27^th and 28^th January 2026 

This is the first entry to a reflective teaching journal and running commentary, which will follow my practical clarinet lessons with an adult student and beginner to the clarinet. In this introduction I intend to outline who my pupil is (in so far as it is relevant to my chosen pedagogies), what goals we will set together, what I will be defining as success and some broad ideas of techniques I would like to try in my lessons with him to achieve success. 

I planned and organised a short interview with my student on the 27th of January and conducted it on the 28th of January. While I already know this student, and much of the information echoes things I already knew and understood of him ahead of time, the interview was illuminating to the different factors I should consider as his teacher and I found valuable things to reflect on in all five of the answers he gave to my main questions.  

1. Tell me about your musical experience 

When asked about his musical experience, I learned that he mainly considers himself a self-taught musician and described the bulk of his experience as “amateur”. He took piano lessons after starting as a self-taught pianist and went up to grade three singing but taught himself the accordion. This tells me that this student is already musically experienced and may benefit from a degree of freedom when it comes to aspects of his learning. This would be to avoid interrupting his very evident intrinsic motivation to learn, write and perform music. He also noted that he does not consider himself to have a classical music background despite being on the classical pathway at Conservatoire. He considers much of his music to be a blend of pop and church music, and while I still plan on using some classical repertoire (as is elaborated on in the second question), I will also need to make sure to think outside the box in terms of what repertoire to present this student with. 

2. As someone on the classical pathway, which aspects of classical repertoire do you enjoy the most? 

Despite not being someone who only works with classical music, I still felt it was important to ask about classical repertoire as this takes in most of the music that clarinettists can learn. I found that my student enjoys music from the classical period and 20^th century onwards. He does not particularly like Romantic era music, which he describes as “trying to combine oil and water”, so it is important that I do not present him with this kind of material. I am lucky to have a student who already has enough of an understanding of classical music history to articulate so clearly what kinds of music he does and does not want to play. 

3. When you are learning a new instrument, what do you find helps your learning? 

The main takeaway I got from my student’s response to this question was that repertoire is a huge aspect of how he learns. He finds music he enjoys that features the instruments he is learning and works with material he has already “internalised” in some other context. I said offhand in the interview that I should “start with music he likes” and he responded with “maybe”. He seemed unsure, which could just be a sign of a slightly anxious disposition, but it may also mean that he was trying to allude to something more advanced than just “playing music he likes”, and I may need to ask further clarifying questions throughout our lessons. In any case, approaching my student’s learning with an open mind seems to be the best approach, especially as I think he will benefit from some slightly unorthodox approaches. 

4. What do you feel hinders your learning of a new instrument? 

I go back and forth on whether asking this question directly was a socially intelligent thing for me to do as a teacher, but my student’s response to this question was very interesting too. He is very clear that he does not like being put on the spot, which is a lot of how I was taught to play the clarinet (mostly in the form of performing what I have been working on to my teacher). It might be smart to teach him clarinet intonation as quickly as possible, so that I can play music with him as much as possible throughout the lessons. My student was also very open about the clash between his ability to learn instruments very quickly and his dyspraxia diagnosis. The pitfall he warned me about was that if he can’t learn something at the speed he feels he should be able to, he is prone to negative self-talk. As a teacher, I absolutely do not want to encourage negative self-talk, and want to make sure that my student feels safe and happy with his progress regardless of how the lessons go. Beyond this, I also feel that it is important for me to research best practice when it comes to teaching a dyspraxia student and more about dyspraxia in general. 

5. Tell me about your favourite past or current musical project. 

I already knew that my student is a visual artist, writer and clothes maker in addition to his music, but in his description of the graphic score he is writing I learned how heavily he likes to intersect his different hobbies together. I think it would not be effective for me to reference his characters or other artistic pursuits, because it is important that it comes with a sense of agency and authenticity to him, but I should be ready to encourage him to use his other hobbies to fuel an overall excitement for the clarinet lessons.

3^rd February 2026 

I bought clarinet reeds for my first lesson with Melodie. 

