My Magic Pointer

I read a Scholarly Pedagogical Article recently about the timing, content and degree of  teacher feedback found to be most helpful in facilitating learning, independent learning in particular.  There were charts and stuff and everything.  The gist of it though was that to comment too much, too often and too soon is one of the primary hallmarks of unskillful teaching.

Fortunately for me, pretty much all my students are quite forthcoming about how annoying it is when I over-participate.  Even the more subtle ones tend to swing their legs in frustration over something as benign as my offering to point with my magic pointing baton at those notes on the page which are mysteriously invisible to all eyes but mine.

"Ms. Alison!", they protest, "I know how to do it myself!".  And if I ask them a particularly relevant question such as "are you sure that is your left hand third finger and is it really on C", they invariably correct it with much more grace than if I just tell them it is incorrect (and point, annoyingly).  I always find it hilarious when they insist they WERE doing that, to which I can only reply "I must be going deaf" and/or "I guess I need new glasses".  This is invariably taken as the honest truth which is even more amusing.

Anyway, this oblique approach not only facilitates a useful (and entertaining) flow of information in both directions, it saves me from crouching over the student in question, pointing at every single note and possibly also singing the note names for them while tapping the beat AND continually correcting their hand position.  This is bad for morale and hell on the back, but exactly what I see the vast majority of my colleagues doing at work.  Except for one guy who cunningly sits behind the student and I swear is fiddling with his iPhone behind the friendly shelter of a music stand.

It is very difficult to refrain from interjection in those moments that feel like forever, when it would be so much easier to just say "no, it should be this".  In my most desperate moments I must even fight the urge to just pick up their tiny hands and put them in the right place.  However, the better I become at waiting and watching, giving them the time and space to determine for themselves if they do in fact need some help, the more I realize that the student will almost always figure it out.  Some of them must be forced to do so by my unhelpful silence.  At the beginning they tend to figure it out verrrry sloooowly and need lots of hints.  But soon all it will take is an innocuous "if I'm not going deaf, I think I heard something you need to double check in measure 11".  And hey presto, without even having to wave my magic pointing baton. 

It's too bad they're not into that, really, as it has the capacity to make showers of glitter stars, rainbows and particularly delicious candy unicorns.  All the more for Ms. Alison.