Estimated reading time 5 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
Music teachers, do you have students that complain that the music’s too hard? Or do they act out a lot? This happens when students worry that they will fail. How can we, as music teachers, fix the situation? Read more to learn how to deal with students who act out in music lessons.
Brock and Fernette Eide assert, “Never assume that a child who is showing resistance or acting out in response to a particular lesson, curriculum, or classroom is simply shirking.
“Children crave success, and it’s in their nature to learn and grow. If they reject what we are offering them, that rejection is often a form of defense that they’re using to avoid failure when they feel that success is impossible” (216).
In other words, if students feel that they will fail, they’d rather seem rebellious than stupid. Alternately, the behaviors can also represent a cry for help.
This article uses technical musical terms. For definitions, see the Glossary at the end of the post.
Automaticity and Students Who Act Out in Music Lessons
Why do students act out in music lessons?
Sara Raviotta stated at the 2022 ABLE Assembly (a special need arts teachers conference) that at least 20% of music students have learning disabilities. However, she estimates that the true number may be more like 50%. This means that almost all music teachers will need to deal with students who act out because they have problems with learning though traditional methods.
When a skill becomes so automatic that you don’t have to use working memory to do an action, we call that automaticity. LD, ADD, and other special needs students can struggle with automaticity. It can take much longer for LD students to make a technique automatic through repetition than typical learners.
In other words, you have to teach and review the same material more often than you might think would be necessary. This frustrates many music teachers.
Also, this can lead them to think that students don’t care and have lazy habits. Or that the students don’t practice when they actually work extremely hard. This is because they have to use more working memory than students who have made the task automatic.
If a teacher gets frustrated with his or her student, it can create a stressful working relationship with the student.
Students Who Act Out in Music Lessons: Being in the Zone
Students often act out in music lessons when they don’t play well. So, what does happen when we play well?
Have you ever played in the zone? That place where everything you do seems to go right?
When musicians prepare to play, they often tense up, which is the opposite of what they need to do to get in the zone. The Inner Game of Music’s term for when you play in the zone: “a state of relaxed concentration” (23 – 24). In other words, you have an awareness of how you play, but stay loose enough to play smooth, flowing, graceful music.
When students worry about teachers yelling at them for making mistakes, they can’t enter this state of relaxed awareness, which in turn hinders the student’s playing.
Stress and Students Who Act Out in Music Lessons
Not only does stress inhibit playing in a state of relaxed awareness – it also degrades the overall learning experience. This remains especially true for students with LD, such as dyslexia and language-based learning disabilities.
In their book, The Dyslexic Advantage, Brock and Fernette Eide state, “… when children with dyslexia are given challenges they cannot meet, their frustration persists and they are at risk for reactions like stress and anxiety, anger, misbehavior, demoralization, even clinical depression. If prolonged, these responses can become part of a child’s emotional and behavioral makeup.
“It’s important to remember that the nervous system treats anxiety and depression just like it treats any other ‘skill’: the more you practice them, the ‘better’ at them you become. For example, the more you ‘practice’ stress, the less it takes to make you feel stressed out, and the longer you remain feeling stressed.
“Stress also has a highly negative impact on learning because it lowers working memory, focus, and motivation. That’s why keeping children in environments where they feel chronically stressed is emotionally harmful and educationally counterproductive” (213).
When this happens, it shouldn’t be a surprise that students act out in music lessons.
Students Who Act Out in Music Lessons: My Story
An incident I had in college made me first realize that stressful environments inhibit learning. I had a guitar ensemble class that I struggled with mightily. My playing and reading hadn’t reached the standards the teacher had set, and he put a lot of pressure on me.
It came to a head in one class when he asked, “Why do your hands shake!?”
I replied in a whiny voice, “You make me nervous!”
In the next class he backed off, and the classes went better after that. I learned a valuable lesson both from my reaction and from my teacher’s adjustment when he realized that putting more pressure didn’t help.
I’ve brought this into my own teaching. When you’ve got them interested and engaged, generally you won’t have a problem with students acting out in music lessons. However, stress makes it harder to learn. Therefore, I work hard to make the students feel comfortable with me and with my teaching style.
Students Who Act Out in Music Lessons: Less Stress
So, how do we keep students from acting out in music lessons?
Whatever you do, don’t yell at a student or even raise your voice. That never helps. You need to be calm. If you stay calm, the student stays calm.
Instead, I tell students, “Don’t worry about mistakes. Mistakes have their part to play in the process of learning [click for more info], and we’ll work on fixing them together.
“My job will be to help you with any mistakes you make. In fact, if you don’t make any mistakes, I don’t have a job. So, make a mistake ever so often so I feel like I have job security.” Students laugh when I say this, which helps them to settle down and relax. Also, it establishes my music studio’s philosophy.
Positive reinforcements, like giving high fives and praising students when they work hard or behave well, creates a good learning environment. You should have a 4 to 1 ratio of praise to criticism. Your praises can be as simple as: better, good, much improved, good effort, play it three times just like that.
Even criticism needs to be stated positively, such as: we need to work on [the technique that needs improving] or let’s tighten it up.
Besides creating a positive and relaxed work environment, you need to find the right level of challenge for your students. To learn how to do this, read:
For LD, ADD, ASD, and other special needs students, color coding the score will be the best pathway to success:
Conclusion
Not only do LD, autistic, and other special needs students act out in music lessons, but typical learners do as well. Creating a less stressful learning environment that uses multisensory teaching strategies will help recover difficult and disengaged students.
Once students feel like they can learn and be successful, they will have better attention and will work harder. It will make the lessons more fun for you as well.
© 2022 Geoffrey Keith
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Glossary
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