Helpful Devices for Our Pupils

by Ellen Holly

First and most important of all is the teacher's attitude toward the pupil. Have you not noticed how susceptible the young are to personal atmosphere? A pupil from six to twelve years of age will take on the temperamental condition of the teacher at the time of the lesson as surely as the daylight takes its color from the sun or the gray sky. We music teachers should have a real understanding of this point, for being alone and undisturbed for a half hour or more, the two minds and individualities have great play upon each other.

The teacher-mind will, of course, lead, but the amount of pleasure and profit arising from this lead depends upon something other than mental influence. Supposing a teacher meets her pupil on the street one of those Spring days when out-of-doors calls so enticingly to old and young, teacher and taught. The pupil is racing and romping and having a boisterous good time after having been in school all day. How does the employment she is about to offer him compare in interest with what he must leave? Is it surprising that he often comes reluctantly? The teacher must be sympathetic and not find fault with the boy even if he asks her reproachfully (as a seven-year-old pupil of mine once did) why she did not come the day before when it rained.

FOLLOW PUPILS LEAD

It is delightful the way the pupil will play into the teachers hands when she least expects it. Once I was intending to give some work in finger training and this is how it suddenly turned into a lesson in original composition.

My pupil had his pudgy little hand on the keyboard, his thumb on C, and the other fingers trying to take their position on the adjacent keys. The fingers accidentally struck C—F, C—F. He at once noticed the tunefulness of the interval and he shouted excitedly.

"Listen, listen. Isn't that a song?" I said it certainly sounded like the beginning of a song and that he made it. I suggested that he make a whole song, words and all. Nothing doubting, he said he would. He decided to sing about the wind.

"Say something about the wind" said I. Gazing off into space he repeated:

"The wind doth blow" (great relish over the doth). Then came, "The kite doth fly," and with some hesitation, "Up in the sky the blue clouds are floating." The last was changed to "The clouds are floating in the sky," and we were ready for the music. I told him to sing, "The wind doth blow instead of saying it. He sang: and with a little help the song was completed.

After the song was sung a few times, I was able to return to my plan of finger training because the youthful composer's fingers were so unsteady and uncertain he was glad to have them trained so that he could play his new song.

NO PRACTICE BETWEEN LESSONS

Not infrequently a lesson would take the following form:
"What can you do for me this time? Does Number 14 go any better?"
"Well, no it doesn't -- 'cos I forgot to practice."
"Not both days?"
"Oh, no: yesterday mother took me to town to buy a new pair of shoes. See -- russet shoes -- aren't they nice ?"
"Yes, they are nice -- but the day before yesterday you practiced, didn't you?"
"No, mother was not home, so I forgot to come in."
"Couldn't you practice little while after dinner, before bedtime?"
"Yes, I could, but father doesn't like to hear it."

0, these fathers! In what a dreadful state their nerves must be that a few minutes of that gentle little tinkling should so shatter them.

TACTFUL INSTRUCTION

Sometimes a pupil will take his seat at the piano with pouting lips and an ominous frown, and after five or ten minutes of judiciously guided work, the pout is transformed into a smile and the frown to a placid brow. This miracle can scarcely be performed by plunging at once into something that is particularly troublesome at that stage of his progress.

The teacher should avoid introducing a point that has by experience proved hard to make attractive or hard to understand, at an unpropitious moment; that is, at a lesson when the pupil is feeling dissatisfied or is for any other reason in an unreceptive mood. Also consider your own condition, for even teachers and grown-ups in general have a few rights left after the all-demanding juvenile has been given all his. So don't take up anything especially strenuous at a time when you had a hard day and your nerves feel as though they had been stretched to their limit. This may play havoc with that beautiful schedule you have made out, but schedules are something like advice in that both are more frequently thrown aside than followed when the time to act arrives. Though, expended on a plan of procedure is not wasted; it will all work out in the long run even if not "in schedule time."

DRILL-WORK MADE PLAYFUL.

As soon as the pupil is in an acquiescent state it is time to get some real work out of him. We must, perforce become a "drillmaster." The pedagogic artist cannot neglect or omit this part of the work.

Let us proceed with the mythical "Number 14" we inquired about at the beginning of the lesson. Looking back in the lesson blankbook it is seen that it was first given some time ago, but it is still in a very crude state of performance. It must be played several times in succession before any improvement is discernible, and the following device has proved helpful in holding the pupil to this continuous work. If entered into with that real game-enthusiasm upon which so much depends in dealing with children. Some thorns of tediousness will be removed, and a rose or two of fun will strew his path. Place a pencil on the keyboard five keys from the last one. Tell the child he is to play the game and you will keep score. Each time he plays the part that is being practiced you move the pencil to the next key and when it reaches the last key the goal is touched. Of course you will grow more particular as the end is nearing, and you will not move the pencil unless the playing is well done. Soon the pupil adopts this scheme and of his own volition says the move cannot be made.

