A series of posts on accidental successes uncovered in Zoom teaching in the past few months.

It has never — literally never — been easier to watch your student practice.

It hit me that the way students and parents really work at home together is a mystery to me. Six out of the seven times my students come into contact with the violin is under the purview of their parent–not me. I wanted to peel back the curtain.

Our transitions into quarantine meant

• Zoom became ubiquitous,
• many parents were at home with their children all day (doing practice earlier),
• and parents wanted all the help they could get.

I asked families to send me their typical practice time. I sorted everyone into my schedule and then requested families set me up on zoom on a particular day/time so I could watch.

A series of posts on accidental successes uncovered in Zoom teaching in the past few months.

I love to be close to the screen while teaching on Zoom, both so I can see the student and my face appears life-size on their screen.

When I need to demonstrate something with my violin, though, I don’t have much room. If the violin is pointed at the camera they can catch my face, fingers, and movements of the bow. There is no way that with my desired set up the whole bow will be captured in the screen. They aren’t able to see where in the bow I am, or how much of it I’m using.

Perhaps this is happening to you, too?

My solution is to tape the bow. I put a thin white tape in the middle (landing spot).

If I land on white, students know I’m in the middle.
If I’m above white, I’m in the upper half.
Below white, in the lower half.

Simple.

I was also gifted a small student bow. Invaluable. This bow is clean (no tapes), but can mostly fit in the frame. When I want to demonstrate a stroke I use hair clips (link) to match where the students’ tapes would be.

A series of posts on accidental successes uncovered in Zoom teaching in the past few months.

Consider what it took to get to the in-person violin lesson of times past…

• consult the weekly calendar
• pack up violin and music bag in the morning
• careful family strategizing of who picks up what and delivers who/what/where
• child gets in car knowing they are headed to a lesson
• parent gets in car knowing they are headed to a lesson
• a commute ranging from 2 to 35 minutes (if you are one of my students)
• usually a Suzuki CD playing in the car
• perhaps a conversation about what is important during the lesson
• perhaps a snack
• get out of the car with violin and violin bag
• walk into the Ithaca Talent Education building (a historic one with lots of music paraphernalia on the walls and a sense of Suzuki sacredness, at least unconsciously)
• the sounds of lessons envelop: violin, viola, and cello playing Twinkle to Mozart and beyond
• wait outside the teachers’ door, unpacking the violin very quietly
• teacher opens the door to great you, invites you in

Now consider what it takes to get to our virtual alternative…

• check email: calendar notification that zoom lessons starts in 2 minutes!
• frantic scramble to rush into the living room, wake the computer up and connect it to a charger
• teacher pops on screen, says hello

A world of difference, no?

A series of posts on accidental successes uncovered in Zoom teaching in the past few months.

The significance of the student/teacher lesson time is miniscule.

A 30 minute lesson? 1/336th of their entire week.

Of course on zoom, when I am requesting parents be my eyes, ears, and hands, it becomes startlingly obvious how little practice parents have at skills I consider basic.

“Could you place a hand behind the elbow to help guide her bow stroke?” Parent grabs child’s forearm and tries to push the bowing into place.

“Could you tell me whether his fingers were on their inside corners or rolling to the outside?” Blank stare.

“Your dad will drive the bow while you move the fingers.” Harsh scrubbing sounds, not on the correct string, completely misaligned with the child’s careful fingering.

Of course, this result is entirely the fault of me, the teacher. Enraptured in my own teaching work in the lesson, I assumed parents were picking up what I did and how I did it.

Zoom made it clear: they didn’t.

But through zoom teaching I also found a way to start teaching parents how to work with their children.

Commuting via car to visit a child every day is, in regular circumstances, near impossible. Zooming with a student and parent every morning for 15 minutes? Totally doable.

Many of us are craving change right now.

Change in political leadership.
Change in our healthcare system.
Change in policing.
And a break from 90+ degree weather.

But I’m going to argue something unpopular. I don’t think change is within our circle of control.

From years of sitting meditation I’ve come to believe that movements, thoughts, even decisions our not made by ‘us.’

Sam Harris proposes an interesting thought experiment to investigate this.
Try to conjure up in your mind your three favorite movies.
Okay, now pick your favorite among these three.

How did you do this? Did ‘you’ make the choice? Or did it just occur to ‘you’? Are you merely the overseer of such choices, telling yourself the story that you were in charge?

Run the experiment again. Pick three different movies. Choose a favorite. Where were YOU in the process?

He would argue that thought, speech, and actions are pre-determined. Or, as my zen teacher says it, an endless chain of cause and effect. We are in the midst of these cause and effect reactions, so we tell ourselves the story that each fork in the road is a choice made by us. We take credit for change.

