Beth Bauer received her doctorate of music education from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Her dissertation is titled "What is an appropriate approach to piano instruction for students with Down syndrome?" Additional degree work includes a Master of Music from Northern Illinois University where she studied with Bill Koehler, and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music where she was a student of Daniel P. Horn. Additional pedagogy instruction occurred with Karin Edwards, Larry Rast, and Karen Taylor. Currently, she is an instructor in pedagogy at the Wheaton College Conservatory where she teaches Introduction to Pedagogy, Studio Administration, Group Instruction, and Music to Special Learners and oversees pedagogy student teachers and music internships. In addition to her faculty work in the Conservatory, Dr. Bauer is the founder and coordinator of Beethoven's Buddies, a music program for students with developmental and intellectual delays, at the Community School of the Arts, Wheaton College and teaches precollege piano to beginning through advanced students in the Community School of the Arts. Prior to her work at Wheaton College, Dr. Bauer was a visiting guest instructor in music education at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. She also was the assistant to the director and an instructor in the Young Pianists Program at Indiana University. Additional positions included the Education Director at the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic and the Program Director at the Suzuki-Orff School for Young Musicians in Chicago. Her work with students with special needs has been featured in The Chicago Tribune, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, the Indiana University Alumni Magazine, and the Wheaton College Alumni Magazine. Publications include articles in Clavier Companion, the Philosophy of Music Education Review, and the Manitoba Registered Teachers' Association. She chairs the Special Education Research Committee for the National Conference of Keyboard Pedagogy. Dr. Bauer is a sought after clinician and speaker to professional teacher's organizations, national conferences, and parent groups. She has been teaching piano for 20 years and working with students with special needs for 14 years.
Beth Bauer
Conservatory of Music
Wheaton College
501 College Avenue
Wheaton, IL 60187
630.752.5098
beth.bauer@wheaton.edu
When I started teaching piano to students with special needs, I had no background in special education. I began working with this population recuperating from surgery on my left ulnar nerve as a result of too much piano practicing. Following the surgery, I returned back to graduate school and was informed that I needed to write a research paper during the last semester of my Master's degree. I decided to research and test out whether or not a high functioning student with Down syndrome could learn to play the piano. At the end of the semester, the student accompanied me to the class and played two pieces for the class. This led to further research in special education and music education and the pursuit of a doctorate in music education. My dissertation is entitled, "What is an appropriate approach to piano instruction for students with Down syndrome?". Following graduation, I began teaching in a community music school where I was asked to start a music program for students with developmental delays. This led to the start of "Beethoven's Buddies" and speaking to parent groups for children with disabilities, to MTNA teacher's groups, and to National Conferences. Currently, I oversee music internships and pedagogy student teachers at a college while also coordinating and teaching in the Beethoven's Buddies program and instructing precollege piano students. The studio is fully integrated and all students participate in the yearly recitals, competitions, and service projects. Since the beginning of this journey in 1996, I have taught over 50 students with different disabilities including: Down syndrome, autism, Fragile X, dyslexia, ADHD, vision impairments, and hearing impairments.
When I started this journey, it was overwhelming, but I soon realized that what I was learning was having a profound impact on my overall teaching strategies. It also brought a new level of joy and acceptance to the students who were making a radical impact on my life. Below are ten characteristics that any teacher working with students with disabilities will find both necessary and beneficial.
Consistency
For students with special needs, consistency is crucial. Everything that we do in the piano lesson must be consistent with what the student is doing in school, at home, and in other therapies. We must be consistent in the rewards we provide for positive behavior and good work, the lesson routine and home practice routines, and the studio setup. All of my students with special needs have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) that determines their academic, social, and behavioral goals for the school year. The IEP is the basic starting point for my lesson planning. This document will be of a great help to you, and parents are usually willing to share this information.
Consistency in the lesson routine includes a lesson schedule for the student. This can be a picture schedule or a simple checklist of the order of events in the lesson. By having a consistent schedule at all lessons, you are providing a level of comfort for the student so that she knows the order of the lesson as well as what is expected of her for the 30-minute lesson. Furthermore, students gain a sense of accomplishment when they finish each of the scheduled items.
Consistency also applies to the time, day, and location of the lesson. When piano teachers have openings or cancellations in their schedule, it is common to adjust teaching schedules so that there are no open spots. Changes in lesson time, day, or location can be very upsetting to a student with special needs, and this extends to events outside of the studio as well. For example, one of my students got very anxious when we discussed an upcoming recital. He kept asking me if the recital was going to take place in the piano studio. When his mother and I explained that it was in a different setting, he got very nervous and started reciting different advanced geometric shapes. Whenever he did this it was a clue to his mother and me that he was nervous about something.
