Joe, I love this. I was thinking something like this while reading your post about negotiating relationships with coaches. There you make the (accurate) observation that you play if you're better than the other kid at your position, not if your parents have a better relationship with the coach. I was going to write about what seems a fundamental problem with this fact (that it gives the weakest kids the least time to get better), but I couldn't quite get my thoughts together. But without putting words in your mouth, I see a link between my gripes and your insight here that raising the stakes too high is exactly the wrong approach to letting young people enjoy things and take agency over their learning. I feel incredibly lucky that my 7 year old has a piano teacher who leans in to every kooky thing my daughter wants to try, learn, do. She definitely feels that getting your freak on is the key to long-term enjoyment, so they practice beethoven and taylor swift songs even though my daughter is not especially serious or focused and gets very easily distracted. She may never have a recital, but she has had a year now of feeling like playing on the piano and playing the piano are the same activity, which I hope she can keep up! PS This is Alfie.
Hey Alfie, thanks for sharing your thoughts! The observation you make is especially on my mind right now. We are in the middle of a travel softball season and the team has a girl that, over the course of the weekend (approx 4 games), saw the field for maybe three innings and only one at bat. This is what happens. The kids who need more reps get fewer. Why? I think it's pretty obvious. It's embarrassing for the coach when the kid makes a mistake and contributes to a loss (btw, we lost every game we played, so it's not like the one kid was the problem). I think the same thing holds true for our piano teacher. Recitals are public and, no matter how good of a teacher someone is, it's a very human thing to feel like it's a judgment on you when your student is out there, banging away on the wrong notes at the recital. In this sense, this coach and our piano teacher are similar in that they misunderstand these moments. I wish they could see that the games (recitals) are relatively meaningless as outcomes, but meaningful as formative learning experiences.
I love to hear that your daughter is getting a different experience! Our piano teacher thought she was incentivizing practice, but she misunderstood that casual play (and the learning that follows) is the fuel to our creative engine. Instead, it was more rote practice. That's not going to work for a lot of kids, and, I suspect, especially boys. Team Piano will look great at its next recital, but if fewer kids are interested in learning the piano, is the teacher succeeding?
Joe, I love this. I was thinking something like this while reading your post about negotiating relationships with coaches. There you make the (accurate) observation that you play if you're better than the other kid at your position, not if your parents have a better relationship with the coach. I was going to write about what seems a fundamental problem with this fact (that it gives the weakest kids the least time to get better), but I couldn't quite get my thoughts together. But without putting words in your mouth, I see a link between my gripes and your insight here that raising the stakes too high is exactly the wrong approach to letting young people enjoy things and take agency over their learning. I feel incredibly lucky that my 7 year old has a piano teacher who leans in to every kooky thing my daughter wants to try, learn, do. She definitely feels that getting your freak on is the key to long-term enjoyment, so they practice beethoven and taylor swift songs even though my daughter is not especially serious or focused and gets very easily distracted. She may never have a recital, but she has had a year now of feeling like playing on the piano and playing the piano are the same activity, which I hope she can keep up! PS This is Alfie.
Hey Alfie, thanks for sharing your thoughts! The observation you make is especially on my mind right now. We are in the middle of a travel softball season and the team has a girl that, over the course of the weekend (approx 4 games), saw the field for maybe three innings and only one at bat. This is what happens. The kids who need more reps get fewer. Why? I think it's pretty obvious. It's embarrassing for the coach when the kid makes a mistake and contributes to a loss (btw, we lost every game we played, so it's not like the one kid was the problem). I think the same thing holds true for our piano teacher. Recitals are public and, no matter how good of a teacher someone is, it's a very human thing to feel like it's a judgment on you when your student is out there, banging away on the wrong notes at the recital. In this sense, this coach and our piano teacher are similar in that they misunderstand these moments. I wish they could see that the games (recitals) are relatively meaningless as outcomes, but meaningful as formative learning experiences.
I love to hear that your daughter is getting a different experience! Our piano teacher thought she was incentivizing practice, but she misunderstood that casual play (and the learning that follows) is the fuel to our creative engine. Instead, it was more rote practice. That's not going to work for a lot of kids, and, I suspect, especially boys. Team Piano will look great at its next recital, but if fewer kids are interested in learning the piano, is the teacher succeeding?