Reprinted from the Rutgers Music Education Newsletter, Spring 2001 issue
Support the Arts at the Local Level … Listen to your child PRACTICE!
by
Cecil Adderley III
As music educators prepare students to perform as individuals, or with others in an ensemble setting, we also seek the assistance of another important group of teachers that will help each student musician reach for the next level of excellence. This group of teachers is the parents.
On a daily basis, music students are provided with appropriate instruction by their music teachers and are encouraged to practice select passages of material in order to refine their musical skills. Although the average teacher spends a significant portion of his/herday instructing learners, it is crucial that other means of educational support are provided. This support of the arts should come at a local level — at home, from parents.
If a team effort is employed by both the music learner and parents, then a greater focus is brought to the child’s learning experience in his/her music class. Nothing motivates music students more than knowing that their parent(s) care about their efforts and the quality of their work. Many parents provide encouragement to the young music learner or beginner, but as the years pass, so do the cheers of exhilaration. Some students need to hear continuous words of comfort, much like the parents of River City, Iowa, in Meredith Wilson’s "The Music Man" provided their children with cheers of praise in the final scenes of the musical as the band played for the first time in the city square. I firmly believe that if more parents listened to their children practice throughout the K-12 musical experience, then they would have a better understanding of what the child is learning in the classroom.
As parents listen to their children practice, they are quite capable of providing a great deal of encouragement and stimulation. Local evaluation of the practice session can create a prime opportunity to share with their child and build memories that will last a lifetime. It is shameful that many students enrolled in the music classes of our schools prepare music for months and cannot remember the last time they were provided with encouragement from their parents. An even worse case is that many cannot remember having had a parent listen to what they were practicing or even attend one of their performances at the secondary level. We must realize that students are aware when select teachers are not mindful of their efforts and that they are especially perceptive of the projected insignificance of these efforts when others do not recognize them.
Some parents are doing a wonderful job of supporting the arts in their schools and providing their child not only with the needed encouragement to succeed, but also providing praise to many of the other participating students. If more parents do not take the time to listen to their children practice and perform, then what value will the child place on their contribution to the arts? Often times the only thing students need is an enthusiastic parent that supports their artistic efforts, and praise so that they feel a need to strive for the next level of achievement.
As students continue to enroll in music classes let us not forget to remind parents of their important role in their child’s K-12 music experience. It may take years of parental guidance, encouragement, and time to see the progress a student musician can make, but only a moment for a child to decide to discontinue music instruction when they begin to believe that their efforts are not worthy of attention.