To prepare for a positive recital experience, this student was allowed to walk around the performing hall several weeks prior to the recital. At first, he rearranged the windows, organ pipes, and other architectural features of the recital hall into advanced shapes. Thirty minutes later, he was simply walking around without saying anything. The simple task of allowing him to see the recital hall was calming and led to a positive first recital.
The importance of consistency was illustrated in a recent anecdote from the parent of one of my students. The parent informed me that one night her son with autism was getting ready for bed. He had a very specific, consistent routine for finishing homework, after school activities, getting dressed, and getting ready for bed. After putting their son to bed, the parents went on with their work around the house, but they heard piano playing. They went into the living room and found their son practicing. He had forgotten to practice piano before he went to bed, and he couldn't sleep knowing that his normal routine had not been completed.
Adaptability
Everything you learn in your piano pedagogy classes and conferences is still useful and necessary when teaching piano to students with special needs. However, you will need to adapt this information to include the special education research on teaching math, reading, speech, physical therapy, and behavior management. A great resource for this is Woodbine House Publishers - they have published many series on teaching students with autism, Down syndrome, and other learning disabilities. These books address methods on teaching reading and math, setting up schedules, and behavior management. Furthermore, these books are very easy to understand and the ideas readily apply to teaching piano.
This body of literature changed my teaching strategies for both hand position and note reading. When teaching hand position, I can never give a verbal description of proper hand position to my students with disabilities. Instead, I need to find something that makes sense in their world. Many of my students participate in physical or occupational therapy and are familiar with stress squeeze balls. These balls can be easily implemented in the piano studio. Our first lesson assignment for practicing is to go throw a ball with both the right hand and the left hand. Since the students are familiar with the balls, I can use them to teach the concept of hand position for the piano.
For note reading, I use the computer program Boardmaker to make visual images that represent line and space notes. Boardmaker is a program used in schools for the teaching of reading, and it is also used to make pictorial schedules for students. For the treble clef, we use food (eggs, grapes, brownies, donuts, French fries) and for the bass clef we use animals (ant, cat, elephant, goat). After laminating a large staff and the visual images for the different notes, we play games placing the images on the appropriate line or space on the staff. This transfers very easily into staff reading.
Flexibility
This characteristic is a MUST. Some days, your lesson plan may not be used because a student comes to his or her lesson following a bad day at school. This bad day may carry over to the piano lesson and trigger a meltdown. As the teacher, you will have to be flexible and find a way to work on something that will redirect the student away from whatever is bothering him and still be applicable to the piano. This can be accomplished by reviewing the things that the student perceives as "easy" such as flashcards, workbooks, or simple music games. If there are persistent meltdowns during the lesson time, it is necessary to keep a log that denotes the time, setting, people, and activity that may have caused the meltdown. You may see a pattern emerge that can be easily fixed.
Flexibility can also pertain to the actual studio setup. My studio contains a large wall calendar, a birthday poster, a trampoline, and several teaching clocks to indicate the start and end time of the lesson. These items are all found in school classrooms for students with special needs. Having these familiar things in the studio creates a level of comfort that translates into successful piano lessons.
Flexibility is also important in the pacing of the lesson. Students may need to take breaks between lesson activities. These breaks can include jumping on the trampoline, throwing a ball, drawing, asking questions about the student's day, or another break activity found in the student's IEP.
Setting expectations
The expectations for my students with special needs are no different than the expectations and goals I have for my students who do not have disabilities. For example, all of my students with special needs participate in the yearly recital, group lessons, and competitions when appropriate. I do not segregate my students with disabilities from the rest of my studio. This also requires me to inform my "typical" students that my students with special needs may do something they would not expect at the recital, but that behavior should not be acknowledged. By setting consistent, high expectations for everyone in the studio, the students know that I believe in them and that I know they can be successful.
Patience
When working with this population, you will need to be incredibly patient. Many of my students have an inherent fear of failure when learning new concepts. This requires me to patiently point out all of the concepts the student does know. Patience is also required in the amount of repetition and multiple methods that are often needed before a concept is truly learned. Furthermore, progress as normally evaluated and assessed by piano teachers will be in significantly smaller strides than we are accustomed to with other students.
