Some of the best teaching I’ve ever done has been in bringing my students to a concert.
When students hear high-level versions of what they’re working on, so many lessons get driven home. A concept I’ve been working on for months becomes instantly understandable because they’ve heard it done right. I drove the point home simply by letting them hear someone else do it.
We teach practice – repeating a skill until we’ve mastered it. But what about showing students what a mastered skill looks like?
I think that idea could work far beyond music performance; there are analogs in every educational discipline for showing students what it looks like to do well what they’re trying to do.