I like big books, and I cannot lie.

Well, at least, that’s the inscription on a tote bag I pinned to a “cool stuff” Pinterest board my freshman year of high school. But, I’m not lying when I say that books (short and long) have been a big part of my life.

The daughter of a librarian and three generations of english teachers, I seldom spent long without a book in my hand. Our car rides, time in the waiting room, lazy afternoons, and moments before sleep were accompanied by — if not featured — a good book.

And most of my fundamental understanding of the world and the way it does or can work has come from books. I remember the first time I uncovered I literary symbol on my own, the pain I felt at the pit of my stomach when a book ended before I wanted it to, and the sense of independence and rebelliousness I developed as I snuck Marx and Nietzsche around my conservative, rural hometown.

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One question I ask myself often is how I can practice the skills I need in lessons outside of actual lessons.

I don’t want my 100th repetition of teaching a proper bowhold to happen in my 100th lesson on bowholds with my student. The spacing of my students, irregularity in the content of lessons, and uniqueness of each child doesn’t provide the opportunity for repetition that I require in my own students’ practice for them to build skill.

Furthermore, it could be absolutely detrimental to the growth of my students for me to make the careless mistakes that are part of the learning process on my students.

In an ideal world I would be able to practice on a simulation of a private lesson, as airplane pilots practice on flight simulators. While I’m still puzzling out the technology and circumstances to take advantage of, I’ve developed a few practice strategies to improve my teaching skills outside of practicing during actual lessons.

One of them is using some of the time I spend walking to and from campus or running errands to mentally run through my sequences.

For example, I’ll think through the way I [Read more…]

The first thing I did when I heard the Akropolis Reed Quintet was coming to town was type their name into Google. At the recommendation of my chamber music coach, Professor Will Fedkenheuer, I browsed the Akropolis website, joined their email newsletter, and followed links to updated youtube, twitter, and instagram profiles. Their online presence was interesting, aesthetically compelling, and frankly unusual as a relatively recently founded classical music ensemble. As someone who has chosen a professional path in the classical music industry, but also has a keen interest in business and entrepreneurship, I found myself wondering how Akropolis navigated the complexities of both worlds seemingly exceptionally. I wondered how, with a commitment to masterful musicianship, they were able to settle on an elegant organizational structure and unified mission, with funny instagram posts to boot. [Read more…]

Carol Dweck’s research into static and dynamic understandings of skill development have been referenced and discussed often.

Dweck, in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, outlined the way people can understood themselves as having a fixed or growth mindsets. They might believe, as those with fixed mindsets do, that skill is innate, and that humans are fundamentally good or bad at something. Or, like those with a growth mindset, they might believe that at any moment everyone possesses particular skill set, but they have the potential to change and develop any skill.

Perhaps the most significant thing Dweck has to teach us is that mindset is not a matter of decision. Fixed or growing perceptions of our own ability is programmed into us based on our environment and experience. [Read more…]

What we call “I” is just a swinging door that moves when we inhale and when we exhale.

Shunryu Suzuki

A tradition I have been investing my energy into recently is Soto Zen Buddhism.

I didn’t start the semester expecting to do a deep, physical, intellectual, and spiritual dive into Zen Buddhism this semester, but I think the freedom from commitments and a desire to move toward authenticity has led me on this path.

Soto Zen Buddhism, especially in the America tradition, is a philosophy of life around the ideas of emptiness, suffering, one-ness, non-violence, gratitude, change, and truth. It is practiced through a commitment to zazen, seated meditation.

The mediation is not guided or prescribed, but by sitting in stillness and silence one can begin to understand what it means to be. Many zen centers, including the one I practice at in Austin, has three or four opportunities a day to sit zazen with the zen community.

After noticing shifts in my manner, thought patterns, and stress after a few weeks of zazen, I began to wonder if I could include meditation more directly into my teaching routine.

Since then I’ve experimented with various forms of seated meditation before and after I teach my students. The routine I’ve settled on is a brief, 2-5 minute meditation in the practice room where I teach immediately before and after my students are with me for our lesson.

To be specific, my routine is as follows… [Read more…]

I once heard in a sectional with David Kim, concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, that great attention should be devoted to tuning beautifully. Though, of course, it is important to make sure orchestra members are in tune with each other before the piece starts, his subtle point is that the audience experience of a concert involves far more than just musical performances of pieces.

Indeed, our experiences of performances often starts with our journey to the concert venue– perhaps even the dinner we have before. Who we are with significantly changes our interpretation of the concert, as does the manner of the conductor as they walk on the stage, the drinks served during intermission, and the coordination (or lack thereof) of bows after the music stops. The length of the concert, the performance dress, the music selection, the volume and sound production, the temperature of the room and the amount of times a soloist walks back on the stage for another bow are elements of performances that can’t be ignored.

All of these details are inevitably intertwined with audience experience. But they are also typically ignored.

Perhaps in an ideal world we wouldn’t let the surrounding periphery of experience influence the way we understand one thing. The clothes someone wears shouldn’t be indicative of their value as a member of a company. The likeabiluty of a band’s Facebook page shouldn’t automatically make them superior to a band without a Facebook page. And the amount of time we spend waiting to exit a parking garage shouldn’t effect our love of a blended orchestral sound.

But it does. And therefore it is worth teaching our students to take charge of as many aspects of their audiences of them as possible. [Read more…]

I recently talked about the danger of judgmental feedback, and the value of just “saying what you see.”

Sometimes the best way to “say what you see” is by using words. But words require deliberate diction, fluency, tone, and rate to communicate exactly what you mean.

In my experience 10 carefully chosen words can almost always take the place of 100. Using fewer words keeps communication clearer, emphasizes what is important, and leaves room for as much student/teacher interaction in the lesson as possible.

But even 10 carefully chosen words can replaced by a well timed, clear gesture.

Instead of reminding a student verbally to curve their pinkie, you can remind them with a light tap. They make the correction themselves. Instead of describing the way you want the music to swell to the climax of the phrase, you can simply move your hand in the shape of the music you want as they play. Instead of saying over and over again “open your elbow,” you form your hand into a simple buffer resting on the outside of their arm that encourages them to open their arm instead of swing it. In these cases, no words are required to communicate meaningfully.

I’m not advocating for completely mute teaching, but I think it is worth fully exploring the power of gestural communication. Consider an incomplete list of advantages of prioritizing symbolic gestures over words. [Read more…]