Patience is also required when initially communicating with and getting to know your students in the first lessons. Many students with disabilities interpret language very literally or have a limited vocabulary. When you are first getting to know your students, it is appropriate to ask the parent to help with interpretation of the student's speech and body language.
Compassion
Parents of students with special needs do not want you to feel sorry for them or their son or daughter. Instead, it is easier if you imagine walking a day in the parents' shoes. For many of my students, the parents have been told what their child CANNOT do instead of what their child CAN do. Compassion is treating the student as a child first, without regard for a disability label. The disability is only one aspect of the student's total character. The parents are not expecting you to turn their children into prodigies; rather, they just want someone who will treat their children with dignity, value, and respect.
Children with disabilities are capable of learning how to play the piano; however, the process for learning requires the teacher to be compassionate in interactions with the parents and the students. In addition to the special education literature, the parents will be your best source for information on the student. Compassion is also needed when handling student meltdowns. Do not focus on the meltdown as the most important activity of the lesson. Instead, focus on one positive aspect of the lesson, and communicate this to the parent at the end of the lesson.
Sense of humor
Another key characteristic is having a sense of humor. Sometimes your students will say the funniest things; often saying things you would never expect at the most interesting times. Many students with disabilities are very concrete thinkers and interpret language literally. This means that sarcasm, idioms, puns, and metaphors will be challenging for the student to understand. For example, saying a section of music is "a piece of cake" could be misinterpreted to mean there is a piece of cake in the piano studio. Therefore, the teacher needs to choose words very carefully when making illustrations. In addition to being concrete thinkers, it is not uncommon for students with special needs to be a walking encyclopedia on a topic that highly interests them. Some examples I have seen include a complete knowledge of all Disney movies (and directors), the ability to reprogram smartphones, learning multiple foreign languages independently, knowledge of music history and composers, and knowledge of advanced science and geometry concepts.
I learned that one student's understanding of language was very literal and concrete. She had an extremely advanced knowledge of composers, and I learned what a sense of humor she had when she was performing at a conference where I was speaking. We had prepared her piece for performance and discussed what she could expect on the day of the conference. She stopped me to inform me that the dead composers could be compared to the Seven Dwarfs in the Disney movie Snow White. I was not sure what she was talking about and asked her to explain. She said, "Happy is Mozart because his music is happy; Doc is Bach because he is sort of in charge; Debussy is Sleepy because he puts me to sleep; Beethoven is Grumpy because his music gets so loud, bold, and dramatic; Sneezy is Offenbach because Can-Can is in fits and starts like sneezing; Dopey is Saint-Saens because his Carnival of the Animals seems silly and simple but there is more there than it seems, just like Dopey in the movie who is not as Dopey as we think; and Bashful is Ravel." At the conference, she stopped what I was explaining to tell the group of teachers about the comparison of the Seven Dwarfs to the famous Dead Composers. How do you argue with that or not laugh? This student has Asperger's syndrome and was only six-years-old at the time. Wow, was that eye opening!
On another occasion, one student was working on playing with smooth legato and piano and pianissimo dynamic markings. This was very challenging for the student, and I suggested that he think it was a lullaby to put a baby to sleep. As the lesson progressed, whenever he would play too loudly I would tell him the baby is crying. He thought that was so funny. One of his favorite toys was a stuffed yellow M & M that he proudly announced was named Mindy. I asked him to bring Mindy in the living room when he practiced to see if his playing would put her to sleep. At the next lesson, he played with an excellent legato and beautiful piano dynamic marking. He quickly informed me that Mindy liked his playing and fell asleep quickly. Several weeks later, he started laughing while he was playing a new piece of a different style. When I asked him what was so funny, he said "If I play loudly I will make the audience cry." His mother and I could not stop laughing at the impact of the lullaby and piano dynamic marking examples for practicing. He recently reminded me of this example almost two years after the initial lesson where it was discussed.
Learn from your mistakes
When I first started teaching students with special needs, I was very fearful of making mistakes. One wise parent said, "We don't expect you to know everything or be perfect, we are just so happy you want to work with our child and are willing to try." This statement really helped me realize what was important. Teachers should always try their hardest, but they should also realize they will make mistakes. Mistakes are acceptable and the important lesson is in what you learn from the mistakes.
At the first recital where I included students with special needs, I learned a very important lesson. A student with Down syndrome enjoyed taking a bow. It got to the point where he was just being silly and the importance of the bow in the recital lost its meaning. To address this problem, the student was told that he could only bow when people would clap for him. Later in the recital, students received awards for their work throughout the year in piano. When this student received his award, people starting clapping for him. The student immediately ran to the piano, took his place to bow, and started bowing. I quickly learned the importance of choosing my words carefully!
