Teaching Philosophy

Success in trumpet playing depends on three things:  talent, intelligence, and desire.  It is my belief that students at Henderson are as talented and intelligent as trumpet students anywhere in the country.  Motivation, therefore, is the key element to their success.

Before I can begin work to this end, it is necessary to earn students' trust and confidence.  They need to know that I care for them as individuals and that I ask as much of myself as I do of them.  I learn from my students and from my own mistakes, both in playing and in teaching trumpet.  Openness with my students, sharing my failures and shortcomings with them, engenders trust.  This allows me to more openly discuss each student's strengths and weaknesses.  This feedback is put in perspective against both the minimum standards I expect and the student’s own abilities.

The uniqueness of each individual requires flexibility in motivation strategies.  Strategies for each individual must also change in response to outside pressures, such as jobs, parents, peers, other classes, etc.  I discourage students from working to please me, rather, I encourage them to excel for their own sakes.  Growing maturity levels in students require constant re-evaluation by the teacher.  Some of the various techniques I use include:
    personal pride and desire
    the need to truly excel in one area of life
    increased feelings of self-worth that come with improvement in playing
    getting the student to take responsibility for their progress
    stressing the importance of music as an art form to society
    the need to be competent for their future students and to strive to be even better than their own teachers were
    drawing parallels between:
        trumpet playing and band directing and other jobs
        trumpet playing and conducting
        learning to teach yourself and learning to teach others
        preparing for lessons and preparing for band concerts and contests
        the facts of professional life after college
        playing great music really well
        junior and senior recitals
        guest artists on campus:
            Iskander Akhmadullin (Moscow, Russia)
            Dallas Brass (three times)
            Dr. Robin Dauer (Professor of Horn, Arkansas State University)
            Sergeant Major Woody English (U. S. Army Band, "Pershing’s Own", Washington, D. C.)
            Michelle Kaminski (Dallas)
            Chuck Lazarus (Minnesota Orchestra, Dallas Brass)
            Joe Neisler (Professor of Horn, Illinois State University)
            Rhythm and Brass
            Al Vizzutti
            Dr. Laverne Wagner (Musicologist, Quincy University, retired)
        help students attend concerts off campus:  Canadian Brass, Saturday Brass Quintet, Doc Severinsen, Summit Brass, Wynton Marsalis
       

One of the realities of teaching I have had to accept is that students change with the times.  Strategies that were effective twenty-five years ago no longer work.  Recently I have begun discussions with students in this area.  As a result, I have made changes in my grading scales that have helped many students work harder.  I dislike using grades as a motivator, but they do help students keep working through slumps.

Students will rise to the level of their teacher's expectations, but an increase in standards that is too drastic will discourage many.  As my relationship with my studio has grown, I have gradually and continually raised standards of performance.  In 1994 I began development of a Course of Study to set challenging goals that could be met by hard-working, ambitious students.  Spread over nine semesters, the Course of Study takes students from the very basics to a level that would be comparable to graduate students at most schools.  Each semester lists the music to be covered; the first four semesters are also broken down into suggested weekly assignments.

I find it necessary to provide a lot of flexibility within the standards I require.  Individual preferences for styles of music and outside pressures from other classes seem to be best met by allowing students some freedom of choice within the required material.  The Course of Study increases in both technical and musical difficulty each semester.  Within each semester, however, it tends to be fairly stable.  Some exercises are short and easy to learn; others are long and of greater difficulty.  During a “rough week” students generally pick easier pieces, but they know that if they do this for several weeks they will eventually be overloaded with difficult works. 

Critical thinking is strongly encouraged in my trumpet students.  The flexibility in assignments confronts the students with many decisions, such as:  what aspects of their playing need improvement, what do they have time and motivation to accomplish within a week, are they prepared well enough to have the exercise crossed off, etc.  I point out music theory relationships when they are important to learning the piece and playing it well.  Students are encouraged to do their own analysis of the music to decrease the learning curve.