In watching a documentary on the work of Albert Cullum, a brilliant teacher in the 1950’s who used fun as the basis of his amazingly successful teaching techniques, I was struck by something he said.
One day, early in his teaching years, he was using the same old methods, teaching more or less by rote. He looked at the kids and suddenly realized, “I’m not having any fun with this, and if I’m not having fun, these kids can’t be either.”
This moment was the basis for his decision to seek teaching techniques that would enliven and inspire both teacher and student.
Using the credo, “It has to be fun,” he embarked on an exploration of how to make children really interested in the subjects they were forced to learn.
His ideas were wildly creative. To teach about weather patterns, he had kids outside the classroom window feeding a huge roll of butcher paper through the window to the kids inside, who took the paper and held it aloft as they danced around the room. Cullum made these kids feel the excitement of the wind, and as a prelude to learning about weather it was a brilliant and successful stroke of teaching.
My students have fun at their piano lessons. I mean hilarious, rollicking, boisterous fun. Or as fun as one can make a piano lesson.
After watching the Cullum documentary, I realized that I had stumbled onto exactly the same ideas in the same way: teaching the old methods, I had resolved to engage the student in a way that captivated them as much as the piano captivates me.
The one principle that seemed to work in all situations was to studiously observe the reaction of the child you are teaching. For example, a sighing, tentative student is telling you that you are going way too fast and are no fun.
A laughing, animated child is ready to learn anything.
The solution is to make the task so simple that it becomes a ridiculous game, a game that anyone can master. Then you add another game to that, then another one to that, and sooner later you have a child playing a scale, or with the perfect hand position, or mastering the idea of using the five fingers as a group.
Thus your job as piano teacher is to discover how many little games a complex piano movement must be broken down into.
The fun comes from the ease of each component game.
For example, suppose you’re trying to teach fingering to a five year old, and the going is tough. You can tell this by the child’s reaction: sluggish, resistant.
The reason it’s tough is that you’re going far too fast. The child can’t understand using ONE finger, much less THREE, or FIVE.
Resolve to teach the first three fingers.
Start with the thumb. Let them play everything possible with their thumb. If they lay it flat, laugh and call it a “bug crusher.” Comically point out how silly a thumb looks mashing each note by itself. You’re not disapproving, you’re observing. That’s game one.
Then play games with the index finger. Have them play every C with their index finger; make up games using the deadly pointy finger. That’s game two.
They’re becoming aware of the unique quality of each finger.
Now put their thumb on Middle C and have them play C and then the note to right of it with their index finger. In PIANO BY NUMBER this would be 1 2. Basically you are trying to get the child to start with the thumb and rock the hand so it then plays the key next to it with the index finger. That’s game three.
Kids will get this quickly and go off wildly, “walking” around the piano keys with those two fingers (thumb, index) in the sequence described above.
You now have a kid who has had fun discovering his fingers, and how they can go in a certain order, or not. This child is a much better candidate to try to learn more of the endless complexities of fingering, especially if he is smiling and happy.
I let myself have fun teaching this, and the child can feel it. I frankly don’t care how ridiculously small a piece I break a piano motion into. If I see the child stumble, I break it down further.
It’s not about my curriculum, it’s about the child’s reaction to my curriculum.
A child who has had fun learning something will never forget it.
