One of the hardest aspects of being a teacher is remembering the difficulty of first learning something that now comes so easily to us. Something that we probably found so difficult when we first learned it. Breaking down a technique we have mastered, a skill we do without even thinking about it, or recalling a set of facts we know like the back of our hands, into the small – manageable – parts that are essential for our students to learn those very things, is quite possibly one of the greatest gifts a teacher possesses. Remembering all the while the words of Mark Twain: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
Peter Loel Boonshaft, Director of Education
KHS America
About the Author
Dr. Boonshaft is the author of the critically acclaimed best-selling books Teaching Music with Passion, Teaching Music with Purpose, and Teaching Music with Promise. Dr. Boonshaft is currently on the faculty of Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, where he is Professor of Music and Director of Bands. He has also been named Director of Education for KHS America. He was honored by the National Association for Music Education and Music For All as the first recipient of the “George M. Parks Award for Leadership in Music Education.”
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