Filling the Bucket

Generalization is when you take information that you learned in one situation, and you apply it to an unknown, but similar, situation. When you generalize, you build on what you know, to discover what you don’t know.

In order for someone to generalize, they first need to build a wealth of experiences and knowledge from which to draw their generalizations. I call this process “Filling the Bucket.”

Filling the Bucket is all about giving information. It’s not about asking questions or challenging your students to be creative. It’s about giving them the right answer for a specific situation.

As a music teacher, filling your students’ buckets may look like taking time each lesson to sing or play songs and chants in different tonalities and meters. Just so they can listen.

For an older student, it might look like a conversation about how your knowledge of period, composer, context, structure, and harmony, combined to inform that one musical decision.

Realize that when we talk about “teaching our students how to teach themselves,” we’re really talking about Generalization. And there is no generalization without a full bucket. So fill those buckets, and watch your students soar!