Skip to main content

Growth Mindset

No automatic alt text available.
Establishing the growth mindset is one of the most important jobs of a teacher.  It's also the most challenging because you are at odds with potentially other teachers, children the student interacts with, and possibly even the student's parents.  This is not to say that all of a student's social interactions are negative.  The point is that there could be conflicting messages.

I had a teacher trainer once tell me, "Always praise the process, not the product."  The advice stuck with me and became a sort of mantra that helps me to shape the words that I choose to use during the lessons.

It's not easy!  Over many years of teaching I've come to realize that praising the process is not quite as clear-cut as the pictured chart would have you believe.  For example, saying something like "You're so talented!  You played that beautifully," is obviously something that reinforces the talent is set mentality. 

But what about the grey-area phrases?  "Nice work, you played that really well" may seem innocent enough.  After all, you praised "the work," right?  But what work was that?  A student may interpret your meaning any number of ways.  If the student did, in fact, actually work really hard at the piece, his growth mindset would be reinforced.  But what if he only practiced the piece once or twice to get it sounding better than the previous lesson?  That's when this type of praise becomes less productive.  It could mean that the student thinks to himself, "Ha!  I only had to practice once and I got away with having a nice lesson."

What this means is that the more specific the feedback, the better.  "Work" is often too vague of a word.  What specifically improved about the piece?  A good example of specific praise would be: "Nice work on those shifts.  At your last lesson you had a difficult time hitting the pitches accurately.  This week you were in tune every time."  A specific improvement is pointed out.  Even better is if the feedback can provide comparison.  Last week/month/year this was happening but now it is improved.

What I've learned is that by focusing on improvement it removes a lot of focus from the idea that something is "100% fixed."  Music is a life study, which means that we don't need to achieve robot perfection in our playing.  Our goal is to be better than we were.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Like Brushing Your Teeth

One of my teacher trainers told me that practicing should be like brushing your teeth. There is never a day when your tooth brushing is affected by other events in your day. The process is completely emotionally detached. I mulled over her words of wisdom for quite some time after she said them to me. What struck me the most was the suggestion of emotionally detaching myself. All my life I have been told that music is supposed to express emotion. So it was almost like it would be wrong to try and strip that away. For me, the teeth brushing example was a very interesting concept. I realized that the level of habitual repetition of that daily routine is rarely achieved in any other life areas. Dishes get put off, vacuuming, shopping for groceries.... but I always make the time to brush my teeth. Always making the time for practice? A lofty ideal indeed.

The Illusion of Mastery

Dr. Molly Gebrian touched on a concept called "the illusion of mastery" in her Rethinking Genius interview.   Basically, it's what psychologists call it when you do something over and over again, giving yourself a false sense of mastery. Wait... if you do something over and over again, shouldn't it be mastered? Well, not always. The true test of mastery is internalization.  If you're still having to follow the directions for how to make chicken, you haven't mastered chicken cooking.  Mastery means that you've cooked chicken so many times you're no longer worried about the basics.  It also means that you are confident enough in those basics that you are able to add extra elements with some degree of certainty.  For example, you know how the chicken should be cooked even after adding a sauce or extra seasoning. In other words: you can complete the task under pressure. The physical and psychological leap from the practice room to the stage is th

Interview with Michiko Yurko on Music Mind Games and Sight-Reading in the Suzuki Method

Welcome to Rethinking Genius, Michiko! Please introduce yourself and tell us about your company, Music Mind Games. Hi, Danielle! I am Michiko Yurko and I am the creator of Music Mind Games, a project I have been working on for 40 years. It’s been great! Music and education were important to my parents. Although they followed different professions, my father sang and my mother played the piano. I was always supported in my music and dance lessons and related activities so I have very positive memories of those years. My mom was an elementary classroom teacher and her extraordinary devotion to her students and her creativity taught me to be innovative in my own work. Music Mind Games, LLC was founded in 2005 after Warner Bros (my publisher for nearly 20 years) was sold to Alfred. Although they believed in my work and continue to publish the book Music Mind Games, Alfred said they could not afford to produce the Music Mind Games materials. My husband, Cris and I discussed all sorts o