and grandparents and best friends.  No one is immune from loss.

When it is the loss of the family unit of origin, many complications arise for the piano student.  Unlike smaller, portable instruments, the piano cannot be tossed in the back seat of the car.  The likelihood of having a piano at both parents' homes is slim.  Some have keyboards, and some don't.  Sometimes Grandma or Grandpa is the proprietor of the piano, meaning that practice has to be worked into an already jumbled living arrangement.

The simplest solution is to cut out students who can't practice at all of their residences.  When I get into that mode of thinking, I consider the students who would get the axe.  I genuinely like my students, and my compassion for their complex lives usually wins out.  Some of these students are genuinely glad to see me every week, even when they haven't practiced.  They need a supportive adult who listens for at least five minutes of the lesson.

Some teachers believe that a lesson should never be about the student's feelings.  I'm not OK with that.  Call it my downfall, if you will, but I never could understand how teaching an expressive art could exclude the recognition of the daily flow of emotions.  The first five minutes of how-do-you-dos help the student transition from the rest of life to the musical part of life.

I tend to agree with a former teacher, an old-world style professor who was the very model of reserve in the classroom.  He said, "Every lesson is a psychology session."  He knew that he needed to click with each student in a way that allowed that student to hear his instruction and connect to it.  That may involve allowing a moment or two of frustration to be experienced, or the telling of a sad tale, either to get it out of the way of the music making or to help the teacher understand what is blocking progress in the lesson.

This acknowledgement doesn't meant that teachers hand out therapeutic advice or that the student stops working on music.  It also doesn't mean that we keep secrets from the student's family members. None of these actions is in the job description of piano teacher.  It simply means that we recognize the humanity of our students as much or more than we enforce the ideal syllabus we studied in pedagogy class.

Take the Bait, and Get the Hook

My fall studio recital will include versions of these pieces:
Ode to Joy - Beethoven
Für Elise - Beethoven
Canon in D - Pachelbel
Solfeggietto - C.P.E.  Bach
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
When I'm 64 - Lennon and McCartney

Most teachers can count on students falling in like, if not love, with the pieces listed above.  They are known as hook pieces, the pieces that hook students so strongly that they work against odds to master them.  They are even more enticing if the teacher says, "I don't think you are ready to tackle this piece." This declaration guarantees months of dee-dah-dee-dah-dee-dah-dee-dah-deeee  filling the studio.

But, wait a minute - Lennon, McCartney? Have they been around long enough to be on the list of time-tested composers? Is "When I'm 64" now an old chestnut in the piano repertoire?

I can't give you a factual response to this hypothetical question, but John and Paul's music is vibrant and interesting to today's young students.  The same is true of the early music of Billy Joel - "Piano Man" and "Just the Way You Are" -  which will also be on the program. I'm glad to continue their legacies in some small way.

There will also be a waltz by Oscar Peterson ("I never played anything like this before", says student), Blue Rondo by Dave Brubeck, and an old 18th century American piano duet that caught the imagination of another young student.  I also spent two years listening to every possible version of the score of "The Phantom of the Opera" played by an obsessed student who later became quite accomplished at classical repertoire. We are so lucky as piano teachers to have a vast repertoire of potential hook pieces for our students.

We can also learn about our students through the pieces that grab their attention.  First, that there are pieces that have something innately addictive or entertaining or communicative.  Für Elise is definitely one of them.  Beginning students can be happy playing the opening phrase over and over and over again, never getting to the drum-like bass part or the fleeting arpeggios that happen later in the piece.  They are hooked from the start.  They will play this piece in all kinds of versions before tackling the "real" Für Elise, which they will probably never stop playing.

Second, never assume that you know what students will like.  The student playing Blue Rondo also chose the Chopin Prelude in c minor, whose giant chords couldn't be more different from Brubeck's rapid-fire, off-meter patterns.

Third, sometimes we may need to step out of the traditional step-by-step process and throw the student a real challenge.  I have fought against this in the past, only to be thwarted by the eager student determined to prove me wrong.  Every now and then a student jumps levels for no apparent reason and succeeds. Some of my most accomplished pianists have done this, despite the little pedagogy teacher in my brain saying, "Keep your students on a steady track of learning."  Some just jump the rails.

Suzanne Guy, inspirational teacher and author, reminds us that our students can learn anything with the right guidance. Pay attention to what your students are asking for, even if it seems out of sequence or somehow wrong.  You can probably find a way to make it work, even if the student learns only the melody or one section of a piece.  They offer you the bait, and you find the hook.

Gee, thanks!

I was once quoted in the New York Times, and I am not kidding. The words and the credit for them were mine. The twist is that I would not have been able to write those words without the person about whom they were written.

Jean Stellfox was the best grammar and English teacher I ever studied with, bar none. It is thanks to her, and my newspaper-editor father, that I can put together cogent sentences with decent punctuation.

She didn't have fancy tricks up her sleeve either. I well remember sitting in rows, declining verbs student by student, trying to figure out whether I would get "you" or "he, she, it" by the time my turn came around.

She kept order by her demeanor. No threats were necessary, just unflappable glares. Learning was the only option in her class.

After I began to publish my writing, I sent her a heartfelt thank-you letter.  After she was killed by a hit-and-run driver, someone going through her effects found my letter and many others, choosing some lines from several to publish in the Times. She had collected all of these notes and letters and put them in scrapbooks. That alone was a surprise.

The bigger surprise - the one that resulted in her obituary being in the Times - was that she had accrued a very large sum of money over the years to go to Dickinson College upon her death. It was appropriate for a single woman to trust her investments to the school that shaped her career. Major gratitude.

I confess that I have a much smaller collection of thank you notes from past students.  I felt less self-conscious about that collection after learning that Miss Stellfox also had one. She didn't seem to need thanks. She was always self-composed and secure that what she was doing was her job, and that she was doing it in the best way she knew.

As a new school year starts, my mind goes to ways I could improve my teaching.  I can't say I always feel as secure as Miss Stellfox appeared to be. Maybe that was just appearance.  Maybe that was why she kept all those thank-yous, to remind herself that good things were coming from her efforts.

If you are - or were -  a student, take the opportunity to express your gratitude for what you have learned, whether it is from a piano teacher, an English teacher, your parents or a coach. You may not ever find out that you encouraged a person who encouraged you, but it feels good to say, "Gee, thanks!".