There are many great reasons to learn an instrument as young as the Preschool years including: a child that shows interest, time to practice as part of the routine before school & homework begin, and that students this age are at a developmental stage where music will become part of who they are, just as learning their native language will be. A big key to a student's success at this age is for parents to know that they have a…
This article was originally posted HERE on Medium.com where Christine Goodner is a top writer in Music & Parenting. What is the practice environment like in your house? As a musician, and a music teacher, I know the environment we practice in has a big impact on the kind of practice we can do. Can we focus? Can we find something specific to improve and improve it? Can we work through our resistance to doing the hard work? How do we get…
Listening to Podcasts is one of my favorite ways to learn new things and get inspired. Especially while exercising, cleaning or driving. I listen to a variety of podcasts including shows about writing, creativity, business, books, and of course Suzuki teaching and parenting. Today I wanted to share a few of my favorite Suzuki podcasts. They are great resources for parents and for teachers looking to fresh ideas and new perspectives about teaching and the Suzuki philosophy. I am not…
The following is an excerpt from the book Beyond the Music Lesson: Habits of Successful Suzuki Families which officially comes out on Amazon Thursday June 22nd. It is meant to be a resource for families looking to answer the question: "How do we make the Suzuki method work in our every day life?" I was a Suzuki student, starting lessons at the age of two and a half. There are parts of being successful at the Suzuki method that…
I was trying to come up with the most useful thing I could share with other teachers on the topic of working with parents. So, I started to think about all of the things I do in my studio like conferences, parent education, and parent talks.
There are lots of things we can do as teachers to help parents be successful. However, I would like to ask teachers to think bigger picture than that.
As a young violin teacher I heard a concept that blew my mind at the time. When you look at the beginner student in front of you – don’t think about what they need in order to learn to play twinkle. Think about what they need in order to play a Mozart Concerto and teach them with that in mind.
I believe we need to do the same thing with new Suzuki Parents.
When I think about the families that I work with the most productively I think about families that:
I’ve finished most of the parent teacher conferences in my studio for the year (If you want to read more about my process you can read more HERE & HERE). The most common issue I heard (besides learning to practice well as students start to become more independent in practice – a theme that kept coming up for the middle school students) was that in a number of families the parents felt like it was a daily battle to get practice started.
Let’s be honest – it is not very motivating to keep taking your child to music lessons if you know it means daily squabbles with your kids over the practice. Many working parents have just a few quality time hours a day with their kids and spending part of that time fighting about something is not a fun idea.
This is why parent teacher conferences are so important – I don’t know what practice is like for families at home without these honest conversations and sometimes these situations can be turned around quite easily, as long as parents are willing to put in a little effort to change the tone for practice.
In each of the cases where this issue was brought up we decided that the number one priority for this student and family was not moving forward on the instrument – it was developing a positive attitude about practice.