Today, I'd like to talk about the “currency” of motivation.
As a mom of a 10-year-old, I've noticed the power of “currency” in motivating my son from an early age. When he was 5, his currency might have been LEGO or watching a train video. “If you do XYZ, you can play with your LEGO,” or “If you clean this up, you can watch your train video.” As he got older, his currency changed. These days, it's playing the Nintendo Switch or watching YouTube channels featuring people playing Nintendo Switch games.
Using incentives to motivate your children or students can be effective. With my orchestra students, I believe one of the best motivators is the opportunity to play fantastic repertoire.
When it comes to programming, I don't use my student orchestra to satisfy my own artistic needs. Through my professional experience, I've already checked off most of the pieces on my bucket list. I'll always choose music that is fun, inspiring, and educational, and I will not program works that are beyond my students' current abilities just to satisfy my own ambitions. Instead, I want my students to SHOW ME that they're ready to take on difficult music and that they can accomplish difficult things.
I'm proud to say that my students continue to rise to the challenge. Over the years, they've made tremendous progress, allowing us to experience increasingly challenging repertoire, both technically and musically.
Here's another observation about my son. As a beginning violist, he has assignments on MakeMusic.com, where his teacher uploads an excerpt and the app assigns a grade based on his performance. My son is a natural high achiever, so he'll redo an assignment until he gets 100%. But once he reaches that perfect score, he stops trying to make the excerpt sound any better.
From my perspective, there's still plenty to work on. His note lengths and tone aren't always consistent, and his intonation could use some improvement. But when I point these things out, his response is, “I already got 100, so I don't need to practice.”
I do think this is a fantastic tool for teachers, especially when it comes to helping underachieving students reach a certain level of proficiency. Teachers are SO BUSY, and these apps are incredibly helpful for tracking student progress.
However, for students who are already naturally motivated to succeed, I wonder whether these tools can sometimes have the opposite effect. Instead of encouraging them to keep improving, the app may put a ceiling on their efforts. Once they've reached the target set by the system, they no longer see a reason to push further.
This is one reason I don't use chair placement tests or “pass-off” tests with my students. Not only are these assessments time-consuming, I don't want the fear of failing to become their primary motivator. More importantly, I don't want students who pass a test to stop practicing simply because they've met the required standard.
At this stage of their development, music majors SHOULD want to play better than what's considered “good enough.” Of course, they need benchmarks and goals to help them measure their progress. But I want to help them look beyond those benchmarks and find motivation in the work itself, in the process of improvement, overcoming challenges, and discovering what they're capable of achieving.
One of my goals is to help students develop their own internal standards and learn to recognize and celebrate their progress along the way. After all, if we always stop when we've reached the target someone else has set for us, how will we ever discover how much further we can go?
