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Episode Description
Janna shares advice for adjudicators on preparation, mindset, difficulties related to time vs. feedback, and more. Hear how her local trains judges.
Janna Williamson shares advice for adjudicators, including preparation, mindset, essential elements to consider, difficulties related to time vs. feedback, and more. You’ll also hear how Janna’s local MTA takes intentional time to train their piano festival judges.
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Items Mentioned and Other Related Content
Adjudicating: 5 Tips for Preparing Ahead of Time (Piano Pantry blog)
008 – Preparing Yourself as An Adjudicator (The Piano Pantry Podcast)
Free download: What Are We Listening For? (Janna Williamson)
Effective Judging Techniques Teacher Presentation (Janna Williamson)
The Language of Teaching (Andrea McAlister)
Transcript
Amy: Welcome to episode 143 of the Piano Pantry podcast. I’m Amy Chaplin, your host. Today, I’ve invited my friend, Janna Williamson. to share advice on being an adjudicator. In my early days of judging, I eagerly gathered every bit of advice I could, and now I want to pass it on to you. By the way, much of the wisdom I gleaned from is compiled in a blog post on the Piano Pantry website titled, Adjudicating.
Five tips for preparing ahead of time. My guest, Janna, is a nationally certified teacher of music. She runs an independent piano studio in the suburbs of Chicago and coaches teachers worldwide through her YouTube channel, online courses, and consultation service. Janna holds master’s and bachelor’s degrees in piano performance from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University and Wheaton College.
Hello, Janna, and welcome once again to the Piano Pantry Podcast. Am I correct that this is your fourth time on the podcast? I think so. This is so fun. Thank you for having me. So it’s easy to assume everyone knows you, but let’s just cover our bases and go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience.
Janna: Well, first and foremost, I am a wife to my husband who is also a musician. So that’s always, you know, got its little interesting moments in life. And I have four kids who are ages 12-21 right now as far as work goes, my primary job is that I teach piano out of my home in the West suburbs of Chicago and I should have counted before we started. I think I’m at 23 weekly students, and those are all pre-college.
I do have one adult who comes in about twice a month. Adults are not my forte. I like to stick with the kids and I have ages from 5 to 18 right now and from. I’m an absolute beginner all the way up to advanced playing, you know, Beethoven preludes and all that, so I like teaching the whole gamut. And then beyond my own teaching studio at my home, I have a YouTube channel where I primarily talk about historical repertoire, especially intermediate level, things like sonatinas.
And Bach, I have a lot of Bach videos. And then I enjoy speaking to teacher groups and working with other teachers. I have a couple of online courses, those sorts of things. So, I enjoy hanging out online with people like my friend Amy.
Amy: Well, I so appreciate what you do for our community because I felt like it was so needed. And when you stepped in, it was like, Oh, finally, we have someone that’s really addressing this particular level of students.
Janna: It is something that I think has been Not intentionally, but avoided. People have not spent a lot of time talking about The intermediate level and it’s, we all teach a lot of intermediate students. Let’s be, I mean, there’s a lot of beginners, but there are a lot of intermediate students out there. So it’s an important thing to talk about.
Amy: Well, the reason I asked you on today is that I was having a look at your list of teacher presentations on your website and happened to notice that you have a session that you do for teachers called effective judging techniques. And I was planning on doing this episode, and I saw that, and I was like, wait a minute, this would be so much better if I had Janna chiming in and not just doing it all by myself. So, why is this something that you are intentional about talking to teachers about?
Janna: Well, I’ll tell you the story of how that particular presentation came about. In Illinois, we have an Exam system called the Achievement in Music, Achievement in Music, AIM exams, and that’s through the Illinois State Music Teachers Association as part of MT& A, and it is a very well-rounded, robust curriculum that is split into theory exams, which my students are all taking this Saturday, so I am in the throes of thinking about the theory portion, and then in our area, in March, we give the performance exams, and I love the AIM curriculum, and Because of that, and because it was needed, I have served as one of the AIM coordinators for my local group probably the majority of the time that I’ve been part of that.
