October 7, 2025: Tuesday Upbeat
Teachers: Happy Tuesday!
We Do Not Ask Students If They Practiced
We do not ask students if they practiced. Ever. This is a studio Golden Rule. Please repeat this rule until it becomes your mantra, too! “We do not ask students if they practiced.”
It is very important that all teachers understand that this is not a suggestion or a recommendation. This is a mandatory studio policy that all teachers must follow. In relation to not asking students if they practiced, we:
- Do not make them feel guilty for not practicing - Do not tell them something is or will go wrong or bad if they don't practice - Do not shame them for not practicing - Do not tell their parents anything about them not practicing - Do not make them feel bad for not "being prepared for their lesson" or anything along those lines - Do not threaten them with negative consequences for not practicing, including not being ready for recitals or other things
What we do is nurture students in lessons, and help them have positive, rewarding, and joyful experiences while learning music, at their own pace -- whatever that pace is, even if it is "very slow" by our own standards.
You may have longstanding beliefs about practice. Teaching at our studio may require some teachers to set aside some of those beliefs while teaching students at our music school. Our Golden Rule comes from much experience, research, and thought about healthy music learning and positive student-teacher relationships.
Asking students if they practiced is a kind of passive-aggressive belittling. It accomplishes nothing positive, but can cause much that is negative. It can seed unhappiness and resentment over long periods of time. Even if the student did practice (yay!), it's still judgmental. Being judgmental is fundamentally in opposition to our studio/school philosophy and culture.
So... We do not ask students if they practiced!
Notes:
If a teacher cannot tell whether a student practiced, the teacher should develop their skill in this regard.
If a teacher needs a student to practice in order to make progress, the teacher should develop better teaching skills in this regard. We operate under this belief: That if a student is not making progress, it is not because they're not practicing, it's because the teacher is not properly teaching or using effective teaching strategies and methods in their lessons. Placing the burden onto the student is simply attempting to shift away responsibility. Essentially making the student teach themselves. Student blame is not an effective teaching strategy.
We teach 60 minute lessons intentionally so that every lesson is an opportunity to practice with the student. All students will make progress no matter how much they do or do not practice at home. If you would like some teaching strategies, ideas, and encouragement for how to teach students who never practice, please ask me!
The best way to encourage students to practice is to encourage them to perform at recitals, and come to Forum. Students will naturally prepare to perform. Even still, the encouragement should be gentle and nurturing, and not negative. For example, we allow students to perform partially-learned music at recitals. Our recitals are about music-making, not succeed-or-fail high stakes events.
Please follow the Golden Rule and make this mantra a part of your firm belief system and teaching philosophy:
We do not ask students if they practiced! 🙂
Have a magical Tuesday, a musical week, and enjoy happy, healthy and tension-free teaching and learning with your students.
Thank you,
Dennis Frayne
"Dr. Dennis"
Laguna Niguel School of Music
Dennis Frayne Music Studios
30110 Crown Valley Pkwy, Suites 105/107/108
Laguna Niguel, CA 92677
(949) 844-9051 (office cell)
(949) 468-8040 (personal cell)
www.lagunaniguelschoolofmusic.com
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