SUMMER VACATION, A PIANO STUDENTS’ ENEMY
The advantages of taking summer lessons: Students are not in school, and there is more time to practice on the piano. If summer break is only 2 months long, the improvement in skills on the piano should feel like 4 months. No worry about skill atrophy. The disadvantages of taking summer vacation: Skill atrophy during the summer. Students typically fall behind by about a month from where they left off at the beginning of the summer. Your teacher has to start from materials learned in May and slowly review them. The teacher will try very hard to bring the student back to their previous level of proficiency, but the experience will be frustrating for students. The teacher has to help the student stumble through things that they used to play with ease, having to re-teach old things without demoralizing the student. Your piano progress will be 6 months behind those who stay for lessons during the summer months. Those who stay are “+4”, those who take ...