I’ve been a theory coordinator, and then many years I have spent as the performance exams coordinator, or one of the coordinators. And to that end, one of the responsibilities is to actually train our judges, because the way our particular group does it is entirely on volunteer. If you’re going to enter students in the exams, you have to volunteer your time as a coordinator or an office manager, or primarily we end up being judges.
And we have wonderful teachers in our group. But just because you’re a good teacher doesn’t mean that you feel confident about judging or that you do a good job at it. And so many of our seasoned teachers felt like it would be very useful for our group to just regularly train our teachers in how to do this, and I think overall we have a pretty particularly given that this is a local association.
This is not a state, you know, or a national thing. I think we have a really good track record of overall good judging but you know, there are some times when some subpar judging comes through and so All that to say, I have given this talk or worked on this training with my own group multiple times, and then it was requested that my colleague and I, Stephanie Myers, give this at the state conference.
So we’ve done it for the Illinois state as well, and then I have subsequently given it to other local groups as they were preparing for AIM exams. Now, it’s not just specific to AIM. I do have some, you know, things that are detail-oriented for that, but in general, it ends up just being comments about how to judge.
You know, overall, I will say it has a that presentation has a bit of a bent towards historical repertoire because once you get to a level, I believe it’s level 4, students are required to play one Baroque piece. One classical era piece, and then one romantic or 20th century, and then when they get to level 10, it’s four pieces from the four eras.
So, because they’re required to play Baroque from the get go, you know, all of the judges have to be judging Baroque era, which is one of the specific challenges we meet in this.
Amy: I love this so much for two reasons. One, when I first started teaching, I was looking for something for my students that had what I felt like was good quality, right, as far as a festival goes and the RCM program, I looked into that quite a bit and their teacher training is so Or not their teacher, excuse me, their, their judging training is so excellent. And that really turned me on to the RCM program, but we didn’t have it in our area necessarily. But I just always have thought very highly of that program.
And second, for my students, I wanted to make sure that my students, if I send them to things, we’re going to be getting useful feedback that was worth the effort that we put into participating, right?
Janna: Exactly, exactly.
Amy: And they’re their time for producing something and feeling like they’re going there and getting something valuable. So I think that it’s phenomenal that you have something like this. Another reason that I thought it was going to be good to have you on here is because I haven’t had a ton of experience doing it.
I would say maybe in the past, I don’t know, 15 years of teaching, I’ve judged maybe 10 to 20 festivals and competitions, which I don’t know, maybe that’s a lot. I really don’t know what’s normal for people. But what does that look like for you? Have you done much judging outside of your local festival?
Janna: Yeah, so aim would be the primary thing that I’ve done because every year I’m required to do it as part of my volunteer participation. I have done some competitive events. I’ve even done some online things, which is a whole different way of approaching it when you’re listening to a recording. I’ve done guild auditions way a long time ago in the past.
Guild was desperate for judges both here and in my hometown. So those are the kinds of things I’ve done. I did, you mentioned, I think, not participating a whole lot as a child in some of these events. I actually participated in tons of this stuff as a kid. I was in an area that had Federation, and a state evaluative thing.
So I did lots and lots of this, and I’m the daughter of a piano teacher, so I always heard the back side of all of this, too. So I have a lot of experience in all aspects of it. However, my primary judging has been through the AIM program locally.
Amy: So before we get into some of the nitty-gritty of judging and stuff like that, what about preparing yourself as a judge ahead of time? Is there anything particular that you can think of that would be helpful for just coming up on the day of judging?
Janna: Well, I think it’s important – you already mentioned this – I think it’s important to think about why we even enter students in this in the 1st place because we’re on the opposite end of it. And we are teachers, so we want to be good teachers and encouraging what we want for our students on the other side of it. So, when I send my students to an evaluative event, and we can just take competitions out of this for the moment and just speak of things that are simply evaluative, my goals for my students are.
