“We’ll sing a song in 4/4 and tap the beat as we sing it,” she explains. “Then we’ll sing a 3/4 song, and feel the waltz of it, and clap to that beat.” With one student who wasn’t dyslexic but had other perception issues, Reynolds notes, “As soon as I did this, she got it; then we could go back and review the book part of it and count it, point to the beats in a 3/4 song.” Of that particular student, Reynolds observes, “She could get the higher concepts, she understood them--and she could actually think quite analytically about music once she understood the concepts.”

Enabling Success
Much of what Reynolds does is common sense teaching, magnified tenfold. “The most important thing is instilling confidence, and the next most important thing is having an arsenal of ways to explain the basic concepts,” she says. Beyond that, if you want to instill confidence in the parent of a dyslexic or otherwise learning-disabled child, Reynolds recommends auditing a class on teaching disabled students. “The parent is dying to give their kid something that will make them feel happy about themselves,” she says. “They’ll say, ‘My kid has trouble in school; I’m really hoping that this can be something that they have fun with, can enjoy and succeed at, and can find success in other things because they succeed at this.’ So if you can say, ‘I have experience, I’ve taken a class on how to approach this’--even a community ed course--it makes a difference.”
Ultimately, says Reynolds, “as far as my teaching methods, my students never sense and I never tell them that I’m doing anything any differently, even the ones who know another student that I teach. Because the last thing you want to do is single them out and make them feel special. They tend to hate that word. I think with all of these kids that have any kind of challenge learning, whether it’s a disability or not, their confidence level is low. So once you can get them feeling like they can do it, they usually can.” n

Jenny’s Advice
- Different students respond to different approaches. Be prepared with several ways to explain basic concepts.
- Confidence is key. Remind students of their accomplishments and abilities.
- Demonstrate concepts like meter to children before introducing them to the sheet music and notation.

“I’ll teach my students how to play something and then show them the sheet music for what they just played,” Reynolds explains, “and when they say, ‘I can’t do this,’ I can say, ‘You just did.’”