One day a little girl left on my piano a tiny wooden horse about an inch long. The next child who came conceived the idea of playing the horse was five miles from home, and each time the practice bit was well done the horse moved one key and was one mile nearer home. At the fifth time playing he was placed way back on the last key and said to be home in the stall.

One boy found an image of "Foxy Grandpa" in his stocking on Christmas morning which just fitted the piano keys, and this was at once put into commission as a record keeper. Another pupil has a toy automobile the size of the width of the piano key and she uses that, calling the last key the garage. So the babies amuse themselves and are happy while working harder than they would without this play.

THE OLDER CHILD

Pupils of twelve years and older constitute a very different problem. In some particulars they are more difficult to teach than the little ones, while in other ways they are easier. At this age they can be taught technic as technic, and they begin to acquire facility and speed. The teacher can explain more freely, not having to adapt her words and ideas to the young understanding. But that watchfulness as to the right attitude of the teacher towards the pupil cannot be abated and, indeed, the older child is often harder to keep in touch with than the younger.

Physical nervousness is likely to appear and the child usually ad no knowledge how to control it and little inclination to do so. A great stock of patience and fortitude is here required of the teacher who is probably fighting obstreperous nerves of her own. For that very reason she has acquired some skill in the management of nerves in general. She must be careful not to insist too long on one point, understanding that there comes a time when all further repetition is worse than useless. The metronome must often be used sparingly with nervous pupils. If the rhythm is troublesome the teacher can count and "speak the rhythm" in a quiet tone of voice that will support the player rather than drag him along. The metronome is so aggressive and relentless it exasperates a tired child beyond endurance.

A THERAPEUTIC MUSIC LESSON

A pleasant incident of how the music lesson may avert rather than cause nervousness came under my supervision not long ago. A growing boy, developing far too rapidly, came for his lesson looking tired and worn out and he complained of a headache. I wavered as to the advisability of keeping him at work for an hour when in that condition, and then I thought I would see about the efficacy of music as a therapeutic agent. Sympathizing with the boy and assuring him that the lesson would be made as easy as possible comforted him at the start. I gave him to play a quiet piece with a gently flowing rhythm, and he, having a genuine feeling for music, was soothed as I hoped he would be. All through the lesson I selected work that was not trying to the nerves and spent part of the time in telling him facts about music he ought to know. When he bade me "Good-bye" he said his head had stopped aching entirely and he really looked rested. It was the quiet tone that prevailed and the rhythmical work he did himself that straightened out his nerves after an exciting day at school.

Has it ever occurred to you that if a pupil fails to notice what is on the printed page he will not pay much more attention to what you put there in addition? A pupil came to me who had been studying before. She brought the last piece she had played and I marveled at its appearance. Hardly a measure that had not a pencil mark on it -- a great cross over a note, a ring inclosing a note, a dash above one, a line through another, and at several places a reminder of some kink in black, red and blue pencils ! The page was a sight only equaled in its hodge-podge condition by the sounds which came forth when the piece was played. I discovered what each mark meant for at every place a mistake was made. When I asked the pupil what the marks were for she studied them some minutes and finally said she guessed she had played something wrong at those places, not in the least knowing or caring just what.

When a pupil reads a passage incorrectly it is very much better to insist upon his discovering the mistake himself. That will make more impression upon him than pencil marks of every color in the rainbow. It will conduce to make him more observant of the music page as it is printed and no danger signals obtruding themselves.

I consider the time well spent by a High School girl in discovering that she neglected to phrase correctly a certain passage. After being told there was something at fault and being answered in turn that it was not the notes, not the rhythm, not the touch, not altogether the accenting, she at last saw the phrasing indication. If I had dashed in with an ugly mark of some kind, simply telling her to notice that phrase, I doubt if she would have given it another thought.

When our pupils reach the High Scholl our real troubles begin. The girl or boy is so fascinated with the new regime at school, so impressed with the deeper studies and so delighted with the games and the school spirit that music lessons and practicing are very tame in comparison.

Their time is so occupies with the school work there is little left for practice. This is one reason why it is wise for children to begin the study of music at an early age before there are so many interests to engage their attention. The more musical ability they have acquired when they have reached the high School, the easier it is to make the music work congenial to the state of mind at that age. It ought to be possible to coordinate the music with the school studies to a certain extent.

The selection of the compositions to be studied is now especially important on account of the pupil's strong likes and dislikes. What to the teacher seems exactly in keeping with all conditions is sometimes actually distasteful to the pupil, and it is foolish to insist in such a case.