T. S. Elliot stated that “the journey, not the arrival matters.“ I think we can all agree with that wonderful thought. As teachers, that is our stock-in-trade. It is what we dedicate our professional lives to. It surely describes the big picture of our time with our students. It can also describe so many aspects of our teaching. For me, it describes the relationship between rehearsals and concerts perfectly, by simply changing it to “the rehearsals, not the concert matters.” As we know, rehearsals are where growth, learning, and progress happen. Surely, we hope the concert will be successful for all those involved: the community, school, families, administration, and especially for the students, but truthfully, that “arrival” of the concert has far less to do with teaching and learning than the “journey” of those rehearsals.
Peter Loel Boonshaft, Director of Education
KHS America
The content of this Blog article or Banded Story is the intellectual property of the author(s) and cannot be duplicated without the permission of KHS America and/or the author(s). Standard copyright rules apply.
RECENT BOONSHAFT'S BLOG POSTS
#308. Why Make It Vivid?
When rehearsing an ensemble, one of the challenges is to convince our musicians that they must make the piece not only come to life, but do so incredibly vividly. The best way I have found is to ask them how many times we will rehearse a piece before a...
#307. Don’t Say A Word
I have often suggested that you should write a quote of the board at the start of a class or rehearsal, and then simply point to those words or tap on the board. I wouldn’t say a word. I would just stare at the words, and then start teaching. The following quote by...
#306. “Change The Ending”
Seemingly every day I teach, I realize something I am doing that I need to improve, correct, or completely reimagine. It might be my choice of words, the tone of my voice, my sounding exasperated, how I sequenced the material, my choice of examples, my rushing the...
We look forward to the evolution of this exciting program, and welcome feedback on how we can further enhance the work that you do in music education.
We are excited to offer your program the opportunity to join the KHS America Academic Alliance today.