We are pleased to share that Alameda East Branch member Dr. Deborah McQueen has an article published in the Fall 2026 issue of The California Music Teacher, MTAC’s statewide magazine.

Her piece, "Graphomotor Skill Deficits in Students and Their Effect on Piano Skill Development," tackles a challenge many of us are noticing in our own studios: more and more students arrive with learning differences, and precious little training exists to help us adapt.

The numbers back up what we're seeing. National data show learning disorders have been rising steadily for a decade, and Dr. McQueen cites recent industry surveys putting the share of private music students with a documented or suspected disability (i.e., ADHD, dyslexia, autism spectrum traits) at 30 to 35 percent. Most of us were never trained to recognize or work around these differences; that's squarely the job of board-certified music therapists, not studio teachers. Yet we're the ones sitting next to these students every week.

The article's central insight is the overlooked link between handwriting and piano playing. Since cursive and manuscript instruction were largely phased out of schools roughly fifteen years ago in favor of typing, researchers have observed a rise in "graphomotor" deficits, kids who never built the fine-motor foundation that handwriting used to provide. Dr. McQueen argues this doesn't cause learning disorders, but it does make their characteristics more pronounced and harder to manage, and it shows up at the keyboard in familiar ways: stiff wrists, whole-arm playing, hammered keys, and trouble with independent finger control.

Why does this matter for piano teachers specifically? Because handwriting and piano playing draw on nearly identical neurological groundwork: control that moves from the shoulder outward to the fingers, learned pressure regulation, and the same brain circuitry that converts an abstract symbol into a precise physical motion. Dr. McQueen walks through the neuroscience of both skills, including how they build the corpus callosum, strengthen executive function, and activate reading circuits, then translates the research into practical studio strategies: having students hand-notate music on manuscript paper, targeted non-dominant-hand exercises, and simple off-bench tools (pencil grippers, finger trainers) borrowed from occupational therapy to build the hand strength many students never developed.

It's a genuine service to the profession to have this kind of research made accessible to working teachers. Keep an eye out for the Fall issue in your mailbox, and if you teach piano, it's well worth the full read.