Extracurricular activities occupy a special place in a child's life.
They're outside of school. Hence, extra-curricular.
They're not graded. They're "outside the curriculum," after all.
And, most important of all, it's expected that it will be fun. The notorious F-word.
Parents voluntarily pick these activities for their children, after all. Who would want to volunteer their kids for something that won't be fun?
And that, my friends, is the curse that music teachers live with. The curse of extracurricular fun.
Or the expectations of a certain kind of fun, anyway.
It's not going to be the same kind of fun as kicking a ball around a field. Or learning how to shoot a bow and arrow. Or something else that's going to last for only a year or two.
It's going to have challenges. There's going to be some discomfort. There will be hard parts to work through.
The fun of music is learning to enjoy the challenges. It's the fun of conquering challenges, and sharing the victories with friends, family, and even strangers.
The fun of building a skill over many, many years.
The problem is when parents expect the same kind of fun as the other extracurriculars. As soon as things get hard and the kids don't want to do it, we have the dreaded conversation.
"We want this to be fun for him, not another chore to add to the homework load. We''ll take a break from lessons until he understands the importance of practice."
And we all know that day never comes.
When we treat music as a core curricular rather than an extracurricular, we stand a better chance of success.
I often joke with parents that if piano were a graded school subject, they would be damn sure that practice happens. Whether the kids find it fun, or not.
When we treat music as a core subject in the household, then we can get the flywheel moving.
By helping kids lean into the hard parts and figure things out, we increase their motivation when they see progress.
And when practice and motivation start feeding into one another, that's when the real fun begins.