To prepare for something. It’s a great goal for them to have. Somebody besides me, you know, setting a date for them to have X number of pieces prepared and whatever else they have to do. So setting that goal, giving them something to work towards, and then receiving helpful feedback, again, from somebody who’s not me.
Because I can say a hundred times to a student, I don’t hear your dynamics. I’d like you to play louder here and softer here. And then magically, when a judge says that on a sheet, they suddenly say, Oh, I’m supposed to play with dynamics. So that outside feedback really does something for students. It’s even if the teacher has been saying the same thing on the flip side of that.
It’s very helpful for teachers, especially if you start to see the same feedback, like your students regularly are not doing X, Y, or Z; it’s helpful for you to know that there might be a hole in your teaching or to recognize things that you are. across the board doing well. So that’s the first thing is just to think about why are we even doing this in the first place?
What would I want my students to gain from this experience that I want to provide on the other side? And as our friend Christina Whitlock says in her Dr. Phil impersonation, it ain’t about you. So this whole process is not about me as the judge. It’s about the student who’s walking in to be evaluated in that moment.
And so I just want to make sure my mindset is there, that my whole job is to encourage that student on what he or she is doing well, you know, applaud a job well done for preparing in that moment. And then offer them some sort of helpful, constructive feedback that can help them move forward and encourage them to keep going farther in their piano study.
We want our students to keep taking lessons. We all want that. We’re the ones benefiting from them paying their tuition, so we want to make sure this is something that’s encouraging, , positive, and yet is also going to be helpful and doesn’t just say, doesn’t just give them a pat on the back and say, good job.
Amy: Well, and I think for teachers, just having that open mindset of, like you said, it’s not about you, but also, you know, if you receive a lot of similar feedback from judges on your students.
Maybe there’s, you know, something that, as a teacher, you can consider, you know, growth and maybe, like, working more on expression or something like that with your students. So, not, you know, having the defenses up or anything, but being, having an open approach.
Janna: Yeah, absolutely. As far as the nitty gritty goes, you know, if you’re Judging a lot of repertoire, most of the time, competitions and evaluative events will send you the repertoire ahead of time. So if there’s, you know, obviously there’s pieces on there you do not know, then just doing a little research to play through sheet music or listen to recordings can be very helpful. And then you know, as my soapbox that I’m always getting on about historical repertoire, I think really understanding the style of anything you’re going to be evaluating is immensely And so, you know, if that’s something that maybe isn’t your biggest forte, then that’s what I would like to help with.
Amy: Yeah, that’s something that I did quite a bit, at least the first several times that I did judging. And I was able to get a repertoire list I always asked ahead of time. And it was just, I just went into it feeling more prepared. Just having like listened to the piece one time ahead of time and just. I kind of started thinking, what are elements that I would be thinking of or looking for in a piece like this?
So I’m just not put on the spot on the day of when you’re furiously trying to write quickly that I’ve already kind of taken that time to prepare my own mind as a judge going into it. And that was so helpful.
Janna: We as teachers You know, we, when we’re teaching a piece, we have a vision, an oral vision, I guess it’s kind of a mixed metaphor of what we want a piece to sound like, right?
And whatever the level is, it can be an elementary piece or an advanced piece. And so when we’re quickly evaluating a student’s playing in a lesson, or in a. Judging situation, we’re just matching up what they’ve done in that moment to what our artistic vision is for that piece. And, you know, again, encouraging them and saying what they’ve already done to meet that vision and then talking about what they need to do to improve that.
So, really, judging is just speed teaching, just evaluating it very quickly one time through hearing it. And you don’t hear the process of them learning it, you know, playing slowly or only playing one section. You just hear it once, but it is still just speed teaching. And that’s one thing I actually encourage less confident judges to do is just practice doing this in your everyday student’s lessons.
