What if the most effective strategies in your teaching didn’t require new materials, new repertoire, or a ton of planning? What if effective strategies could come from doing things more intentionally? This article is inspired by a recent conversation with a music teacher colleague who highlighted two simple tools that significantly elevate the quality of teaching and the depth of student learning. They’re not new tools. They don’t require training or technology. But when used consistently, these strategies can transform how a teaching week unfolds.
Tool #1: Teach the Same Lesson All Week - Most music teachers are accustomed to tailoring lessons to each student one at a time. When each student arrives, we respond in the moment—adjusting, reacting, moving things forward as best we can. So here’s another layer we can include that involves teaching the same lesson to every one of our students for the entire week.
Instead of reinventing our entire approach for every student, we choose one overarching teaching focus. It might be: shaping phrases, improving tone production, using multiple ownership, or asking students to be the teacher. Then, we explore that same idea with every student—adjusting the level and language to match our individual students.
What I’ve noticed in my own teaching is how by the third or fourth lesson, I’ve figured out a few things that resonate with students. I’m feeling more certain about which words to use. I’ve got a sense of which demonstrations actually get the point across. Having worked with a few students, I can now anticipate student responses which make it easier to move in multiple directions.
This is such a great strategy because by the end of the week, we’re no longer “trying” to teach the concept— we actually have variations of the experience to back up how we teach. We’ve accelerated the time span for gaining experience. Our teaching improves not over months or years, but within a single week, and our students benefit immediately from that growing clarity.
Tool #2: Follow-Up - There may be few things more important for music teachers to do than following up on what we did at our students’ previous lesson. Because every time we don’t follow up on assignments from the previous week, we send a message to students that we’ll most likely soon regret - that whatever we did at their last lesson wasn’t really all that important and students didn’t need to follow up on it at home.
When teachers include follow up in each week’s lesson, we confirm that we value what students do at home. We’re interested in finding out how things turned out. We ask questions - Did students resolve what needed resolving? Did students run into more problems on their own? Did students achieve success? We return to what we assigned.
The biggest challenge with follow up may be time management during the students’ lesson period. Because, if during the previous week, we gave students a lengthy list of assignments, we may be challenged to actually follow up on that entire list at the following lesson. Which means follow up has implications for what teachers initially included in students’ assignments.
When teachers make assignments, we’re not just thinking about what students need to get on top of this week. We also need to consider how much time will it take for students to follow through at home. And how much time will it take us as teachers to follow through at their next lesson. Too many assignments, and it’s unlikely students will have time or effort to follow through at home. Too many assignments, and it’s unlikely that we teachers will have time to follow through meaningfully. In this way - follow up isn’t just a matter of what we do next week. Knowing that teachers will need to follow up next week becomes a guideline for how much teachers assign in this week’s lesson.
Bringing the Two Tools Together - It’s amazing how a quick conversation with a colleague reignited my enthusiasm for teaching the same lesson for a week and building in follow-up. When music teachers apply a focused idea across multiple students, it’s so rewarding to see how we can refine our teaching in real time. When we follow up on previous assignments, we demonstrate our accountability to students while making sure that assignments don’t disappear after a single encounter.
I appreciate that when music teachers create a teaching environment where ideas are clearer, the resulting learning is deeper, and progress more visible. And I hope that in doing so, music teaching begins to feel less rushed and more purposeful.
In a profession where it’s easy to feel stretched across dozens of students and countless details, these tools offer a way to regain focus—one week, and one idea, at a time.
What is one concept you could focus on across all students next week?
What message do your current follow-up habits send to students about the importance of their assignments?
How might combining a weekly teaching focus with consistent follow-up change the pace of your lessons?
Do you have colleagues who might appreciate reading this blog? Please feel free to share it with them.
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