Fun at Paisley

Author: Sarah Smith

I have been working at Paisley Middle school giving lessons to the horn and trumpet students. I have absolutely loved working with these kids. When I arrive for service, the first lesson I get to teach is a single horn student (in the other periods I usually teach group lessons). This student is quite shy, and the only horn student in his class. He has taken a while to warm up to me and even still he is very soft spoken when answering direct questions. But I have loved getting to teach him because, even without much formal training, he is quite the little horn player with a lot of potential. He is also, usually, very open and receptive to my suggestions and will sometimes even offer up his own ideas as well.

For example I put a lot of emphasis on singing the music that you are playing, This can be helpful in many ways. For one it helps you internalize how the notes and rhythms sound without making your face too tired. However, this student is very uncomfortable singing and simply will not create sound with his voice when I ask him to. Instead he asked me if he could whistle his music. I let him try it and he whistled it perfectly, he hit all of the notes. I was really pleased with his compromise because it is similar to singing because he is able to create the correct pitches so that when he goes back to the horn he has all of the notes internalized, and he is a really good whistler.

This was a good lesson for me as a teacher. Sometimes listening to your students can be the best thing for them because they can show the ways in which they like to learn and then they will learn better.