How do you think of your students? When it comes to describing each one of your students, what words would you choose? Do you describe your students in terms of aspects like their method book level or the piece they’re working on? Or do you use descriptors that describe their progress? Things like beginner, or elementary, or advanced, etc. What would happen if we take a more personal direction? What words would we use?
Musical Persona - Let me introduce you to three of my students with a quick description of their musical persona:
- Angelica is a dynamic music maker who is thoughtful yet cautious and expressive, enjoys collaboration, and has musical interests from Clementi to jazz standards to Taylor Swift.
- Alex is another dynamic music maker. He’s amazingly curious, in particular, with finding challenging musical explorations that explore his broad musical tastes from classical composers to today’s movie themes.
- Austin is another dynamic music maker who is confident, open to feedback, and forgetful. He has wide-ranging and eclectic interests, and will take on any piece as long as he can throw 100% of himself into it.
Personalizing Student's Musical Journey - The words teachers use to describe our students are often illuminating. Of course, there’s value in keeping track of our students’ development through method books and levels. So we’ll continue to do that. My point is to highlight another way to look at our students.
I really appreciate that when we describe our students in terms of their musical persona, we open the door to personalizing their musical journey and use descriptors that invite us to teach more than the next piece or benchmark. When we choose language that honours students’ musical persona, we remind ourselves that our work is about outcomes that last far beyond any method book. It’s all about nurturing music makers who feel seen, capable, and connected to music for life.
A Meaningful Invitation - So here’s my invitation to today’s music teachers: alongside levels and benchmarks, let’s also champion the musical persona that students share with us every lesson this week and long into the future. Let’s be the generation of music teachers that always has our student’s musical persona in mind.
When you think about one student’s musical persona in your studio, what characteristics come to mind? How many of those characteristics describe who they are musically rather than where they are in a sequence or level?
How might your communication or feedback change if you intentionally taught to a student’s musical persona (curious, cautious, confident, classics, collaborative, eclectic) instead of their method book placement?
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