If students aren&amp;#8217;t practicing, I honestly think that&amp;#8217;s the teacher&amp;#8217;s fault.
Too many teachers assign practice as just a &amp;#8220;fill out this practice sheet with so many minutes per week.&amp;#8221; There&amp;#8217;s no guidelines. Nothing specific for the students to work on. You&amp;#8217;re probably lucky if they actually practice and don&amp;#8217;t just fill in random times. And even if they do practice, you better hope they&amp;#8217;re making good use of that time, and not just practicing the same section (and sometimes practicing it wrong to boot! good luck fixing it once a student has run it wrong 20 times).
A better situation is to make moving on contingent upon their improving outside of class. Work a segment of a song in class. Expect next time for it to have improved. Give the students specific instruction on what you want them to work on, what needs to change, and how it needs to sound. And when they come back, assess it - did it improve? Is it any better? Are they demonstrating that they understood and practiced what was needed?&nbsp;
And if they aren&amp;#8217;t&amp;#8230; put that piece away and move on. Guilt them a little. It&amp;#8217;s okay. As long as you&amp;#8217;re right there to be their biggest cheer leader when they do something right.&nbsp;
It&amp;#8217;s okay to have high expectations for students, if you give them the tools to succeed and celebrate those successes with them. But there&amp;#8217;s also no law that says you have to celebrate mediocrity. Don&amp;#8217;t settle for anything less than the best.
The other thing I dislike about this photo is the grammar :/