Young teachers are all looking for opportunities to gain experience working with students. I stumbled on a way to double, or potentially triple your group class time.

When you are invited to teach a class go ahead and split that class into two or more subsections and schedule them at different times (back to back might work best).

You most likely won’t be paid double for your additional work, but at the very least you will rack up twice the amount of group class time. On top of that you can use the same lesson plan for both, have the opportunity to teach the same plan back to back (optimizing your delivery the second time around), and get feedback on how the material lands with two different groups of students.

I hope you take advantage of such a simple trick. It was a game changer for me.

Leaves are bursting with color here in upstate New York. Fall brings prospective parents and excited students. Here are a few thoughts I have on starting beginners…

1) Ignition. Where is the interest coming from? Has the child experienced ignition (link)? Are they ready to go? Is the parent right there with them?

If the interest is purely mechanical (no ignition), I ask families to attend a few lessons and group classes before we even talk about starting lessons. If I still don’t see a spark, I question the wisdom of embarking on this particular journey.

If the interest is pure ignition I make sure parents understand the day to day, foundation work necessary to become a violinist. The ignition, though powerful, is not perpetual. We will need other sources of energy to propel us on the journey.

2) My commitment. I cap my studio at 20 students. I dedicate myself completely to each family in the studio. When I imagine working with a new family I imagine working with them until their child turns 18. It is important families realize the depth of my commitment to them. The commitment doesn’t need to be reciprocal to get started, but just understanding the depth from my side can encourage depth on theirs.

[Read more…]

I recently talked to a parent with a ‘strong-willed’ child. She wasn’t sure how long the whole violin journey would last because she wasn’t sure how long her daughter would be interested.

I had a few ideas about the concept of quitting…

1) Bob Duke once shared the insight… your students will either play violin forever, or they will at some point quit. We need to de-stigmatize what it means to quit. It isn’t the end of the world. It isn’t taboo. People quit. In fact, everyone who isn’t playing violin anymore quit playing violin at some point. We would do ourselves a service to build some safe off-ramps for our students to avoid a traumatic end to an otherwise beautiful journey.

2) If two of the three members of the Suzuki triangle want to continue we will continue. Violin lessons are not the singular effort of the child. They are the shared effort of parent, student, and teacher. If two of those members (parent and teacher; teacher and student; student and parent) still feel strongly about continuing, it is the responsibility of those two to keep the momentum of learning moving forward. When it is truly time to find an ‘off-ramp’ it is often a unanimous decision.

3) Don’t quit when it is hard, quit when it is easy. Challenge is part of the process. In fact, challenge might BE the process. If you exit while moving through great difficulty you are quitting difficulty, not the violin. Difficulty will never go away, so it is best not to avoid it. Instead make your decision to quit once you’ve crested challenge and it is truly a decision about the violin and its place in your life.