As a pedagogical principle I take responsibility for a student’s understanding, working with students to appreciate how they learn best, and recognising that I must be adaptable and imaginative in my explanations and conceptualisations. I avoid dogmatic styles of teaching, and instead take an exploratory and pragmatic approach that fosters enjoyment as well as excellence.
I’ve surveyed established and innovative instrumental pedagogies and adopted principles from Suzuki and body mapping into my teaching. This gives me an extended “toolbox” to use with students, especially those for whom reading music is challenging or those who are too rooted in their music stand.
What underpins my teaching is context. I do not teach the oboe, rather I teach playing the oboe in orchestras and ensembles. Whilst this might sound obvious it is very much overlooked. I believe we need to prepare learners not only to play the notes, but also to understand how they interact musically and socially with other players.
I was appointed as the double reed specialist at Create Music in April 2023 where, after a lull of some 10 years, I am beginning to rebuild the double reed provision in the East Sussex area.
Previously, I taught woodwinds for Cheshire School of Music, and for four years I was the oboe teacher at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys. Past students have gone on to play in local and national youth orchestras, and won music scholarships to Oxford and Cambridge. I’ve also taught baroque oboe at Huddersfield University and have dep’ed at Junior RNCM. In the past few years I have also worked with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain as part of their residential safeguarding support team.
Additionally, I have an MSc in Performance Science from the Royal College of Music/ Imperial College, which concluded in a research project about orchestral musicians and dyslexia. This led to an invitation to present my study at the British Dyslexia Association‘s annual conference in 2020. See below for details of my study.
In 2018 I carried out academic research into dyslexia and musicians as part of my Masters at Royal College of Music/ Imperial College. Dyslexia affects around 10% of the general population and there is evidence that this proportion is significantly higher in the arts & entertainment industries. In the UK thousands of people play in orchestras and other large ensembles for leisure and for work and many will be dyslexic. So what are the specific challenges players with dyslexia face? And what advantages do they bring to the stage? My study’s aim was to find out.
For orchestral musicians reading music accurately and fluently is of paramount
importance. But what are the implications if an instrumentalist is dyslexic? Typical
prevalence rates predict that around 10% of musicians are dyslexic and, in fact, some
research suggests this proportion could be higher. However, very little is known about
dyslexic musicians, even less about those who play in the complex environment of the
orchestra, where reading is just one of many cognitively challenging skills that must
be mastered to achieve expert performance. The aim of this cross-sectional
explorative study was to investigate what challenges and advantages are experienced
by orchestral musicians with dyslexia, and report if any commonalities exist between
individual instrumentalists with the same condition. A purposive sample of musicians
(n=51) was recruited for an online, self-administered questionnaire. Questions
explored two areas: (1) experience of dyslexia in daily life, including self-reported
symptoms, and (2) reported challenges and advantages of the condition with respect
to music-making. Using a mainly deductive approach the study’s findings confirmed
the established view from practitioners that the condition is dimensional and thereby
highly individual. However, the experiences of participating musicians converged to
varying degrees to suggest four key findings: (1) stress impacts negatively on how
dyslexia symptoms are experienced, (2) dyslexia can negatively impact confidence in
performance situations, (3) some musicians enjoy heightened creative thinking which
contributes positively to musicianship, and (4) the experience of adapting to living with
dyslexia can result in valuable life skills. In conclusion the study found that whilst there
is convergent data to suggest commonalities, more tightly focused work remains to be
done to unpick many of the issues raised, especially around the complexities of
reading, attention and confidence in performance.