Music Teaching Tips: How to Handle Unmotivated Students

Are you a music teacher? Do you wish to have some music teaching tips to help you handle and facilitate unmotivated learners? Well, this post is for you as this provides you some helpful music teaching tips to make all your students highly motivated ones and to create a classroom environment that is more conducive for learning and teaching music.

Music teachers must be motivated enough to deal with all kinds of students; they should handle both the motivated and the unmotivated ones. Since they may not have much problem in dealing with the motivated ones, relating or reaching out to those unmotivated and uninterested students has become a challenge to all music teachers out there.

It is true that not all students enrolled in a music class or in a private music studio simply love music. Some of them are just encouraged or obliged by their parents while the others are just influenced by their peers.

When it is not their personal choice to be a part of each music sessions, they may be faced to higher risks - not having the passion to excel and adopt their learning, missing out their music classes, and not participating at all. In these circumstances, the challenge and the responsibility lie on the hands of their music teachers - you!

Who are the unmotivated students? What are the underlying causes? How can their music teachers resolve the conflicts? How we can make them value learning? These are just some of the questions you may have in mind that this post aims to address.

Unmotivated learners are the ones who are disorganized, forgetful, aggressive, hyperactive, passive, resentful, withdrawn, reluctant, rebellious, or perfectionists. Of course, behind these untoward behaviors are the underlying causes and reasons. Here they are:

• Expectations are too high or too low.
• Their parents are either overly demanding and permissive or overly neglectful or protective to them.
• Conflict and criticism at home are intense or frequent.
• They probably experience feelings of isolation, perfectionism and stigma.

Music teachers can always aid in resolving these issues. There are various music teaching tips that they can adopt and practice in their everyday teaching. First, you are to know your students and establish camaraderie among and between them. Creating a more conducive classroom environment that makes each learner more participative, active and attentive is indeed helpful and viable.

Next, individual counseling may be of great help; you may also suggest to the school administrators to brainstorm and evaluate the present curriculum. The curricula have to be affective and objective. These integrate group works, career development, self-management, decision making, and coping with crises.

Music teaching resources and strategies must focus on the strengths rather than the weaknesses of the students. Rewards are more highlighted and practiced than punishments. All teachers should make learning a fun-filled experience - establishing emotional connection among them and creating a school climate that values learning.

Ultimately, collaboration between teachers, parents and counselors is the key to helping all students be successful. So, let us work this out hand-in-hand and see how our dear students become the kind of learners we anticipate them to be: motivated, interested and inspired.


Get to know more music teaching tips, visit this music teacher website. - Earl Marsden

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