2010 will be an exciting year around here for adult piano students. As with our present curriculum, PFA provides a unified and easy-to-understand framework for delivering musical expertise to adults of all ages and occupations. To support the changing nature of adult needs, we have substantially restructured our core curriculum to include new things, and to simplify many current challenges that adults face. PFA 2010 has many new features. 

The goals for 2010 are to:

• Substantially improve usability, manageability, of our teaching materials. This means having multiple explanations available for similar concepts and providing many more possibilities to reach the same goals. In other words, we are definitely not a "one-size-fits-all" learning institution. We adapt to your needs.
  

• Expand accessibility to support students who are comfortable using the web. We will post handouts, musical examples, explanations, music files and other materials to aid in your understanding of your experience here.

• Extend the integration of 'by ear' playing with 'note reading.' Musicians think "by ear" (they think of the music, not the notes), but one has to learn to read and understand the musical score. Coming into lessons, every participant will be slightly different than all others in their abilities. Remember--we train ability here.
  

• Enhance the content delivery of our teaching system. Music instruction should not just be music books to play from. Now, a decade into the 21st century, our understanding of how people learn and remember is better than ever. That's why we choose the cross-disciplinary route (see the Society for Neuroscience Summit proceedings.). We meet the criteria the SFN is talking about--competence in piano teaching, psychology and neuroscience. We will make our knowledge available to you as soon as we can.
  

• Achieve a more flexible delivery for people with special needs--any type of special need. People have disabilities; many disabilities come on as we age, others are acquired through accidents. We can expand our work with you to include your particular circumstances by reviewing your medical needs and creating a plan that does not exceed your particular capabilities.
  

• Deliver compatibility with any prior instruction; we will help you integrate what you already know with what you are learning. Often people come to us and say they have to start over. Of course, no one really can start over. What we will do is help you retrieve old memories of prior instruction, and look for any skill or knowledge deficits that exist. In that way, you will build upon prior instruction, not try to eliminate it.