Zip your lips and let ’em go.
Over the past year or so, I’ve gotten to hear a lot of someone learning to sing harmony. She started out with adding high descants (like, very high), and then progressed into upper and lower harmonies. At the beginning, they were often not tied to the tonality, or struggled with intonation, or were just very repetitive and loud.
That. is. how. we. learn.
By experimenting, failing, listening, trying again.
So I kept my mouth shut. I never (ok, almost never) asked her to stop. I celebrated her when she did things that sounded nice. I complimented her on her stick-to-it-iveness.
In short, I worked very hard to do nothing that would dissuade her from trying more, learning more, getting better. Because she was deriving joy from the act, and wanted to get better.
My intervention, even with positive intent, carried the high risk of clamming her up for good.
Sometimes the best thing for a teacher to do is nothing. Just zip your lips and let ’em go.