This week we’re considering rationales and strategies for reinvention. Today: student needs.
If you’re lucky enough to teach or lead for a career, the students change. Their perspectives, their behaviors, their needs. We need to change with them.
These can be small incremental changes, but they aren’t always. Sometimes, they are big, grand changes that require reinvention.
In the wake of the pandemic, I found my students learned differently. Specifically, they were much less able to self-start in their personal practice without practice recordings. So I reinvented my approach to practice recordings. Rather than the occasional recording for a particular spot or difficult piece, I began providing detailed practice tracks for as much of my repertoire as I had time to make. I made them with as much live singing as I can (something I never previously considered) and provided as many different mixes as I could.
Beyond the reinvention of my perspective and plan, it required me to develop new skills, workflows, and timelines. Wholesale reinvention in service of my students’ needs.