Have your student play something that’s performance-ready or near performance-ready. And in that moment, think, set a timer even for five minutes, and say, I’ve got five minutes to go through the most important things on this. Tell them the most important things I did, they did well. And the, you know, one or two things I want them to work on to take it to that artistic vision. Because the time, the time is one of the main challenges that we deal with.
Amy: I think you, you hit a very important point there, and that was to begin with the things that they did the best, right? To highlight, and to be specific. Yes. You know, and I’m sure we’ll, that’ll come up again, but don’t just say, good job, well done, thanks for playing today.
Right. Wow, like, your use of ritardando at the end of the piece was so well articulated, you know, something like that. Be very specific about what they did well.
Janna: Yeah. And I think anytime you can connect that, especially with children and I think teenagers too, anytime you can connect it to how it made you feel like you’re retarded, the end made it so peaceful.
I loved your ending or something like that. Or the dynamics were so extreme. I almost jumped out of my seat when you played the fortissimo or something like that, that, that helps the student know that what they did, you heard and it. It affected you. I will never forget. It was one of these aim exams.
I was I was in the office going through comments and one of the office ladies said you have to come read this comment. I cannot for the life of me remember what the piece was, but it was something about tacos in the title. And the judge wrote this amazing comment that said something like, The staccatos were so short and spicy, it was just like a taco with the perfect salsa. Or something like that, you know, that really connected a student’s experience. with what they had done well in that moment.
Amy: Well, and it’s, it’s basically putting into context exactly what we want to be teaching in the lesson, right? You’re trying to create, to create imagery with what the students are playing, right?
Janna: And what they’re familiar with. Every kid has eaten a taco, you know, and they all know spicy salsa or not spicy salsa. And just the connection of You know, these really short staccatos sounding spicy. I just thought that was such a great word picture. It is a good one.
Amy: So what is your vision for creating positive and useful events and feedback processes?
Janna: As I said, remembering it’s all about the student. So always putting that, that framework on. Beyond that, I do think it’s helpful for judges or teachers who are coming in to work In evaluating to have some sort of framework and guidelines. If it’s just a blank piece of paper that that can be really, really difficult.
So. So, good events will have some sort of, even rubric, you know, things, helpful things for the judge to be listening for or looking for how to create scores or ratings or something like that.
Amy: So what are some general guidelines that you use for judging historical reps specifically? Could you give us a few tips there?
Janna: Sure. I actually have a free download for your listeners if they would like to go to that. I, what I’ve created is a, Effective judging cheat sheet is what it’s called, or what are we listening for? I organized this according to the four standard historical time periods: Baroque, classical, romantic, and 20th century.
So, you know, each time period, of course, we want accuracy of rhythm and pitch and anything that’s on the score that the composer or the editor has helped us with. We want our students to be doing that. The truth of the matter is classical musicians. It’s all about obeying the score. That is, that is what we do.
But, of course, things go beyond the score because it’s an oral art that we do. So, do you want to talk about one particular time period? Pick one.
Amy: Yeah, let’s talk about Baroque.
Janna: Alright. So, in my experience of judging Baroque music is particularly problematic actually for students just playing accurately.
So, that is in, in some ways more important there, or, or it’s just something to really be paid attention to. Very clear accuracy, clarity of rhythm, and pitch. And then stylistically, Baroque pieces within one movement. Always have just one mood or the Baroque word for it would be affect, you know, one character, one mood.
And so students need to learn, they have to establish that mood from the very first note and keep it the whole way. This is, of course, different from later time periods when you get contrasting themes. You know, lots of changes in the, that’s not true of Baroque. So you establish at the beginning and then you keep it that way.
Students have to execute ornaments correctly in the Baroque period. And that is a sticking point for a lot of students and a lot of teachers. So I advocate for using good additions. That can be something that’s very difficult in judging actually. And so I always default to whatever addition the student has brought in.
I’m going to go with whatever they recommend. And if I see a student regularly playing, you know, mordents as trills or vice versa, then I’m going to make a comment on it because it is a very important thing in that time period. Articulation is another huge thing in the Baroque period. It needs to be consistent.
