The pIANO OLYMPICS
When I was a fresh, new teacher, I told myself: “I will never do fancy and complicated rewards systems! It’s too much work and I don’t like rewards!” Anyways, here’s my fancy rewards system for the 2024-2025 year!
To reward or not to reward?
The New Yorker cartoon by Amy Hwang.
There’s a lot of debate concerning rewards in the education world. Generally, extrinsic rewards (i.e. if you do this, you’ll get that) are not best practice because they can hinder, creativity, long-term thinking, and overall performance. They are also unsustainable over time, and can actually become addictive (Pink 57). Ideally, students are intrinsically motivated—they do things for the inherent enjoyment, satisfaction and interest that an activity sustains.
In a perfect world, putting in the work required to become an accomplished pianist would always be enjoyable and interesting. Drive would come effortlessly, without ebb, for everyone. Beautiful music alone would be enough to motivate us into countless hours of practice and unwavering dedication! But this is simply not reality. Not even for me, the teacher!
The truth is that learning is not always fun, nor can it be fun every single moment of every lesson or practice session. Sometimes learning is uncomfortable. Sometimes keeping up with goal-directed habits is hard, especially when you’re a kid. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep the end goal in sight. This is where I believe the judicious use of rewards to be appropriate. Giving extrinsic rewards for the not-always-as-fun tasks pushes students nearer to the intrinsic reward of musicking: experiencing the confidence, exhilaration, and absolute joy that comes with achieving difficult things. Those positive feelings motivate students to continue putting in the work, creating a cycle of success that ultimately becomes the reward.
With all this in mind, my goal is to create rewards systems that:
Encourage depth of knowledge and mastery, which allow students to experience the intrinsic joy of making music.
In this vein, my year-long studio incentives always use a spiral approach.
Can be individualized to each student’s strengths and pace while still being a clear and fair system.
Foster confidence and allow students to see and reflect on their progress.
Are a realistic blend of long-term and short-term challenges.
Don’t provide instant gratification.
And thus is born the studio incentive I construct each year. This year, it’s the Piano Olympics!
Five Pillars of Musicianship
This year’s incentive focuses on growing five fundamental skills students need to be good pianists. Not every skill develops at the same time or at the same rate, but this system is structured in a way that follows the trajectory most elementary-level students (who are practicing well!) will make over the course of an academic year. It also highlights how all the pillars are interdependent. For example, we can’t improve our technique if we don’t practice it. There is a simplified version for very young students, but the five pillars remain a common thread.
1. Practicing
Practicing is a skill in itself, which can be honed over time. The amount of time we practice, how much time we allow to elapse between practice sessions, and how we structure our practice all impact how quickly we improve.
2. Aural Skills
Aural skills involve training our ears to not just to hear, but to understand music, develop our inner hearing, make musical predictions, and describe what we hear using musical terms.
3. Technique
Good playing technique equips us with the toolbox of pianistic touches and gestures we need to make our music sound the way we want it to (or the way a specific musical style deems appropriate).
4. Reading/Music Theory
Reading music is a long, careful, and systematic process. Reading music efficiently requires making a connection between the notated music, how the music will sound and—for pianists, at least—how playing the music will feel under the fingers. Music theory, simply put, includes the building blocks, structures, and rules that govern music.
5. Creativity
Creativity is a cornerstone of my entire teaching philosophy and purpose. Without it, life is just boring. Creativity is a thought process, not something we are born with or without. Students can learn creativity, and it’s an expectation in my studio that students will consciously grow their creative skills just as they would music reading or music theory skills.
How it works
Each pillar contains three tiers of tasks worth one, two, and three points, respectively. Most tasks build upon each other in length and difficulty. Students can track their progress by filling in bubbles on Task Tracker pages.
Students are grouped into three teams. At the end of the school year, every member of each team will win prizes based on how their team ranked. Any student, regardless of team, who earned a Gold ranking will also get to attend a special party at the end of the year.
Any student who has reached the Bronze ranking by the end of the fall term will earn a special treat at the Winter Recital.
The Junior League, comprised of the very youngest students, has their own points and rewards systems so that older, more experienced students do not have an unfair advantage.
Pink, D. H. (2011). Drive. Canongate Books.