You will make mistakes when teaching any of your students. It is all right to make mistakes and admit to your students that you made a mistake as a teacher. It is how you learn from these mistakes and how you fix the mistake in future teaching situations that matters.
Lose the ego
In piano pedagogy and performance, we are trained to focus on attention to detail, the final polished piece, the recital program, the repertoire list, and meeting the demands of practicing and performing. All of these things point to perfection and personal attainment of goals. Since starting to teach students with special needs, I learned the valuable lesson that perfection is not everything and it really is not all about me. I have learned far more from my students than I ever thought was possible.
Many children with disabilities find fitting in at school to be a challenge. However, while they find it hard to fit in, they also want to be appreciated and accepted for who they are. Sometimes something as simple as playing piano in the school music class, or recognizing the quarter note on the bulletin board in music class can lead to social acceptance for a student with special needs. Typically developing students will also see students with special needs in a different manner after these experiences, because everyone is participating in similar activities. Furthermore, social acceptance by peers can lead to increased self esteem in students with special needs. These simple accomplishments that many of us take for granted are truly more profound than whether or not we play a piece perfectly or build a bigger repertoire list. This is the true meaning of teaching and making a difference in the lives of our students.
Have FUN
Many teachers might view teaching piano to students with disabilities as very daunting and overwhelming. However, I argue that it is really does not seem like teaching; it is having fun. The strategies and techniques learned from special education are a part of good teaching in general. It is much easier to work with students with disabilities if we view them as typical students who might go about things in a different manner. Once we understand that this is just another student with unique strengths and weaknesses, the teaching does not seem so overwhelming.
As teachers, we all have a special "bag of tricks" we use to work with our students. By adding strategies and learning techniques that are commonplace in special education, the piano teacher is adding to that "bag of tricks." I now use these strategies with all of my students if it is something that will help them understand the goal we are trying to accomplish. This makes both the teaching process and the learning process fun. I can honestly say that I look forward to each student who comes in my door because each one has a unique learning style, unique strengths and challenges, and will accomplish great things. I believe I have learned far more from my students with special needs than I have ever taught them.
You might ask what is the difference in teaching a student with special needs piano versus teaching a typically developing student piano? I would answer there really is not a difference in what I am teaching, but there is a difference in how I am teaching. The student is still learning how to read music, count rhythm, play with different dynamics and articulations, and perform in front of people, but how I teach might be a little "out of the box" when compared to traditional piano pedagogy. It also may require a little extra planning time. These strategies are not hard to learn or apply in the studio. It does take time, but there are people and resources to help you throughout the process, and it is truly rewarding and worth the extra effort.
Bibliography
Adamek, M. S., & Darrow, A. A. (2005). Music in Special Education. Maryland: The American Music Therapy Association, Inc.
Batshaw, M. L. (2001). When your child has a disability. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.
Bruey, C. T. (2004). Demystifying Autism Spectrum Disorders. Maryland: Woodbine House, Inc.
Bruni, M. (1998). Fine motor skills in children with Down syndrome. Maryland: Woodbine House, Inc.
Coleman, J. G. (2006). The Early Intervention Dictionary. Maryland: Woodbine House, Inc.
Horstmeier, D. (2004). Teaching Math to People with Down Syndrome and Other Hands-On Learners. Maryland: Woodbine House, Inc.
Kumin, L. (1994). Communication skills in children with Down syndrome. Maryland: Woodbine House, Inc.
McClannahan, L.E. & Krantz, P.J. (1999). Activity Schedules for Children with Autism. Maryland: Woodbine House, Inc.
Oelwein, P. L. (1995). Teaching reading to children with Down syndrome. Maryland: Woodbine House, Inc.
Van Dyke, D. C., Mattheis, P., Eberly, S. S. & Williams, J. (1995). Medical and surgical care for children with Down syndrome: a guide for parents. Maryland: Woodbine House, Inc.
Voss, K. S. (2005). Teaching by Design: Using Your Computer to Create Materials for Students with Learning Differences. Maryland: Woodbine House, Inc.
Winders, P. C. (1997). Gross motor skills in children with Down syndrome. Maryland: Woodbine House, Inc.
"Ten Characteristics for Teaching Students with Special Needs" reprinted by permission of Clavier Companion Magazine.
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