So let’s say you’re playing an invention and you’ve got that little subject that lasts two measures. You need to decide what the articulation is, when you’re going to play detached and when you’re going to slur, and then that has to be consistent. throughout the whole movement. Since we have polyphonic texture, the individual lines need to be shaped beautifully both in the right hand and the left hand.
And then since Baroque composers didn’t really write dynamic markings, usually students have to use some sort of informed way, whether it’s their edition or they work through this with their teacher, of Coming up with terrorist, stepwise terrorist dynamics, not terrorist dynamics. I had a student who thought I said terrorist dynamics, and those would be very scary, scary dynamics.
No, but terrorist, stepping dynamics and that can be informed by The melodic devices of imitation and sequence and lots of things. I mean, truthfully, if your student is using a good student edition, this is going to be decided for them and they can have some input on it. But I find that most pre college and amateur students play Baroque music like a finger exercise.
They sit down, and they start, and it’s all one dynamic. It’s all one. articulation is just ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka until I’m done and then I’m and then I’m done. And that’s very unfortunate in my mind. And I would love for students to play their Baroque music far more expressively.
So these are some things that I listen for. Now, Baroque is tricky. And so if I’m judging it, I’m not going to, you know, say take points off if I don’t feel like it’s expressive enough unless you know, they’re just really not following what the addition has marked. And then I might do that there, but I’m going to encourage a student if it’s accurate but super boring, like a finger exercise, I’m certainly going to comment on it.
I would love for you to find more opportunities in this piece to be more expressive. Could you shape the lines more expressively? Could you experiment with some different dynamics or articulation? Because I want students to like their Baroque music. And I, I want them to feel encouraged playing it.
Exactly. So, that’s a little bit of a soapbox that I got on there. But that might help your listeners kind of think about what’s different when I’m quickly sizing up, you know, a Bach invention. Versus a Kuhlau Sonatina or an easy Chopin waltz, right? The goal isn’t to nitpick every single very possible detail that you could want it to be absolutely perfect.
Amy: It’s about big picture overall, right? What have they done really well? As you said, if they are super accurate, wow, like you play that with such accuracy and steady tempo, right now you’re ready to, you know, and let’s take that next step and take it further. So those are great points. Let’s just jump into a couple of things for, say, Romantic.
You don’t have to give us a huge list.
Janna: No, in Romantic, we expect more individual expression, right? And thankfully, the composers gave us markings to help us with that, dynamic markings, you know, phrases. So there’s a much higher expectation at that point that the student is following those expression markings to help the music come to life.
And then in both Romantic and Classical, For instance, it’s, they’re usually homophonic styles, you know, a melody over some sort of accompaniment, like a waltz pattern in the left hand. So balance of the melody over the accompaniment is a frequent thing that I talk about when I’m judging students. Cause it’s difficult.
And it’s, you know, one thing that we uniquely as pianists do that the other instruments don’t do. So pianistic, beautiful. balance using rubato, whereas you’re not going to use rubato as much. So those are some ideas that would change that up from what I might be listening for in Baroque or classical.
Amy: Yeah. And the listeners, we will have a link to that free download that you can get at the show notes, which will be pianopantry.com/podcast/episode143. So what about just some general guidelines, Janna, for evaluating students playing non-history repertoire?
Janna: It’s all about doing what the composer wrote, and like it or not, as classically trained musicians who are using a piece of music printed on a piece of paper, we are bound and expected to do what the composer wrote. So it really just comes down to whether the student paid attention to all the markings and, you know, played steadily and all that.
And the truth of the matter is if you’re talking about pedagogical music written in the last 50 years, all of that is imitative of something that came before it. So neo-romantic or neo-classical, you know, loads of our favorite pedagogical composers wrote sonatinas. And so a lot of the issues that we’re talking about for the classical era would apply there.
