Hello!

Hello! I’m John Holmes, ABRSM Chief Examiner and I’m very excited to be able to introduce this new futurelearn course from ABRSM called Becoming a Better Music Teacher. I think it’s really exciting because as music teachers the journey is never done, we’ve never done all the work, we’ve never done all our practice. I think we all acknowledge that this is a continuing journey, continuing professional development, and that’s absolutely at the heart and underlines the spirit of this course is founded on the principle that an effective practitioner is a reflective practitioner. We’re always looking at what we’re doing and seeing how we could do it even better. This is also an offer of support from ABRSM.

We want to be part of your learning journey as a teacher, your developmental journey. So you will be part of a community which we want to become a growing group of people looking at their own professional development. and I think this is very important for ABRSM. ABRSM’s mission is inspiring musical achievements and we know that at the heart of musical achievement is music teaching and learning. So to just give you an overview a quick taster of the course itself. We believe that there’s a complement of skills needed to be an effective teacher, a range of skills and the course is designed absolutely to address each of these areas.

Some of the modules are quite high level, thinking about for example the principles of teaching and learning, thinking about them in a sort of overall context, but others are quite specific, instrumental technique for example and the core principles of motivation and progression. We want to have a look at professional values and practice which is quite specific to the individual context of the singing or instrumental teacher, and there’s also an introduction at the very beginning where we invite you to reflect on the journey so far, to think about your past musical influences, what’s led you to teach in the way that you do, and reflect on the extent to which you feel you want to shape the next stage and plan ahead.

So to conclude, you know, welcome to this community. We’ll be on this journey with you, we’re looking forward to meeting you and getting to know you online, and I’m sure you’re looking forward to joining the community of teachers who will be on the same journey towards becoming a better music teacher.