Thursday, January 30, 2020 by Bonnie Synhorst | Teaching & Learning

A brief note of reflection on developing planning on organizational skills through music study.  As our deadline is approaching in less than 2 days, I’ve been observing the students who have been ready with their pieces for a month or more and comparing and contrasting those to the ones that are madly trying to both complete their learning of their pieces as well as the memorization.  

It’s always interesting to me that, although all students received their music at roughly the same time, some jumped right in and worked diligently on the assigned sections, while others  missed deadline after deadline.  I know full well that some of this has been due to circumstances beyond control, but in most cases, most of the students that are behind could have hit their goals if it weren’t for a lack of personal organization and or plain and simple procrastination.

If you know that you have a child that suffers from the latter and tends to put things off until the very last minute, I have some good news and some bad news!  The good news is, they are likely highly creative and therefore also probably quite musically inclined.  The bad news is, they (much like me) prefer to do all their work in a deadline induced panic!  I have found more often than not, this is NOT the best way to go about things in the adult world---or even in the kid world when school assignments require attention.  Because of this, I’m making it one of my personal goals to help these students use their festival preparation experience to springboard them toward the next goal (Piano Guild, Student Day, or Recital), and work on personal improvement both musically as well as life skills!  Stay tuned. . . . .