Anything that’s that, you know, more lyrical, romantic style. You know, Melody Bober has written loads of neo-romantic pieces. I think of Catherine Rolland has written a lot. Martha Meir, they’ve all written beautiful romantic style pieces. That same thing would apply to whatever you’d be listening for in the easiest Chopin, Schumann, or any other composers of that actual 19th century time period.
Amy: What would you say is the biggest challenge as a judge?
Janna: Time. And I actually have seen this question asked in Facebook forums for teachers, and everyone just says time. It is, you’re so limited on how much time you have to evaluate what just happened and then write down your comments. And you do have to be discerning of what are the most important things that I’m going to say, both positive and negative, what I want to highlight. on either side of it, and I, I have so much sympathy. You know, people are, people’s brains are different.
I have a very fast-processing brain. I’ve realized this. I’m, my husband’s brain is a little different than mine, and I have friends whose brains are a little different than mine, and so for me, to quickly size that up is actually very easy, but I know that’s not true for everyone, and we have multiple judges in my local group for whom English is not their first language, and I can’t even, Begin to think about how I would quickly.
Evaluate and then communicate in a language that is not my first language. So I have so much sympathy for them in that arena. And that’s what I hear mostly from less experienced judges. That is, their difficulty is just how to quickly evaluate and then write down. You know, quickly saying something is even different than quickly writing down.
So this is, again, another way you can prepare for this is by literally doing that in your student’s lesson. And it might seem awkward, but you can say, today we’re going to do a practice exam, which is actually what I do with all my students before they go. Anyway, we run a. Official practice and I do it on, you know, the timeline that it would be in the exam.
So say, okay, today you’re gonna play your piece, and then I’m gonna set up a timer for five minutes, and we’re not gonna talk. And it’s gonna feel really awkward for you, and you’re gonna hear my pencil writing across the piece of paper. But that’s a way for you to practice and then to show them what the feed.
It might be like when they receive it from a judge, my students have been doing this for years. They’re like, sure, whatever. They know how it goes, but it can feel very awkward in the moment to just sit silently on a bench in front of the instrument and not play anything. So that’s a lesson for them. And it’s a way for us to practice as well.
That is
Amy: a great idea. I’ve never thought about doing that, you know, as for myself, as practicing prejudging, you know,
Janna: and truthfully, if you don’t want to take your lesson time, or if you don’t want to do that more than once with a student, you could do this by just watching a student’s performance on YouTube. You know, pick any elementary or intermediate well-known piece, pull up a student performance, set a timer for five minutes, and, You know, write down your comments. Some people like to communicate in full sentence form, paragraph form. Some people use more of bullet points. Either is fine with me. I like to use some complete sentences so that it’s clear that I’m a person communicating with them.
But I will frequently write one or two sentences of my positive feedback and then maybe give a few bullet points of things. You know, basic things I’d like them to work on, or if I want to highlight specific measures, I might use a more bullet-point format and then close again with a couple of Full sentences.
I know that can be overwhelming for some teachers, like I said, who, for whom the writing quickly part is difficult, but that is something you can practice.
Amy: Yeah, I like that, that the point that it doesn’t have to be like, everybody’s different. So if you’re someone that’s more of a full, you know, written form, kind of a person, you can write out full notes, or you could just do little more bullet points.
I know the whole time issue has always been my thing, and I’ve done judging over the years for the state school music associations. And you go in there and then you’ve got like five minutes. They play their piece. You have to write yourself in that time. And what I struggle with the most is having to basically write while I’m listening to the student and watching.
And that has been such a struggle for me. Like, I’ve tried to just, you know, start with bullet points and then when they’re done, try to write it out in a more neat format. But it’s hard to even do it in that amount of time. Yes. Oh, just makes me crazy.
Janna: Well, and truthfully, some events are not giving judges enough time to do a good job. So, yeah, you know, that’s feedback you can give to an organization and just say, I would really benefit from one more minute, you know, per student. Sometimes those state organizations They’re set, you know, everybody gets six minutes or whatever it is. I, you can in those situations either use the backside of a paper or bring your own notebook if you want to just make tiny little chicken scratch notes to yourself and then, you know, make it a more formal, coalesced couple of sentences on their sheet.
