Guided Practice

Most kids' educational and extracurricular activities fall under "guided practice."

Kids go to school and have math, English, and history classes every day. There's a teacher helping them practice on almost a daily basis.

Kids have sports practices every weekday. Often on weekends, too. They do drills and warmups together under a coach's watchful eye.

Music falls in its own column, though. Guided practice is impossible, short of a teacher or parent sitting with the student every day. 

And this is the challenge that keeps most people from learning a musical instrument.

Good music teachers write the assignments down. They tell the student what to do during practice. They guide the student through a "guided practice session" in the lesson.

But then it's left to the student to execute it on their own in between lessons. Most of the time, they don't quite do it the way we explain it.

Either the practice doesn't happen, or it's poorly executed.

The exciting part here is there is an opportunity for kids to develop self-guided practice and personal responsibility.

But the question is, is self-guided practice too foreign a concept? To out there for a child who is used to supervision in most activities? Who is used to being told what to do most of the time?

It's a tough one without a clear answer. 

But, the important part is that we ask the question to begin with.