If we pivot from the mystical zen world into the more trustworthy domain of cognitive psychology we see similar ideas represented in different ways.

Our decisions and actions are governed by entrenched sets of habits and keystone habits. Our memories are selective, biased, and rewrite themselves every time they are recalled. Our consciousness is propped up by a ridiculous number of unconscious functions in the body, all of which chug along second by second without our help at all.

One of those unconscious functions is pattern recognition which leads to instant, unconscious, automatic, fast, emotional, intuitive thinking, or ‘System 1’ in Daniel Kahneman’s terminology. Every idea that pops into our mind is merely a product of patterns collected over the course of our lifetime (or cause and effect). System 1 is constantly pulling in information and updating a personal world view based on collected data. System 1 is in charge of flashing the answer to 2+2 into your mind. System 1 would rather refute information than be surprised by it.

System 2 on the other hand is slow, rational, deliberate thinking which is surprised by nearly everything. It is in charge of figuring the answer to 217 divided by 11. The solution to that math problem will surprise many of us. As you can probably tell, System 2 thinking requires way more effort and we are therefore far less likely to use it. Interestingly, the way humans have found to circumnavigate the effort of to use System 2 is to develop routines we follow to force ourselves through the tough thinking process. For example, airlines require pilots to go through an established checklist of safety measures before flying. In other words, we set up a routine cause and effect process in which we closely pay attention.

So whether we are using reflexive thoughts (system 1) or deliberate thoughts (system 2) to navigate our environment, cause and effect, not choice, is dictating the process.

One thing we also know from physics is that observation has an impact on what is observed. Known as the observer effect (link) and similar to the uncertainty principle (link), merely measuring a phenomena is known to change the nature of the phenomena measured. A simple example of this is when you measure the air pressure of a tire some of the air must be released which changes the pressure of tire upon measurement. Heisenberg acknowledged, famously, that when we use photons (the smallest measurement of light) to detect/measure quanta their slight interference causes these small particles to act differently upon measurement. [If you find this intriguing you might like Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time where he argues that time is an emergent phenomena resulting entirely from our unique perception of the world.]

So all of this science speak is to say…. When we zoom in, or pay attention, to the events flowing through our life they have a peculiar way of changing.

I have adopted Joshua Waitzkin’s view of the world as frames. When something looks mystical or extraordinary it is because the performer is able to view the world through more frames than the observer. For example, a magician is able to perform a cool magic trick because they can move in the spaces between an observers’ frame-work of the world. Martial artists and entrepreneurs are able to strike ‘in between’ other people’s conception of reality because they have zoomed in on life. They are moving at the same pace as the rest of us, but that pace is being applied to (from our perspective) a micro-unit of reality.

When we zoom in on life we bring our cause and effect chain to bear on more and more frames, which will inevitably change the course of our life.

This can be explained through the example of a smoker. Say a lifelong smoker wants to quit. They’ve tried changing their habits many times– drugs, programs, sheer willpower hasn’t changed a thing. The habitual cause and effect they’ve been subjected to for years continues to pull them to smoking. One day, instead of going through the motions of the day they start to take note of exactly WHEN the urge to smoke arises in their mind. The next day they decide to write down the exact times in a notebook. They still allow themselves to smoke just like normal, but now the attentive noting accompanies the smoke. The next day they start to pay careful attention to what their hand does when preparing to smoke. How they pull the cigarettes and lighter from their pocket, how they reflexively flick open the carton, which fingers pull out the cigarette, and how the thumb rolls over the lighter. The more they pay attention, the more they might realize that smoking was a nearly unconscious activity. They actually used smoking as a way to zoom out of life, not zoom in. The more they zoom in, or pay attention, the more frames are available for them to opt out of smoking. Whereas before the urge was a singular on ramp to smoke, now there are hundreds of moments for the urge not to smoke to arise if it does (naturally through cause and effect, of course).

This process of zooming in, creating frames, and paying attention can be leveraged to work on any of the above ‘issues’ in our society. I might argue that, like smoking, our president, healthcare, racial inequality, and relationship to weather has arisen from zooming out in an attention deficit culture.

I believe one of the best ways to practice paying attention is in the violin lesson. Every time we use attention to reshape posture, correct intonation, and shape musical phrases we strengthen their ability to zoom in on the moment, especially when it is uncomfortable or painful. Rather than take credit for change, they learn to track with and pay attention to the most painful/difficult/friction-full moments.

This paying attention training allows me to teach violin daily with the conviction that what we do can, and just might, change politics, healthcare, and injustice. Just don’t miss an opportunity to pay attention to each student, each lesson, every day.

It was an absolute honor to teach at the Ithaca Virtual Suzuki Experience (IVSE) this summer. Hosted by Ithaca Talent Education and Ithaca College, was one of the few summer Suzuki programs for students to even happen.

