Carrie passed around a cheesy hand out in our class on Friday. The title matches the title of this post, “Help & Support…” It was published by Soles & Associates Inc., but has the uncanny character of a Seth Godin blog post.

The point is this:
1. Help means doing something so that another person need not do it.
2. Support means doing something that contributes to someone’s capability or productivity.

As people receive support they become more creative, productive, and effective.
As people receive help they become more dependent while credit is giving to the helper.

This does not suggest support is good and help is bad; there is nuance.

A crucial skill is learning when to provide help and when to provide support.

Your job as a teacher, much like that of a leader, is to constantly help and/or support.

How will you know when to help and when to support?
How will you know when to provide the answers, and when to wait uncomfortably for them?
How will you know when to make exceptions and when to uphold expectations?

You won’t — at least not for a while.

But a good question to ask is whether your help or support will, in the long run, allow this person to help and support others.

If your student has no way of knowing the answer to a question, you watching them flounder will not increase their knowledge base. It will not allow them to teach this point to other students.

But if your student does know the answer to a question, and you cut in to help just because they appear to be uncomfortable in the space of figuring-it-out, your answering for them, helping them, will keep them from building their own connections.

When a family is resisting instruction — the student is testing your boundaries and the parent doesn’t understand the method — you have to determine whether they are really at their limits.

I know many teachers who describe the beautiful re-written rules they co-authored with a family when parents were going through a separation, or moving houses, or navigating a new neuro-divergent diagnosis. In these cases help is humane, help is necessary. Sometimes the only constant in a family’s life IS violin lessons, and you help by upholding the routine even when they can’t.

But sometimes what a child needs to experience is a “Million Dollar Lesson,” because in the long term the best lesson they can learn is that boundaries exist, that they aren’t and won’t always be in control. You support their learning in that moment but ending lesson, exaggerating a teachable moment which will live with them forever. You require them to uphold the expectations because they can.

Same goes for being taught how to teach.

I’ve experienced Suzuki Violin Training in which the teacher trainer merely helps their teacher trainees. They dump all of their rituals, expectations, studio policies, sequences, script conversations with parents, favorite books, you name it. And some trainees need that to get started, to get their feet on the ground. I’ve needed help every step of the way.

But I’ve also experienced teacher trainees who ask me to reflect, to demonstrate how I’m integrating Suzuki’s philosophy, to lead my own independent projects, and to not only ask questions but attempt to answer them myself. This support has led to powerful learning.

Furthermore, I’ve learned my hardest lessons simply from doing something wrong and realizing it too late. There wasn’t a teacher trainer around to give me step by step instructions, to tell me how to do the right thing. I had to support myself.

The distinction between help and support is complex, it’s nuanced, it’s subtle. I am taking this seemingly simple missive to heart– allowing it to guide when and when I don’t offer either.

I hope it helps & supports your teaching, in whichever ever way you need most right now.