4^th February 2026 

I ran into several complications on this day, the first seminar of the semester and the moment where the students got to all decide and declare who we would be teaching. My student was late. I do not assign blame to my student, lateness happens and I have managed to establish that he is neurodivergent which would impact his time management. However, it threw me off for several reasons, and I find it important that I unpack this to respond better in the future. I am also someone who likes to be on time, benefits from a predictable routine and I care a lot about these lessons going well, but I can immediately see how my planning was somewhat rigid. Despite my student’s lateness being an accident, I felt disrespected and thrown off, like I had prepared ahead of time (and spent a significant amount of money on reeds to be as organised as possible), only for it to still be quite difficult. This, combined with camera issues and problems with facilities, resulted in me leaving the room in tears. Luckily, this is a controlled environment. My student and I are equal peers; we can communicate and regroup without it dampening the quality of the lessons. However, if I am teaching a stranger (especially a child or vulnerable adult over whom I would have power), there must be boundaries, and I must never let a student catch me in an emotional or panicked state again. After I calmed down, entered the room again and regrouped with my student, we ended up dedicating the hour to my student’s teaching portfolio instead of splitting the time halfway. It was disheartening, I had such a clear plan and was prepared for the lesson, only for factors outside my control to become obstacles. I, as a teacher, need to practice greater patience and flexibility if I am to overcome similar obstacles.

12^th and 13^th February 2026 

Tomorrow is my first lesson teaching my student the clarinet. I am still disappointed at the delay and my time management, but I have been presented with an unlikely benefit to beginning the actual teaching this late: I now have feedback from my semester one lesson plan. A piece of constructive criticism I was given was regarding the hefty number of new things I was asking a hypothetical beginner to learn. While my student is a musician, he has not played the clarinet prior to my lessons, so a key deviation I will need to make from my original lesson plan is that I should teach him less to begin with. The goals for lesson one with my student will simply be to put the clarinet together and create a sound. No repertoire, no scales, just a good quality sound. This will still require me to guide him through many aspects of mechanics, correct posture, embouchure and air support. If he can make a noise, he will have achieved a lot. Additionally, he does not like to be put on the spot, which will make this a nice lesson for him too.

THE GAP IN JOURNALLING

The next entry I made to my reflective teaching journal was on April the 22nd. Lessons did happen in this period of time, but they were sparse and I did not keep a good record of them. Upon reflection, I think I was so keen to teach the clarinet well that I simultaneously over prepared and under prepared. I over prepared in the sense that I fully interviewed Melodie to get the best sense of how to support him as a pupil, as well as buying him a pack of beginner reeds to make sure we could hit the ground running. However, as soon as I had one bad day, I completely froze up. I was afraid of failing, so ironically I did not prepare adequate repertoire, defaulted to a very simplistic teaching style and failed to consistently be there for my student for a month. My next entry was a lesson that I recorded and it is heavily impacted by my failure to be a more consistent teacher. This is evident in the fact that, despite the fact we did do a lesson on basics in February, we had to return to almost all of the basics during this lesson which was about articulation. In this entry from April the 22nd, I did review various aspects of my teaching in that lesson with time stamps and both positive and negative reflections, but the biggest overall improvement that would need to be made is a sense of consistency.

22^nd April 2026 

22^nd April 2026 

In this lesson, I was planning on teaching Melodie articulation. I will attach my lesson plan too but overall; I found that I had to back track quite heavily and return to the problem of breathing and creating sound. I had a lesson plan ready for this lesson and on my phone. Other than occasionally looking at my phone to check the lesson plan, I seem engaged from the start. Maybe I should have had the plan available on paper or memorised it so that I could be more engaged, but I think that my body language in this video is overall open and at ease. Before the video when we were putting together our clarinets, I asked Melodie what he remembered about how to put together a clarinet. I gave him answers before he could really answer meaningfully himself. This was partly due to time restraints (It was an hour-long lesson, but I still had a lot of material to get through), but with this in mind I was not making a clear choice between the lesson being teacher lead or student lead. I checked in with the student to get a grasp of how he was doing that week and how his mood might impact the lesson. He was busy with his D&D campaign (for context, Melodie is the leader of the LCSU Gaming Society, D&D for him is part of his activities at the conservatoire). I did also verbally acknowledge that it had been a while since we had last done a lesson, pointing to the inconsistency of lessons. I believe that this was the biggest flaw in my teaching overall. 

