Here is a question I got from Marianne:
“Anselma, what would you do if you had a student that wants to quit playing the paino because she feels totally overwhelmed by life’s duties. She has been my piano student for 5 years. She feels a lot of pressure in school and from her ambitious mother.
Her mother wants her to pass a grade exam in piano before she quits. This girl would have to play 4 pieces from 4 different epochs but she barely manages coordinated playing with two hands.
I am at my wit’s end. Do you have any idea what I could do to motivate her?”

This is a great question and I feel that every teacher at some point in their career came across a situation like this.>>

Recently we went to a little town to visit a beautiful Austrian Hot Spring Spa. When we were back on our way home we went to the local train station. To our surprise there was no schedule anywhere that told us, when the next train would leave.

We looked around – outside of the train station building, we went inside.
There was NO schedule, NO timetable for the trains.

We were amazed how this is possible! We wanted to go by train, everything was there, a train station, a train station building – but no information about the schedule and when the next train would leave.>>

Everybody has a treasure inside. We can not see this treasure and so we sometimes forget that it is even there. But regardless if we notice it or not, this treasure is our very nature, our essence.

Carl Gustav Jung said the only relevant task in life is to create a relationship with the own inner Self.
And this makes sense to me. Musicians know this truth more than anybody else.

Music that has the capacity to touch others has to be done with the Self.
If music does not come from this inner Self, it is empty and meaningless to others.>>

Many years ago, at the University I sat in classes for pedagogics and what I learned there was: the best way to teach children is “constructive criticism”.
Basically a “that was great BUT…”-way of teaching.

When I started teaching I found something drastically different and well, I noticed that this idea is completely wrong.

What I found was that children are like traffic lights – for pedestrians. Green or red light.
Think of babies. Green light and RED light. They let you know when they get uncomfortable – whether you desire to know it or not.>>

What is more important: that what IS or that that SHOULD be?
Is or should?

When we educate or teach children we have to find out what supports them most.
Because they are not perfect in what they are doing, they come to us to learn.

Should we give them a realistic picture of where they are and pronounce the IS state?
– Too much realism sometimes seems pretty demotivating…
Or should we put the focus on what lays ahead of them and on where they should be?
Shall we point to the dangling carrot before their eyes that pushes them forward?
– This could be demotivating too because nobody likes to be pushed.>>

Recently I learned a lesson about dealing with people who stress me out.
Thinking that someone is a jerk, a person that said something hurtful or that acted in an uncaring way is an easy thing to do.
We all do it from time to time.

I have seen two very extreme and opposite ways to handle a socially uncomfortable situation.
We feel hurt as a reaction on someone’s behavior. Now we
1.) tell ourselves that we would NEVER EVER be like this.>>

I recently came across this quote by the famous American author Peter Drucker
“Management is doing things right, Leadership is doing the right things.” – and I loved it!

When we are teaching, we are changing people. We are changing how they see things, how they feel about certain things, how they behave and sometimes, when we do it right, we change who they believe to be.>>

There is the regular and there is the luxury version.
Sometimes there is the regular, the fake version and (when you are in China next door, side by side) the luxury version of a thing.

A purse or a shoe.
Or a scarf with a characteristic pattern or a boot in some ugly colour such as yellow.

First we just have the need. After our basic needs are met, we expand our need and we go for the luxury edition.
In case we can’t afford it, maybe we buy the fake thing and tell ourselves it is almost like the luxury edition.>>

Here is the brutal truth: Teaching is hard!
Why?
Because people don’t do what teachers want them to do.
They do something else – or even worse – they do nothing ;o)

The funny thing is I have a degree in music pedagogics but in all my academic studies I did not find any solution to this significant problem.>>

Did you ever hear the saying:
“When you have managed to ride a bycicle, you will never forget it.”

This analogy is often given to express that once we learned certain things, we have achieved something for life. We figured something out and this will serve us for the rest of our life.

Well, this is a very nice idea. BUT. Something clearly is missing in this.>>