The End-of-Project Sharing Element

Do you ever wonder why there isn’t more excitement about what you think are fun projects in your studio?  Shouldn’t art projects, composing their own music, sight-reading challenges, etc. be thrilling for students?

I’m reading a book called Using Technology to Unlock Musical Creativity and the author Scott Watson talks about 8 principles for unlocking music creativity.  I think his principles are fantastic and every teacher should read the book to improve their teaching.  Just now I was struck by principle #8 just now where he states,

One of the best ways to ensure that students are motivated to work earnestly toward a good end product is to include an end-of-project sharing element into the plan…During these presentations students can share the fruits of their labor and feel a sense of celebrity for their creative efforts.

I think that the reason that more students aren’t interested in creative music projects is that there is no end-of-project sharing that is promised.  I’ll give you an example.

Every year the Piano Explorer hosts a composition contest.  A little more than  half of my students are very excited about this contest at first.  Then, as the weeks go by and we try to make some headway into the project, many of them lose interest.  By the time the deadline rolls around less than half enter the contest.  Then, when the compositions are judged and the winners are announced in May, you can see the disappointment in each of their faces if their names are not in the magazine as winners!  One year however, I got it right.  I allowed my students who had composed pieces to play them on our spring recital.  Yes that’s right, the same recital where Chopin and Mozart were performed!  The students were thrilled about this, and I realized then that I could have generated more excitement about the whole process if I had told them all at the beginning that they could play their polished composition at the recital.   Granted, I still would have som fall out from the beginning of the composition process to the end, but I’m certain many of my students would have been much more excited about finishing their project if they knew there was a reward at the end (sharing their piece) instead of just a possibility of a reward. Lesson learned.

I say all that just to wonder out loud, “What other end-of-project sharing should I employ to help my students be excited about their creative musical projects?”

Currently my students are working on writing lyrics to a familiar Christmas tune (but one in which I don’t like the lyrics).  We are having a contest to see who can write the best lyrics and the winner will have their lyrics sung at the Christmas recital.  But, I’m thinking, why not sing all the verses?  It would be wonderful for the parents to hear what their favorite things are at Christmas time (that is the theme they are to be writing about).  And who cares if the recital is an extra 5 minutes because of an extra 15 verses of a very short Christmas piece!

What do you think?  Can you look back and see where not having an end-of-project sharing element negatively affected your project? Or do you have an example of a great end-of-project sharing element that gave energy to your project?

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