Nate Zeisler
Five years ago, the Colburn School asked a fundamental question: How do we prepare conservatory students for careers in the 21st century? There were many suggestions put forward, but one idea kept rising to the top. Professional musicians entering the work field, the group agreed, must also be great teachers.
“Regardless of career path, musicians of the 21st century will always teach,” said Colburn Conservatory of Music Dean Richard Beene. “It is our responsibility to prepare students at the conservatory for a variety of careers in classical music, and teaching is a skill we hope all of our students acquire during their time at the Colburn School.”
With the priority set, a program to foster strong teaching skills in our students began to take shape in spring 2012. With generous support from the Max H. Gluck Foundation, the Colburn School launched the inaugural Colburn Teaching Fellows program.
Led by visiting faculty Dr. Robert Duke, preeminent leader in the psychology of music education, the Teaching Fellows Program enables conservatory students to hone their skills as studio teachers.
“Most teacher training programs focus on creating student-teacher experiences that are positive, with an emphasis on the child truly enjoying the art form. While this is important, children must also experience excellence and artistry in what they do,” Dr. Duke said. “The Teaching Fellows course challenges the assumption that kids aren’t capable of performing music beautifully.”
Dr. Duke believes lowered expectations can result in lower impact. “There is often a ready acceptance that children will play poorly for a long time before they develop some type of skill. The goal for our class is to change that assumption by developing in our conservatory students the skills to enable musicians, even beginners, to play simple things beautifully—not beautifully ‘for a kid’ but beautifully, period.”
The Teaching Fellows class meets every spring for 16 weeks. The Colburn School provides free weekly private lessons taught by Teaching Fellows to music students from local public schools who would not otherwise be able to afford instruction. In addition to weekly class meetings, the Teaching Fellows record their lessons and conduct systematic analyses of their teaching through a technology tool called Scribe 4. Scribe 4 enables conservatory students to play back each lesson and make observations about their teaching. The program then distills the lesson down to a few key moments of student driven analysis, which the students review with Dr. Duke. Collectively, our students provide over 200 hours of private teaching to children each semester.
The Teaching Fellows course has become a cornerstone of community engagement and career development programming. The Colburn School has developed four principles that guide the program:
Help students become great teachers. Our goal is to provide opportunities that enable our students to hone their skills as studio teachers, sectional coaches, and as presenters in performances. Our fellows have the tools to include teaching as a core component of what they do for a living.
Help students engage with their community. Regardless of where they live after graduation, engagement through teaching puts their name, or the name of the ensemble to which they belong, out into the broader community around them.
Make the class action based and experiential. Students learn skills more deeply when they are actively participating in a class. We have embedded this class within our humanities curriculum, as it ties the discipline and history of teaching with experiential learning, enabling our students to develop the tools necessary to be successful teachers.
Instill a whole-musician mentality. Exploring the profession beyond the concert stage is a huge component of becoming a whole musician. The conservatory provides opportunities in entrepreneurship, career development, teaching, and community engagement that unlock students’ full potential as artists.
Since its inception, 61 students have taken part in this course with 21 student alumni serving as ambassadors to the program, many of whom continue to teach. In just five short years, the Conservatory of Music has made great strides in developing the next generation of great teaching artists. We look forward to many more years of developing this very important skill set in the finest classical musicians of this generation.