I sometimes use the little margins on papers to just make note of measures because I might want to say I liked how you did this in measure 42, please check these three measures for an overarching comment. I do think this is where having a vision for what the piece is supposed to sound like before the student starts is so helpful.
Because you will know within eight measures if they’re generally achieving that vision or if they generally are not. And you can pretty quickly then decide. What you want to focus your comments on. If you literally have five minutes total, you’re only going to be able to say one positive thing and one negative thing, probably. That’s going to be about it. And then at the bottom, thank you for playing for me. You know.
Amy: Exactly. Yeah. So how you, how you respond as a judge, a lot of it depends on what your resources are and how much time you have. I mean, don’t feel pressure to write, you know, an entire paragraph to the student when you have five minutes.
Janna: Right. You right. Exactly. Exactly. And once again, it’s not about you. It’s about them. And so what can you, what can you give them? What tiny little gift can you give them in that five minutes that you have? That’s going to encourage and give them constructive feedback.
Amy: I would love to hear a little bit about your teacher training that your group does. How do you go about that? Can you share a little bit of the logistics and what that looks like? Sure.
Janna: Well, our local MTA has monthly meetings from September through May, you know, during the school year. And we have one fall meeting that’s devoted to theory judging and one, you know, winter meeting that’s devoted to the performance judging.
So it’s just part of our regular MTA. And the coordinators run those meetings. And typically, the things that have worked best have been when we’ve done some sort of mock judging. So, we’ve either brought live students in and had them play a piece, or we’ve used video sometimes. We have a little more tech access now than we used to have, so the video can actually work.
But in that, in this presentation that you saw, and when we did it at the same time, state level. I brought, I believe three videos and we gave everyone in the room a piece of The standard test paper that they would be writing on and we gave them a time limit of a few minutes and collected that we asked them to do it anonymously and then Stephanie and I actually tried to very quickly thumb through and find some comments that we thought were applicable and then.
Good, you know, either well phrased or something that we thought was worth highlighting in the students performance. And I, you know, I’m not on the other end of it. So I don’t actually know how helpful that is for people. I would hope that, you know, expressing verbally, you could write this sentence would spark some creativity in people’s minds, especially if this is something they find more difficult, or just giving examples.
We also had a resource that was alternative words for saying the word good. And, also, I had one more resource that was, You know, a very brief statement that might not be helpful. And then a little bit more fleshed out. How could you say this a little bit more fleshed out in a way that might be more helpful to a student going back to their teacher?
One other thing we really recommend is suggesting a practice technique. So it could be something as simple as, you know, student plays with a very unsteady tempo. Talk with your teacher about moving to this piece in rhythm and using the metronome, you know, or a technical thing, you know, your 16th notes were really unclear.
Have you tried doing various articulations? So, practice the things you would you would use with your students. In that type of repertoire, just suggest it because you never know that teacher might not have ever used that practice technique. Or maybe they did suggest that to their student and the student didn’t do it.
And then, you know, an extra voice saying, have you practiced this with the metronome? The student’s like, Oh, maybe I should practice with the metronome.
Amy: You mentioned, you know, just using the word good all the time. I do have an article on the Piano Pantry website. That came to mind that Andrea McAllister did for me. It was a portion of a session she did several years ago at one of the conferences. It was really good. I also have some downloads that you can find on the website, which we’ll put in the show notes as well, which are links to Resources like adjective sheets that teachers can use. There’s another one in there that’s something about how to say good in a better way or something like that. I can’t remember exactly what it’s called, but just helping get those brain juices flowing and how to write things in a different manner.
Janna: Yes, absolutely. And I would say print those out and take them with you when you’re done. I’ve done that because your brain gets fried very quickly and by the time you’ve been judging for two or three hours and you’ve heard however many students come in and play their pieces, you do start to lose the creativity and just having a little prompt of different adjectives can be immensely helpful.
