Adult students can feel 'benched' when their practice doesn't yield desirable results. Teaching them to set clear and attainable goals is vital if they are going to take an active role in assessing whether their practice is productive. By using the language of sports, teachers can show students how to become better 'coaches' of their own practice. This workshop explores how you can use sports analogies as practice strategies to ensure a musical win!

This session focuses on strategies to enhance rhythmic integrity and expression in a student's playing while learning to manipulate tempo. A large portion is devoted to how to practice and troubleshoot common technical problems that arise in the intermediate repertoire.

This session shows how Mrs. Sallee gets her students using chords in the first year, harmonizing in the 2nd year and reading lead sheets by the time they are in the 5th grade. It also focuses on training the beginning students to think vertically through pattern recognition as well as using harmony to improve their sight reading skills and practice efficiency.

This topic covers the potential fun of teaching beginning adults and how to keep them interested in piano study through strategies from Piano for Procrastinators, her own self-published adult method by Willis. It also includes selecting motivating repertoire that helps adults learn, including solo and duet repertoire that probably isn't covered in most college pedagogy classes.

This topic focuses on preparing students to play in a jazz style by choosing appropriate beginning repertoire. It also focuses on counting rhythms, chord progressions and voicings as well as improvisation.

This topic covers the endless opportunities that teachers have to refine their students aural skills when it comes to intervals, rhythm, harmonic analysis and even playing by ear. Do we allow our students to think that ear training is something they do in a theory book, without applying it to their own repertoire, music making or even life?

Mrs. Sallee is prepared to work with individual students one-on-one or in a performance class setting. Any style of repertoire is welcome including sacred, jazz or standard repertoire.

This extended workshop includes highlights from various solo and duet collections, addressing topics such as : "How I Get My Boys to Practice", "Music That Your Students Will Want to Perform in Church", "How I Explore Different Touches at the Piano" and "How I Built a Studio of 20 Adults and Kept Them".

Mary has presented sessions to college classes in Ohio, Texas, Louisiana, Montana and N. Carolina on topics such as composition, studio policies and getting your students to think harmonically as well as sharing some of her favorite pedagogical compositions.