I believe a quality education should address the needs of the whole student. Knowledge and academic skills matter, but education should also help young people develop curiosity, judgment, independence, character, and an appreciation for the connections among different fields of knowledge and human experience.
A teacher’s role is therefore larger than delivering the content of a particular course. Students should be helped to see how science, mathematics, literature, history, the arts, and everyday life relate to one another. Education should contribute not only to what students know, but also to how they think, communicate, solve problems, make decisions, and understand themselves and others.
Independent study requires flexibility because students come to it with widely different needs, circumstances, abilities, and goals. Some need schedules that accommodate demanding artistic, athletic, professional, medical, or family commitments. Others need a learning environment that differs substantially from the traditional comprehensive-school model.
Flexibility, however, should not mean pretending that learning has occurred when it has not. Students deserve accommodations appropriate to their circumstances, but they also deserve honest expectations, meaningful feedback, and an education with substance. The challenge is to maintain academic rigor without becoming so rigid that we lose sight of why a student entered independent study in the first place.
Fairness does not always mean treating every student identically. It means understanding what each student needs while remaining honest about the knowledge, skills, effort, and growth that education requires.
The greatest challenge of independent study is often learning how to work independently. Students must gradually take greater responsibility for managing their time, communicating, completing work, asking questions, and demonstrating genuine understanding.
My role is to provide instruction, structure, encouragement, feedback, and accountability while helping students become increasingly capable of directing their own learning. I see myself not only as a subject-area teacher, but also as a coach, mentor, guide, and partner in that process.
That work depends on relationships. Students are more willing to ask questions, acknowledge confusion, revise their thinking, and take intellectual risks when they know their teacher sees them as individuals and takes their learning seriously. Clear communication and mutual respect make rigor possible; they do not weaken it.
One of the most important early influences on my teaching was Barbara Lourie Sand’s Teaching Genius, a biography of the renowned Juilliard violin teacher Dorothy DeLay. Some of her students included Itzhak Perlman, Midori, and Sarah Chang. I first encountered DeLay’s ideas while beginning my own career as a music educator, but their relevance has become even clearer during my years in independent study.
Many of DeLay’s young musicians followed highly individualized educational paths because their unusual abilities and demanding schedules did not fit comfortably within conventional schooling. She understood that education sometimes needed to adapt around an exceptional talent.
At the same time, she recognized the danger of allowing aspiration or ability in one field to substitute for a genuine education. Even extraordinarily talented young people could not assume that they would ultimately build successful careers around that talent. They still needed intellectual breadth, practical skills, and an education that prepared them for more than one possible future.
That tension remains central to my philosophy: education should be flexible enough to respond to the individual, but substantial enough to prepare that individual for a life larger than any single ambition.
DeLay also demonstrated that rigor, patience, kindness, curiosity, and individualized instruction are not competing values. A great teacher does not simply transmit information or demand compliance. A great teacher studies the student, asks the right questions, sets meaningful standards, and helps that student develop confidence, independence, and judgment.
My teaching continues to evolve through experience, collaboration, study, and reflection. The subjects and circumstances may change, but the purpose remains consistent: to help students become capable, thoughtful, curious, and increasingly independent human beings.
Further reading: Paul Griffiths, “Music: How a Teacher Can Influence a Whole Life,” The New York Times, September 3, 2000.