It’s OK if you didn’t practice today and here’s WHY

I’ve had this situation come up every now and then with students in private lessons and in those situations, I usually would tell my students that it’s fine and okay.

As a percussion instructor, I can come up with multiple videos talking about the importance of practicing, but that’s not what the video below is about.

This video is about an example that could seem to be negative, but spinning it into a positive learning experience.

If you are a percussion instructor, it is important to always try and put a positive spin on things such as students not practicing.

It is a team effort so of course, it is important, but to help the students learn from those experiences in a positive way is what will help that situation not be as frequent.

Some people respond positively to negative feedback, but others could shut down from this approach. So it is important to not always use a negative spin on this for that reason. It could eventually turn into those students no longer having fun with drumming as a result.

The goal is always to keep everyone engaged and to have them:

Keep.

On.

Drumming.

This positive and constructive approach will help with this!

If the student or students do not practice, then try again next week and suggest starting out small by doing only 5 minutes a day and try to increase this amount gradually. Maybe the following week could be 10 minutes a day? :)

This will help things go into an upward spiral for the students instead of a negative downward spiral. A little bit of progress is always better than none at all!

So to summarize this, negative reinforcement is not the way to go about this situation. Positive reinforcement is what I believe produces the best results.

For additional perspective, make sure to watch the video below:

Karl ArrietaOctober 23, 2020