I started with getting him to play slurred notes in the throat register of the clarinet BEFORE drawing out what slurred notes look like on manuscript paper. I made a point of doing this to incorporate Sign before Symbol into my teaching, getting the student to do the act of slurring some simple notes on the clarinet before seeing what it would look like on paper. I then transferred over to singing some of those notes with Melodie and introducing the idea of articulating the notes vocally. This was because I wanted Melodie to build up to the point where he could articulate notes on the clarinet, so I used singing (which he has familiarity with) to introduce the concept in simple terms. I did this using a “copy-me” method, which is good for quickly conveying information but can also make a student dependent on their teacher to complete certain musical tasks. I did get Melodie to do some of the articulation work on his own, but I could have done more to encourage his independent learning, especially given the fact that he prefers to be an independent learner. I used Sign before Symbol once again, and I think I should invest in a white board to make this easier in the future. This is because my staves were quite poorly drawn and a whiteboard would be a better way of conveying the information more clearly and without wasting paper. I kept the exercise (and lesson overall) extremely straightforward because Melodie is an adult. However, for a child pupil I would use many of the same strategies while finding a way to make it a bit more engaging. For example, getting the child to sing some simple phrases from their favourite songs or nursery rhymes first, incorporating silly voices and sound effects depending on the child’s age and personality. 

In the footage I can see that Melodie felt somewhat awkward, he does not like being put on the spot and he expressed a preference for singing “da” instead of “ta”. I let him sing the notes as he wished because I did not want to make him feel uncomfortable and disengage with the lesson. I ended up having to go back on this later in the lesson because “Ta” is a more accurate representation of the best way to tongue notes on the clarinet, I should have explained to Melodie why I was using “ta” sounds and then let him make the decision. When I moved over to tonguing notes on the clarinet, I gave some of my instructions WITH a clarinet in my mouth, this obscured what I was saying. At first Melodie was getting sound out of the clarinet without any issues, but when I added more instructions, he began to make less noise. This also pointed to a combination of him feeling awkward in the lesson and being a bit out of practice, so throughout the rest of the lesson I tried to be more reassuring. I was also using self-deprecating humour and mild complaining to build rapport and to keep the vibe in the room relaxed, but I want to avoid taking this approach in the future. This is because it was a response from me feeling slightly awkward, and being discouraging about my own instrument could discourage pupils further. I also kept calling the task simple, which was also meant to be reassuring but may have been discouraging. In future lesson plans, I should be more mindful about the way I speak. Specifically, I could write down some of my favourite things about each of the clarinet techniques I am teaching in a lesson. I would not try to be over the top, but I should take pride in the instrument I am teaching so that I can reassure my students confidently. 

I gave a pretty good explanation on good posture, as well as the impact that the angle you hold the clarinet at has on the intonation and sound quality, and towards the end of the lesson I explained that a clarinet makes noise through vibration which Melodie seemed to find really helpful. I changed approaches and we were able to make decent progress, but I now know for the future that I need to lead with the explanation of how the clarinet creates sound so that my students can make even more progress in the same amount of time. Overall, I think that I adapted and the lesson went okay, but this lesson contained a lot of things I would improve upon. 

Conclusion

I used some solid teaching techniques, such as sign before symbol, and I was considerate and friendly when delivering my lessons. However, I was often quite rigid in my approach, so when set backs did occur I froze, which limited both the total number of lessons I did and the record taking that I did for these lessons. I also sometimes burdened Melodie with a lot of overly detailed instructions that ultimately impeded his learning rather than fostering it. In the future I would not interview a student before giving them clarinet lessons, though I would probably do a “lesson 0” in which I play some clarinet to them and go over the basics of how the instrument works and how to put it together. I would still buy them their first box of reeds and invest in anything I could to make their learning as easy as possible, but I also need to be prepared for lateness, cancellations and other outside circumstances. Sometimes I will put in a lot of work for a lesson that might get delayed or cancelled altogether, and I need to be able to take that in stride. There are several things I would need to be ready to create or invest in for my students such as sheet music, a whiteboard and pens and hand outs, and there was a lot of places where I could have been more innovative and engaging in my teaching. I should have also provided a practice journal and been more encouraging about practice in general, as opposed to the permissive approach I took in these lessons. The biggest thing I could have done better was simply do more lessons and be consistent with my teaching.