Beautiful Stories of how Suzuki changed lives at IAM

The stories you hear at Suzuki Teacher-Training is such a powerful example of the Suzuki method of teaching. Yep, I've officially drank the kool-aid. I realize more and more, that you really can try as hard as you wish, but you can't teach a student (or the parent of a student in the case of the Suzuki method), without first teaching about character development. In order to do anything well, you have to apply yourself in a disciplined manner. Look at anyone who is skilled at anything...I'm learning more and more that teaching discipline, respect, perseverance, and integrity is so much more important than how far they get in the repertoire and how quickly they get there. If I'm going to teach my students that they should strive to do things well no matter what it is, I need to step up my game this year. Regardless...be prepared... Winter is coming!! (lol...I had to.) Through the week, I've been taking examples of how committing to studying a musical instrument, teaches so many life lessons. Maybe by the end of the week, I'll summarize them all into a list to hang on my studio wall. We shall see.

The inspiration for this post came from one of the days I was in training this week, and after an 'institute' lesson (4 private lessons in one), a mother came up to our teacher-trainer and began to tell how the Suzuki method impacted her own life. As a teenager piano student she worked very hard and became very good at the piano. She told us the story of how when she was 19, her mother was walking along a street in the middle of the day and got struck and killed by a drunk driver. I immediately got angry at this irresponsible driver and had a negative judgement of them without even knowing what they looked like. I said "Of course!" Her face went from a very solemn one, to one instantly filled with peace, love, and forgiveness and she stated that the woman driving was eating dinner with her family. Her husband and her got into a very serious argument, and the woman had already had a bottle of champagne prior.
Now, that still didn't take away my judgement of this person, but seeing how someone whose mother was ripped away from them with no warning at a very transitional phase of life, had forgiven that person. She had obviously worked that out over the years, but how beautiful to live a life free from our constantly judging and negative culture.
      She began to explain how after the accident, she fell apart and couldn't see up from down. She completely quit piano for many years. One day, she felt the inevitable call of any musician to their muse...she sat down at the piano, and the only songs she could remember, were her suzuki songs. She began playing again because of that day. Now, she is a certified Suzuki teacher and her daughter, who is roughly 7 years old, is a fine musician herself was playing piano in that class. Wow.
      It may seem like a minor detail in her unfortunate story, but the joy on her face as she said "I only remembered my Suzuki songs" followed by her honest smile. Obviously, the philosophy behind the method changed this persons life, for the better.
      There are many stories like this, that I wish I could remember and re-tell to my studio, so that they understand the great impact that teaching children how to become better people, helps those children for the rest of their lives.

Behavior in the Studio

Last summer I had the great blessing of being able to study Suzuki Teacher Training with some amazing people who changed my philosophy of teaching completely. I knew it wasn't going to be easy taking on these changes, but I knew in the long run, it would completely renovate the way my studio was ran.
    First, I had Suzuki Cello Book 1 training with Barbara Wampner from San Franscisco at the Chicago Suzuki Institute 2015. Barbara studied directly with Suzuki in Matsumoto, Japan many years ago. When I asked her how to deal with a troublesome student that was eroding my deep well of patience, she only had to say one sentence that would change my life. "Well... we are not here to teach music Leilah...." I felt so confused after this statement... I asked myself in my head... "wait... we're not?" She continued.... "We're here to teach character first, and then music." Her next sentances went on to discuss how without character, you cannot study music. So as suzuki teachers our main goal with the young children (and really any age) is to develop the character necessary to study music and then, and only then do we have the chance to teach them music.
    A few weeks later, I got another amazing life-changing opportunity to audit a Suzuki Piano Book 1 training class with Rita Hauck. Rita Hauck was even more focused on this aspect of music lessons and would go as far as to make kids apologize for their bad behavior, even (and especially) if it was to their own parents.
    At first, I found this shocking. In the world today, teachers are supposed to be careful and not make a parent feel uncomfortable... We have been trained to walk-on-eggshells and cater and spoon feed the parents. But in reality, this is not helping the child develop character at all! In fact, it is doing the opposite!! I began my professional teaching studio in the fall of 2015, and the first few times I had to ask a student to apologize to their parent, I felt like perhaps I may have been stepping over my boundaries as a teacher...but then I talked with the parent afterwards and made sure this was okay for me to do in the lessons....instead of getting the reaction I expected of "no, it is my job to discipline my child"... I got a shocking and quite opposite reaction... "Oh please do! I was so glad you did that!!".
    Therefore, I have adopted the teaching philosophy that I need to develop their character first, before I can teach the kid anything about music. (Does this sound familiar?? *Cough* "Wax on, Wax off." -Karate Kid *Cough*.) I began to realize, that teaching masters of ANY discipline, have been doing this for centuries....it IS the only way to teach life-long lessons.
    I have decided after re-visiting the Chicago Institute this year and taking book 2 cello with Barbara again... that I will NOT apologize for correcting bad behavior in my studio. Rather, I will further raise my standards this year and hopefully gracefully balance this discipline, with nurturing love.

