Keep Students Motivated by Helping them See their Progress

Last week I started a new blog series about keeping students inspired and motivated. You can read the first post in the series HERE.

In that article I outlined three things students need to stay motivated and inspired including seeing progress, feeling capable, and finding joy in the process. Today we’re focusing on the importance of helping students see their progress!

Students stay engaged & motivated in the process of learning their instrument by being able to see that they are, in fact, making progress.

Practicing is hard. It takes a huge amount of concentration, discipline, and persistence to get it done everyday. It’s just human nature to feel like it is not worth it if we can’t see some kind of tangible progress along the way!

Practice Parents:

You are the one who practices with your child everyday, you have a huge impact on helping your child see their own progress. Especially for very young students, we as adults need to notice and point out the progress that is happening in order for our children to see it and stay motivated to keep going.

Look Back to See How Far You’ve Come

Turn back in your your notes from lessons, or your assignment sheets, to six months ago or twelve months ago.

What was your child working on?

How far have they come?

What used to be hard for them that now comes easily?

What new music have they learned?

More importantly – how have they improved at playing their instrument? What progress can you see in tone, playing in tune, and posture?

How has their attitude or willingness to practice improved?

Note: You may look at some of these categories and think that there hasn’t been any improvement over the last number of months. It’s ok if you just see improvement in one area. Focus on that! Progress is progress.

If we point out the improvements that we see our students and children have made and remind them about how far they have come, it goes a long way towards keeping motivation alive.

Take every chance you can to point out progress you see to your child, so they start to take notice of it as well.

As teachers it’s important that we do this in lessons too. It is easy to get so focused on the week’s assignment and the upcoming concert preparation that we forget to say “Wow! Remember when that thing was really hard for you? Look how easy it is now!”

Doing something hard and getting better at it is motivating.

Doing something hard that we never get better at, or that never gets easier, is not.

Get an Outside Perspective

Sometimes it takes someone who doesn’t see our child every day, or every week to see progress.

Have you ever had a friend or relative remark how tall your child has gotten or how much older they look and it takes you by surprise? When we see something everyday, it’s hard to notice the changes happening right in front of us.

Get a fresh perspective by doing things like:going to institutes each summer, watching old videos of our children performing, getting involved in community workshops and events where we (teacher, parent, & student) can see from year to year how far we have come.

Let’s help keep our children and students motivated by regularly checking in and helping them see their improvements.

Playing an instrument involves always striving to get better, but it can also include a feeling of excitement as things get easier and as we learn to play better.

Let’s help foster that in every child we practice with!

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