If you are a musician reading this book, you will probably find something of yourself here. If you are an educator, a music director, a conductor, or any title that causes you to interact with musicians, either amateur or professional, you will find somebody you know in this book, maybe even yourself. Just take a moment to think back over your own years of training. As your training progressed, did you have any difficulties? Or are you the person I’ve been seeking who had the perfect musician’s life, born with gifts in full bloom, no unseen obstacles, adored and recognized, fulfilled…?
Most of us will respond to the pondering by dragging up something not so nice, or maybe even awful. It isn’t because your teachers were uncaring.
It is just that teachers teach what they know, and for the most part teachers teach in their own learning style. As students become performers, they practice what they know, and for the most part they practice what they learned. If that sometimes turns out to be inadequate, where do they go for help? For example, do you know how to recognize and adapt to different learning styles? What happens when your natural skill at connecting to a student is frustrated, no matter how you try? What tools do you use to enhance your student’s ability to generate peak performance skills whenever they need to? What if you had a surefire process for helping a student/performer to relinquish a death grip on a painful performing experience?
Written by Susan Bruckner