Today, I Confess: Sometimes Lessons are TOO Familiar...
*psst! HELLO to my new friends from NCKP! ๐ I'm so glad you are here!
In his opening keynote for the NCKP Innovation Summit last week, Randy Faber talked about Familiarity Bias.
In a nutshell, our lived experiences make it difficult to see new paths forward. This is a roadblock to innovative teaching practices because we get too familiar with the lesson process and become blind to new possibilities that could benefit our students.
Many of us began living The Piano Lesson Experience from an early age. How many music lessons have you been part of in your lifetime? Surely, too many to count...
...and let's be clear here, there's no need to re-invent the wheel. Our approach to lessons does not need an entire overhaul. Your teaching is not broken. It doesn't need "fixed".
Here's what *is* important, though:
We are the exceptions. We are the ones who made music our livelihoods. We fell hard for this art and decided to spend our entire lives chasing ever-increasing standards for an instrument we will never quite "master".
For many of us, this journey was intense and filled with emotion.
But, again, we are the exceptions. The majority of our students are not coming to us for that experience.
Our logical brains know this, but sometimes that familiarity bias kicks in, leaving us building lesson experiences that were designed for us, not our students.
The question becomes: How do we facilitate quality lessons - producing capable musicians - without defaulting to our own too-familiar roadmap?
If our goal is to help students find a love for playing music that serves them for a lifetime (as many of us claim it to be!), how should the lessons we teach differ from those we took?
My current philosophy? It all comes down to PLAY.
I have an older episode on play. There's also a unit on play in The Studio Foundations Course. This is not new territory for me.
...but I have to say: immersing myself in research on the science of play for my newest presentation has blown up my familiarity bias in the most wonderful ways. ๐คฏ
The potential for true play in the context of music study is much bigger than any of us are giving it credit for.
There are many misnomers about play in our work, and I'm dispelling them one by one in my newest resource, The Paradox of Play: Taking Fun Seriously. โ
Some of you got a sneak peek at this material during the online portion of the NCKP Conference in June, but there's so much more where that came from!
Believe me when I say THIS is the content that has me excited to return to teaching this fall. ๐ค
If you'd like to join me for a fresh look at PLAY in the lesson, you can score the video and all accompanying materials for just $29 (through Friday, 08.01).
BONUS: I'm hosting a LIVE Watch Party for the video on Friday at 1:00pm, eastern time. I can't wait to receive your reactions in real time.
Get the presale discount AND the Watch Party invite when you register before Friday, 08.01.25.
โ
That's my main message for you today, teacher friends!
Regardless of whether or not you purchase the Play material, I hope you'll give serious thought to ways you might be a little too familiar with the lesson process.
๐ฅMay we choose courage to ask big-picture questions, boldly experimenting our way into a new season of teaching.๐ฅ