Monday Morning Epiphany

So today as I looked over my notes from Schleuter's A Sound Approach to Teaching Instrumentalists one comment I had starred caught my eye. What I had written down was a paraphrase from Chapter 1. It goes like this, "fingerings = notation, NOT sound". 
Let me go back a bit and explain. 
Growing up I took piano lessons as my first experience with making music. I learned if you see this note, you press this key. I never thought about this note equaling this sound. As I began taking band class this trend continued. I was never taught to think about the notes on the page as sounds, I simply thought "Oh, that's a D, I need to press these keys."
This may seem like simply a word puzzle, but it is the basis of how I used to think about music. Even now, in the fourth year of my degree, I have an extremely hard time with aural skills and the thought of improvisation terrifies me! I am quite inflexible as a musician, because I was never really taught to use my ears. Not to bash my teachers however, they were fantastic and gave me a love for music that will last a lifetime.
What does this mean for my teaching?
Well, I hope to help my students become well-rounded musicians. I want to give them the advantages I didn't have. I will incorporate easy improvisation exercises and get them to sing pitches before they play. I will ask them what they hear not what they see. 
As difficult as it is to realize your weaknesses, ultimately they make you better at what you do. So I hope I can take this epiphany and use it to improve my teaching.