Again, going back to what we want for our students out of this. I want my intermediate students in particular, because it’s harder at the intermediate level than the elementary level, I want them to be connected to their music in an imaginative, creative, emotional, personal way. So if the judge can do that, even with just one creative adjective that they use, or like I said, by connecting it to their own experience of listening to the student, that’s going to be ultimately far more helpful than if they just say, Good job, you were super steady.
Amy: Exactly. I was just going to ask you, what’s like the one thing if you could tell a judge to not do?
Janna: Good job. Don’t say that. I, along those lines, great work. That’s another one I see a lot. Now, truthfully, that’s okay to me, or I don’t, if it’s very minimal comments and they just say keep up the good work.
That’s kind of like a mid-term for me because like, on the one hand, I do want to acknowledge a student did a lot of work to come in and play that piece like that. I love it more when judges say something. Specific, or I really appreciate your work, all your technical work to be able to play like this, or I really appreciate that you paid attention to all the dynamics, or congratulations to you on your teacher on such a detailed, prepared performance. That means a little bit more to me than great work or good job.
Amy: Right, right. Praising the effort, right?
Janna: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Amy: Well, do you have any final bits of advice for teachers on judging?
Janna: I actually think that one of the hardest things to do is to write comments when a student does not play well in an evaluative event, and this is something that I continue to struggle with.
I have judged a number, and I’ve noticed a trend now with upper-level students, so when I’m judging AIM exams, our top level is 12. I’ve noticed a trend of students. Who are late high schoolers who I think they just see this as a hoop to jump through and they will register for a level 11 or level 12 exam and truly not be prepared and I find that very difficult to figure out what to say in that moment to them.
I try to still be encouraging on something – even if it’s just something really tiny, but also just remind them it is okay to say in that moment You need much more time to prepare this repertoire to the level that’s expected for this. So, you know, it’s, it’s a hard balance of being, you are an authority in this case, you know, and, and claiming your authority as an experienced teacher.
And yet also remembering it’s not about you. It’s about the student. We’re trying to be encouraging and offer feedback that can help them. And I do think in that moment saying you needed much more time to prepare for this is ultimately a helpful comment.
Amy: Basically, you weren’t prepared.
Janna: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And thankfully that is not the majority of my experience. But it is worth saying that that is a hard thing to do as well. And just, you know, keep balancing the positive and the constructive negative feedback.
Amy: That’s great advice. So, I like to finish off sometimes with a fun fact. We know Janna the teacher, but what about outside of teacher world? What is something that we could know about you that you enjoy?
Janna: I was thinking about what I have not said before. I have sung in five English cathedrals. So, that is a fun fact. That’s a little bit unique. I would consider voice my secondary instrument, but I am married to a singer. So I would never call myself a singer and he plays the piano, but he would never call himself a pianist.
So we have gone on these cathedral residency trips when the English cathedral choirs are on vacation or holiday, as they call it. Any choir can apply to come to sing for a week or even a shorter period of time. And so. I have now done five of these with a local church choir and choral residencies at various cathedrals around England, and it’s an amazing privilege to stand in a place that’s, you know, 800 or more years old where people have sung and worshipped for that long. It is a fun, unique thing that Privilege that many people have not had.
Amy: I just got goosebumps listening to that. Yeah, I remember when I first met you, that was one of the early things I remember just seeing on social media or something. And I thought, wow, that is cool.
Janna: Yeah, it is cool. It’s a really interesting and unique experience because you spend an entire week in one. place, as opposed to many choir tours or just vacations where you move around and go to all different places. But you really get to know the town, you find your favorite coffee shop, and you get to know the cathedral. And cathedrals almost have their own personality to them. So it’s, it’s a wonderful thing.
Amy: Very cool. Well, Janna, thank you so much for joining us today. Your feedback has been invaluable, and I know teachers are going to love hearing this episode with you.
Janna: ‘Well, thank you so much for having me on again.
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