I came across this fine resource by pianist/teacher Valery Lloyd Watts that's freely available on the web:
Mastering the Piano Manual.
I'm still browsing through it but it looks like it could be quite useful for both teachers and students.
The chapters include:
The Music Learning Cycle
Teaching Strategies
Technical Regime for Pianists
The Business and Professional Aspects of Running a Studio
Teaching Procedures
The teaching procedures section includes "technical facilitators" and practice tips for repertoire up to Level 7 (e.g. Liebestraum #3).
Thank you for sharing this.
From a cursory glance, I find that there may be some useful tips for lesson plans and other topics. But her technique ideas are contrary to what I consider to be a healthy approach, as far as I can tell from her description.
She talks about strengthening the muscles of the wrist and forearm for endurance and about independence of fingers. We don't work to develop muscles in the same way a weight lifter does, for physical strength. We train for coordination. The fingers are not independent units, but we can make them sound that way. Just mentioning Leschetitzky makes my blood run cold. And beware the "flexible" wrist notion. I don't know what she means, really, but if it's a "broken" wrist, stay away from it. In order to make use of the forearm rotation, which is a natural movement, the wrist needs to be more or less like a bridge between hand and forearm. Of course, everything is flexible, never rigid.
There are many approaches to technique that can probably produce good musical results. But I'm on a crusade (can you tell?) to nudge people in the direction of a
healthy approach, using the body the way it was designed to be used. So, if you use this material (and it may in fact be useful), carefully evaluate the technical suggestions before assigning them.
