It's a short road from expectation to frustration

Will your students have done what you expected during the holiday?

My best improvisations always seem to happen when I have 2 minutes to kill and I decide to noodle on the piano, without any goal in mind. If I expect it to be good, it very rarely is. If I have no expectations, it’s often so fascinating that I have to drag myself away from the piano.

Something analogous happens when teaching. When I have practise expectations that my student has not met, I find that the best reaction is not to get frustrated but to listen. When I ask questions and listen carefully to what they say and play, I usually find that they’ve done some really interesting work.

They didn’t do the work I was expecting.

But they did work.

Now it’s time for me to get to work by reacting positively and creatively to what they did.

These lessons are frequently the best lessons. They’re just not what I was expecting.

Letting go of expectations can be liberating.

---

Thanks for reading. I’ve just got back from an unexpectedly wonderful break in Lisbon—I thought it would be nice but it was delightful—and am about to resume teaching. Wish me luck as I try to roll with whatever my students have got up to!