Great Music Teaching Framework
Great teaching starts with a commitment to great learning. Great teachers build expansive learning environments for their students and seek learning opportunities for themselves that are ambitious, open-ended, playful, and curious. These values align with the core interests of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute (WMI) by supporting artistry, community, and equity in all music making and music learning in schools and community settings and with preprofessional musicians.
These values also guide how WMI frames its ongoing conversation about what great music teaching looks like. Regardless of the environment, great teachers artfully manage a balancing act between modeling the building blocks of the artistic process and inspiring young musicians to be creative and make music an important part of their lives.
Great Teachers in Action brings these seven impulses to life, as leading artists and educators model each through a variety of exercises and activities. Get a bird’s-eye view by sampling from several different impulses, or take a deep dive by watching multiple videos for a single impulse.
Great Teachers in Action
Great Teachers in Action brings the seven impulses of the Great Music Teaching Framework to life, as leading artists and educators model each impulse through a variety of exercises and activities. Get a bird’s-eye view by sampling from several different impulses, or take a deep dive by watching multiple videos for a single impulse.
Artistry
- are musicians who model their artistry in everything they do
- experiment with new musical ideas and approaches alongside their students
- explore their own histories and identify the strengths of their artistry
- seek to expand their own artistic horizons in order to better identify with the learning process
Intention
- select meaningful and rich repertoire, and share their enthusiasm with their students
- interrogate the activities they organize for their students, constantly asking questions about whether students could get more from their teaching
- set strong developmental goals for learning for both their students and themselves
Inquiry
- ask questions that spark conversations while requiring comfort with ambiguity
- keep all learning grounded in a broad range of personal experiences
- mark their own learning and development through research and collaboration
- empower students to observe evidence of their own growth
Inspiration
- seek out opportunities to be inspired, musically or otherwise, and reflect on the impact of their experiences
- give students the opportunity to love their own work and growth
- encourage students to embrace their personal expression and musical voices
Compassion
- create learning environments that are responsive to the needs of students in the context of their communities’ strengths and challenges
- meet students where they are in their development while acknowledging and celebrating the variety of learning abilities
- model listening as a way to connect with other people and their cultures
Expression
- emphasize expression and interpretation when working with existing repertoire
- see the composition of new music as a central music-learning activity
- use students’ ears to improvise and venture away from written music
- explore a range of approaches for capturing, notating, and recording original ideas
Agency
- encourage students to embrace their ability to tell their own stories
- empower students to design and lead their own musical learning
- provide opportunities for students to share their work, practice, and process with their community
Great Music Teaching Podcast
There are countless ways to teach music, but what makes a music teacher “great”? Through a series of enlightening conversations with extraordinary educators, this six-part series offers invaluable answers and insights. Learn about the unique approaches and personal histories of masterful music teachers, discover what drives them to teach, and be inspired by stories of their life-changing successes.
