Case Study Jessica #2

I was surprised to see a smile on Jessica’s face when she walked in the door. It was a smile that indicated she was not going to be difficult to work with today. As she sat down to begin, I did not sense the usual attitude of resistance from her. I wasn’t sure why, but the push and pull tension was not present. She did not show an explicit excitement about being here for her lesson, but she demonstrated a sense of contentment in being here to do the best she could in the time we had. Overall, she was quite responsive to my teaching today.

Last week, Jessica was not interested in making her own decisions for choosing the pieces she would play for me. This week, I asked her for her input, but I ultimately made the decisions for which exercise or piece to work on next, etc. As I did, she jumped right in and began to play.

She warmed up with scales, chords, and arpeggios in G minor. I helped her adjust her fingering, and gave her pointers on how to relax as she played her arpeggios. Moving to the next key, I asked her to try her scales, chords, and arpeggios in E flat Major, and it became obvious that she had not practiced them. So, I re-introduced her to the key of E flat Major. After spending two minutes on it, however, I noticed her attention wavering. In order not to push her into her resistant territory, I said, “let’s come back to this.” Then, we jumped into Clowns to work on putting hands together and speeding up the tempo. Her attitude was great. She had practiced hands alone during the week, and while her tempo needed much work, we isolated a few sections of the piece to work on coordinating rhythm for hands together. Upon my recommendation, she agreed upon the spots she will isolate in her practice for the coming week.

Next, I brought out Medieval Sand Castle. I knew it might have been a sore spot in our teacher-student relationship, but I wanted to see how she responded to the assignment to make up a dance for the piece. Even though she loves dancing, last week she was closed, unresponsive and hesitant to move across the floor to the music. I was very curious to see if she might have loosened up this week.

First, I had her play through the piece. We identified the single area needing the most work. In one of the difficult measures, she needed to pay attention to fingering details. I asked her to look at the spot where the fingering changed and play it a few times to feel the switch. Thinking about her interests and her sensory learning style, I asked her to stand up and create a dance movement for that measure by changing feet or changing her body movement on the beat that the fingering changed. Then as I continued to play, she choreographed her own ballet dance to the whole song. Afterward, I had her teach the dance to me. Then, she played the song and I did the dance she taught me.

There is a new sense of excitement in her for this song. Now, I hope that she will make the connection to work on the technical improvements necessary for polishing the piece. Hopefully, there will no longer be a recurring resistance to learning it! We’ll see if she will be willing to memorize it within the next couple of weeks?

I started her on a new song this week: “Snoopy,” from the Celebration Series Curriculum, Book 3. She took interest in it from the start.

Fur Elise: her tempo has improved and she is more aware of the 3/8 meter as she plays.