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Children are excited by sound, they want to make sound, and they want to explore possibilities and express themselves at the keyboard. Children are brilliant— until someone tells them they aren't. When faced with too many rules and layers of abstract concepts at the beginning stages of study they are often just overwhelmed by information they don't...

Numbers seem integral to music study, but they can be very problematic for our students with special needs. We use numbers to assist us in our process, but meter and rhythm are beat units that are heard and felt. Our fingers are all different shapes and lengths, and we use them in groupings to manipulate the piano to make sounds. We use numbers as ...

If there is one thing that music can do, it can bridge all divides. It does not recognize age or gender, race or social class. Music does not recognize disability. Music does not discriminate. It finds and nourishes the good in everyone, and every person has the ability to experience and make some kind of music. If we cannot find a way together, or...

Webinar 

webinar

Teacher Education Webinar Series  On Wednesday, January 31, 2018, at 11am Eastern Time , the Frances Clark Center will launch the Teacher Education Webinar Series. Dr. Scott Price , President of the Frances Clark Board of Trustees, will lead our first webinar, "Autism and Piano Study – A Basic Teaching Vocabulary." Register for this free ...

Welcome back to the Inclusive Piano Teaching blog. After a brief rest, we are back sharing information and resources with all of you. Today's post will include information on where to find resources for teaching students with visual impairments. This group of students includes students who are blind and those with partial vision, but can also be ex...

Students with disabilities will come to your studio with all sorts of labels – autism, high/low functioning, visual impairment, ADD/ADHD, Down syndrome, etc. Although they come with labels, the label does not define the person – it informs the pedagogy. The student is a person capable of learning and doing remarkable things. The label helps us form...

Welcome back to the Inclusive Piano Teaching blog. Today's entry is part two of a discussion on teaching students with visual impairments. I would like talk briefly about some things to think about when bringing a student into the piano studio. Some of these things may sound redundant, but can have a substantive impact on the educational experience...

Studio environment can play an important role in the success of our students with special needs. We don't tend to think of the studio as being more than a tool in the lesson, but the actual environment and the objects present can sometimes be the deciding factors in the success or failure of a lesson. Maintaining a special-needs-friendly environmen...

  The next three postings will introduce you to the three authors who will be sharing their expertise. First up, Dr. Scott Price from the University of South Carolina. Dr. Scott Price is the founder and instructor of the Carolina LifeSong Initiative that is dedicated to providing piano lesson and music experiences (including improvisation and ...

Welcome to the Inclusive Piano Teaching Blog sponsored by The Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy. We hope you will join us in the coming months as we share information on teaching learners of all abilities. Check back often for new content! What is the blog? The Inclusive Piano Teaching blog is designed to bring you in-depth and practical i...

Students with special needs face unique challenges every day, and those challenges may become pronounced in the intense interpersonal environment of the piano lesson. Many of these students face challenges in learning and processing social behaviors and expressing themselves in forms of social communication. These students often require a learning ...

Recent advances in communications technology have radically changed the process of information exchange in this century. Telegraph and telephone facilitated almost instantaneous communication across countries and between continents. Radio brought information and communication to remote areas, war zones, and occupied territories where communications...

One of the greatest tasks facing the pianist and teacher of precollege and college-aged pianists is how to build listening skills. In fact, the word "listen" is probably spoken on average of at least five times in every piano lesson. "Listen" is also one of the words that is written on virtually every competition or audition critique. How has such ...