As you can imagine, a transition from an in person institute to a virtual one required an epic feat of organization, creativity and courage. Faculty members and families alike were stunned by the incredible preparation done by directors Carrie Reuning-Hummel, Natalie Coots, and Sarah Cummings as well as other members of the staff support team.

IVSE included master classes (lessons), repertoire classes (groups), elective classes, play ins, parent talks, student recitals, guest recitals, a convocation and a final concert. No twinklers were in attendance, but everyone else was! We saw students from Book 1 through Book 10 and beyond, with ages ranging from 5 to 18.

It was a complete success. I want to unpack WHY it was such a success.

It is hard to write something on this site right now that feels worthy of saying. In the time of global pandemic and racial protest it is difficult as a healthy, young white person to even feel worthy of saying anything at all.

I was trained from a young age, as a white girl in America, to speak up, raise my hand, and stand out.

By the time I moved through grade school, the narrative of white girl oppressed by white boy or man was dominant enough that I was liberated to be as good as I felt like proving I was.

Swing, like a girl.
Kick the soccer ball, like a girl.
Answer the question, like a girl.
Get perfect grades, like a girl.

If a boy was top of the class, or fastest on the field, it was because he was naturally outfitted to win, but if a girl was the top of her class, or fastest on the field, it was because she had shed the story of her inferiority and overcome oppression. A boy winning was either nothing special, or in some ways an uncomfortable disappointment. A girl winning was something to celebrate.

Things became complicated, of course, when I began to understand myself not as a girl or a boy. Not a man or a woman.

Moving through the world as a non-binary person I began to check myself in class, conversation, and competition. If I’ve chosen to embrace masculinity I’m now receiving privilege, taking up space, and stealing the spotlight deserving women should have. If I’m choosing to spread my legs in public, buzz my hair, persuade my voice to inch deeper, I have to second guess if my success is my own or the product of a rigged social system.

To be a well informed, progressive, acceptable man in our society is to second guess every opportunity, every win. Whereas women of my generation were taught the world was theirs for the taking, men were taught (in certain kinds of aware societies) to be careful, not to take advantage, not to crowd the field, not to say the wrong thing.

In no way am I victimizing men here. As I’ve embraced the masculine side of myself I’ve come to believe even more in this sort of careful calculus. Men should be careful, but women, white women, should too.

As the world around us struggles to process the horrific killing of George Floyd and rises up in protest of racial inequity and police brutality, those of us who were raised as white women have been confronted with an undeniable fact. The world that was laid out before us, the one we were encouraged to seize and make our own, was being offered on the backs of oppressed communities.

And now in 2020, after being taught our whole lives that to succeed in any endeavor is cause for celebration, we are told that we are the ones who need to be careful, we can’t take advantage anymore, we should no longer crowd the field, and we can never say the wrong thing.

White women are falling twice as hard. But that’s okay. Not only do we deserve it, but we can handle it and it’s about time we face some struggle (let go of the narrative that life for you has been exceptionally hard).

The system we have benefited from (being raised as white women) has inarguably raised us to be racist. This isn’t up for debate anymore. It’s just a fact. Many think children only become racist if they are taught to be, but in fact research shows the opposite. If we don’t talk about and acknowledge race, prejudice can develop as early as age 6.

Our field of Suzuki talent education is dominated by white women.

We were taught that everything we do/did/have done is right. Now, through these new lenses, we can see that is no longer correct. We too have benefitted from a rigged social system. So where does the leave us? It leaves us attempting to do the ‘right’ thing, doing what we’ve been trained to do. To stay ‘right.’

But I think now is a time to embrace being wrong. Everything we do, say, and think is wrong. We are racist. We are prejudiced. We do live in a racist society and we do benefit from racist systems.

It is okay to feel wrong. It is okay to live in the messy, uncomfortable space where your identity is considered wrong and out of place. It is okay to feel what I assume BIPOC have experienced for centuries: that they were somehow inherently wrong.

To try to push out of this uncomfortable ‘wrongness’ into a zone of correct, ‘say the right thing’ comfort is to ignore the real issues.

So I offer this post as an acknowledgement that all future writing on this blog can be viewed through the lens of ‘wrongness.’ I know I don’t have much to say or speculate, and I know that whatever I publish will be wrong. The privilege I was born with, and then trained to wield, is now the very thing that keeps me from writing anything fully inclusive, fully aware, fully just.

But I’m happy to pick up and wear this marker of ‘wrong.’ In a weird way it is more liberating than that counterfeit guarantee of unobstructed success ever was.

Remember in every moment that the world is better off when we decide not to do something than do it.

Laotse puts it this way…

“Do you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done.

The world is sacred.
It can’t be improved.
If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.

There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.

The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.”