Practicing...

Sometimes, getting your kids to practice is easy. Sometimes....not so much. Regardless, practicing is very important. Some of you may think "duh"..practice is the only way to get better at an instrument.... TRUTH!!! But as a Suzuki teacher, my goal is to teach far greater life lessons. Lessons which I didn't quite understand myself until recently in my life as an adult, and still struggle with on a daily basis.... Discipline!! I was oddly reminded of this the other day as I was ordering a sandwich at Jimmy John's and one of the signs on the wall said "Do the things you need to do now, in order to do the things you want to do later!" As I reflected on my own piano practice this past year, I found myself wandering to repertoire I wanted to play, rather than what I was supposed to be doing. How much progress did I make? Well... not nearly as much as I should have over the course of a year's time. Eeks! Being a student on a secondary instrument, has been an amazing experience for me. It's making me go through all the steps and phases of my own students all over again! It's helping me see things from their point of view! 

   Usually people would shy away from saying as a piano teacher, "I'm taking piano lessons myself"...but I'm proud of it. I'm not the best piano player in the world, nor do I pretend to be. But I will never hold any of my students back. I know what I can teach, and what I can't teach. I strive to never be responsible for holding my students back. Letting go of my ego, has been great for me as I can really begin to see things from the students perspective. I took piano lessons from 6-8 years old. I really don't remember that much from them... but I do remember the painstaking sweat, blood, and tears I put into building my foundation on cello and boy does that translate to any instrument. However, when you're 29...it's hard to remember how difficult it was back then. How you never really wanted to practice and got bored of your instrument. There were weeks where I didn't touch it and would show up to lessons incredibly unprepared and unapologetic. Eeks!!! (Poor Ms. Liz... AKA, the most patient teacher ever). Some parents believe that you shouldn't make the kids practice because they're afraid of them resenting the instrument. That is a VERY good philosophy... however, if we're too afraid to push them, then they don't improve and improvement is how they stay motivated... SO... that being said, there are some pretty good articles on this. 

One of the most famous one is by NPR: http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2012/06/18/155282684/getting-kids-to-practice-music-without-tears-or-tantrums

Please share your own ideas on how to get your kids to practice consistently. Remember, by you sharing, you're helping fellow parents!!!

Awesome Quote!!

Music Game Apps for kids

I'm constantly looking for and playing kids games to see if I should recommend them or not. There are serious music teaching apps for the older students, but for this post we will try to keep it strictly fun. Here are some of the best music game apps I have personally found (quite frankly...any app by JoyTunes is amazing!):

I will start will all the JoyTunes apps, because well...they're amazing and fun!

1. Simply Piano (JoyTunes): This app is really fun to learn, it plays background music that accompanies you while you learn/repeat simple notes. It might be difficult for super young students as it doesn't really explain what rests are...but it's in the format of "guitar hero" basically...so they can catch on.

2. Piano Maestro (JoyTunes): Pretty much like Simply Piano, but allows me to track what they do in the game. It's pretty neat for me to see their progress. If you're interested and you're a part of my studio, just let me know and I'll send you the link to sign up under my teacher account.

3. Piano Dust Buster (JoyTunes): LOVE! Super, super fun for kids to have fun with music. (Of course, it ignores technique and proper finger numbers on certain keys...but if it gets them loving piano and/or music....DO IT!)

