I love my job! (And I need some suggestions from teachers of any sort!)

Yay! Today, I had a couple students (I haven't taken in the big haul of them yet..I start that on June 12) and this comment was made:

"So I was using that new breathing thing you taught me and when I was in band all of the other people were like taking weird breaths and not makig it to the end of the note, and I made it to the end of the note every time! Mr. Band Director said he was impressed!"

It's SO NICE when they really latch onto something and then are really taking pride in their skills!

Today, though, I was too chatty at the lesson...I was too much in the "left brain" and felt like I didn't have her doing enough. She got braces on about 5 days ago...she's not discouraged, but she's still having some pain and obviously hasn't developed the fine muscle skill in her mouth. We worked on creating our sound like a house...starting from the foundation (abdominal resonating chamber...basically, using the abs and expanded lungs to push the diaphragm down and make room for air and resonation. I usuallytry to explain it to kids in these technical terms, and then I add an anolgy and let them feel themselves doing it with various exercises...well, tonight I stumbled all over myself! I explained it really well as I would to a fellow adult, then I fished a while before coming up with a good anaolgy (the cup filling up with water didn't work, but blowing up a beach ball then squeezing it out seemed to work) and the exercises seemed a little bit lost on her, like she wasn't making good connections.

How, I ask those of you who teach in any capacity or have taught, can you go about really driving the connections home, other than telling them? Sometimes, I feel like it gets to "talky" and their little eyes glaze over. After all, they came here to play the flute! But I want to make sure they have a good picture in their head before they do it...which usually involves the explanation, analogy and listening to me play/playing along with me. I hope to add recording the student in there, but I'm not sure how I could really make a beginning student know what they're listening for. Any ideas?

My cello teacher (way back when) is/was totally nutty, but in a good way. For example when she was teaching me how to slide between notes/shifting, she would called them vomits and basically make an umm..err...vomit sound to go with it.

Obviously almost 10 years later I still remember stuff like that from when she taught. She was an original hippy so that helped a lot too. She was able to display the passion for music that she had, along with getting the point across to me and still make me laugh during the session.

Hmmm....the only idea I had for your particular thought is that our chorus teacher used to have us all lay down on the floor and put a big text book on our stomachs and practice supporting our diaphragm that way.

As far as teaching, people learn in different ways like doing, seeing, hearing, etc. I think time will help you the most. I've been teaching for 2 years and I still have to get super creative with some students, but it's getting easier to 'feel' people out. I'd say maybe try to approach the subject in several ways (the analogy is good). Like show them the correct way and the way they are doing it by playing yourself. Not too much or they'll get intimidated most likely. Then see which ways they respond to best. No 2 students learn exactly the same so it's hard to determine what is best sometimes, but not impossible.