Inherent Rewards

Recently, a parent of one of my young students apologized for her son’s moods, explaining he’s going through a growth spurt, and has some “attitudes” that can be hard to deal with. I knew what she was talking about: he has been distracted, not as regular with practice, not as able to focus in lessons. This is one of the central challenges to my job. Over 20 years of teaching, I’ve seen hundreds of students go through all of the phases. Earlier in my career, I would get anxious when a student was distracted, thinking I was failing as a teacher. Now, I try and find the fun no matter what. If the student is unable to focus for the first 10 minutes of the lesson, but we’re still having a good time, they’re much more likely to eventually come back with whatever focus they’re capable of on that day. So, sometimes we chat, we joke, we bang on the keyboard, I listen to a 4 minute story about a video game. This is because I now believe that learning is all about inherent rewards. If it feels like a slog, you won’t want to do it. If it feels like you have to turn off parts of you that are naturally there, you will resent it. And as soon as you have the opportunity to quit, you will. But if it’s fun, if you feel connected to others while you’re doing it, and that you can bring your true self to it, no matter what that might look like on that particular day, well that’s when you start to trust it. That’s when music (or anything) starts to become a friend you turn to. Someone you want to spend time with. Something you love. I chose Stevie Wonder as the image for this post, because he so clearly and deeply fell in love with music. Every time he sits down to play it feeds him joyful, soulful, grade-A energy. And that’s what I want us all to aspire to.

I also want to reiterate my belief that private lessons and private study are not the most natural format for learning and playing music. I understand why we do it, and I’m not trying to talk myself out of the job lol. But if there were more communal structures for learning and playing music all around us, like there used to be—not just in schools, but also amongst adults—so many of these challenges would be avoided. The inherent rewards would be obvious, and we wouldn’t have to shame kids, or ourselves, into being in a state we aren’t actually in. But for now, I just try to create an atmosphere of joy and ease in my studio as much as possible. Very often, inherent rewards are not built into education. But I believe they should be!

Thank you for reading 💐