4. Piano Summer Games (JoyTunes)- Play National Anthems: More piano song teaching games.

5. Tap and sing by StoryBots (JibJab Media Inc): This is just super cute. It teaches more general music skills, but is still super helpful. You can change from the note names to solfege. Kids love this one! It's super entertaining. (They also have a Christmas version.)

6. Easy Music (Edoki Academy): This app is really not for learning necessarily, although that can happen. It's more of a musical exploration. Really interesting though!

7. Music for little Mozarts (Alfred Music Publishing): This app is a little outdated, but still does it's job and could still be fun.

8. Rhythm Cat Lite HD- Learn to Read Music (LMuse Limited): This one is awesome and entertaining. Games to teach rhythm.

9. NoteWorks Free (Azati Corporation): Super fun note learning game

10. Kids Music Factory Free (GiggleUp Kids Apps And Education): More for 3-5 year olds. But super cute, and they will laugh as they compose their own songs... it's pretty awesome.

These are all free apps, with in-app purchases available but not necessary at all. Give your musical children an app as a prize for practicing Suzuki stuff and see what fun they have. Please let me know which ones work the best!!

Perfectionism Continued

When I was in school for Music Education, my professor in my "Social Context & Politics in Education" made us follow this education blog called "Mindshift". I typically delete them, as I have a lot on my plate and sift through the ones I would actually like to read....one of those popped into my inbox this morning and goes perfectly along with our topic of perfectionism/how we deal with failure. I highly suggest reading it, as it talks about what a parent can do to encourage a growth mindset, rather than the negative perfectionism. "Growth Mindset" is becoming a huge trend in education, and boy does that make an ADHD graduate of high school and college smile! I didn't learn this skill until my Junior Year of college at 27 and yet, I still didn't really get a hold of it until this year at 29! If we can get little kids to stop beating themselves up, and stop learning confidence via perfectionism, but rather a growth mindset...wow...what a blessing in their lives and they won't even realize how much emotional pain, self-doubt, failures, self-loathing, and insecurities they will have thrown away and their confidence towards learning and mastering ANYTHING they want to, will become powerful! They will train success to bend to their will, not the other way around. 

       There are two common analogies teachers often use to encourage a growth mindset over perfectionism...the first one involves Thomas Edison and his trial and error period of attempting to make a lightbulb. It took him roughly 10,000 tries to finally get it right..,but look at what all his failures brought to the future! He would not have succeeded if he let his failures dictate his motivation.

        The second analogy is of course, Albert Einstein. He failed math in school, and YET, refused to let that failure dictate his future and changed mathematics drastically!! 

         We all struggle greatly with our egos. Our egos and perfectionism, are not always a bad thing. They can motivate us to better ourselves short-term when we need a little extra push. But if you use them as tools for success for too long...you're bound to get stuck somewhere along the line and those attributes can no longer help you. You have two choices at that point. You can either say "Well...I gave it my best effort and it's just not my cup of tea..." Or you can use your growth mindset to really figure out and analyze where your weaknesses lie, which involves putting your ego away for the time being and target those areas for improvement! Wow! What a powerful lesson to learn at a young age! I am currently 29 and just now starting to really shift towards this mindset. Perhaps if I had understood this in my teen years, I would not have gone down the dark path I did and wasted so much precious time in my life. But you know what, without those years of failing, I guess I probably wouldn't appreciate my hard work towards success as much, as it did not come so easily to me in my own perfectionist mentality. Cheers to many more years of growth! 

Here's the link to the article "Talking About Failure: What Parents Can Do to Motivate Your Kids in School", if you would like to read it:  

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/05/08/talking-about-failure-what-parents-can-do-to-motivate-kids-in-school/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FnHAK+%28MindShift%29

May Topic of the Month: Perfectionism

     On my theme for the month of battling perfectionism, I showed the kids this quick youtube clip from the Disney film "Meet the Robinson's". As Walt Disney said himself, "Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths". 
     They loved being able to watch a cartoon clip in their lesson, and we discussed it afterwards. They may not understand it fully yet, but I'm going to keep brainstorming to find different ways of approaching the topic. 
      How can I get the students to not make a big deal of their mess-ups and continue going in the music, without starting all the way over? Any ideas? I'd love to hear them!