A discription is infinitely less effective than the thing itself. We asks our students to submerge themselves in the aural environment of the Suzuki recordings because they can learn more from the recordings than we could ever hope to teach them.

This logic has been applied to student and parent observation of lessons and group class. I think this is a relatively standard practice for beginning families in most Suzuki schools.

I took the same logic and applied it to practice.

When has a student ever seen someone practice violin before? When has a parent seen what it looks like for a child and parent to practice together? What does it particularly look like for a child IN YOUR STUDIO to practice throughout the week?

I became obsessed with creating a reference recording of practice.

I took advantage of the technology of the time– Zoom– to visit the practice sessions of families in my studio to collect footage.

I put together the videos, a brief summary that foregrounded the wisdom of the parents really in it, and then presented this at a parent talk earlier this year.

Here is our initial reference recording. I have many more ideas about how to continue to build out this concept, but this talk was the start.

Please enjoy.

With all those ideas out of the way, let me lay out clearly what I am going to do with YouTube.

I’m going to build two archives. One for myself, and one for the Suzuki Community.

I’ve already launched my personal YouTube account and at the time of publishing it has 48 Subscribers. This is the home for all of my teaching. I post…
-lesson recordings
-student practice
-student performances
-parent talks
-sequence videos

I’m also going to publish teaching methodology videos as well. I will use an “explanatory” style, videography, and story-telling devices to document teaching and learning principles.

I’m thinking of this ARCHIVE as my legacy.

How much do you wish you could click on Shin’ichi Suzuki’s YouTube channel and watch his experiments, his wisdom, his blunders and recoveries from day 1? Imagine how much we could learn if we just had the evidence, the footage.

I don’t think I am an especially special Suzuki teacher. However, I want hunreds of teachers to press publish and document their work in public so I can learn from them. I’m putting my archive out, diving into the deep end, so others know it is safe and worthwhile to do so too.

That being said, operating in public like this adds a whole other layer of work beyond just ‘teaching.’ I need to turn the camera on, then off, then upload large files to my computer, then storyboard, then edit, then post. It isn’t easy. But I have two very clear reasons for doing the work.

1) The work will make ME better. The work is practice. Reps. Studying myself. Reinvesting my time into improving. Every day.

2) The community needs this.

I have another goal, too. One that is bigger than myself.

I’m launching the Suzuki Archives.

I already picked up the channel. This is a channel for one-off uploads of anyone in the community. I will upload historic videos of Suzuki teaching. I will upload contemporary videos of up and coming teachers. I will upload videos of teacher trainers. I will upload videos of creative, innovative Suzuki teaching pushing the envelope of ‘western-classical’ music education.

I can see a future of traveling all over the US in the summer to record high-quality, multiple angle, mic’d footage of Suzuki violin teaching. Those videos will be featured on the Suzuki Archive. Teachers get the opportunity to have their work documented in a beautiful way. Our community gets the benefit of seeing that teaching from anywhere, anytime.

And the best part? The channel isn’t mine. It’s ours.

When another young teacher comes along who is passionate about archival work, videography, and YouTube they can pick up the torch. And that torch might just give them access to work closely with some of the most important teachers of their generation. We stand on the shoulder of giants. And I’m excited to support the next teachers who come after me.

This is my vision for my contribution to YouTube.

I have very few personal fears about posting onto YouTube. Probably because I have so much confidence in my one point, my mission.

However a do want to address those few fears that I do have. It’s possible you have them as well.

1) Posting Footage of Children Online

My first concern is the privacy of my students. Not only do I not want to post something that they might consider embarrassing later, I don’t want to personally gain from their likeness on YouTube.

I’m getting around this issue in several ways. First, I am very explicit in my studio policies that I record our lesson videos and post them publicly on YouTube and Instagram. They need to let me know within the first two weeks of the semester if they have any stipulations (like not posting names or shielding faces) or simply would prefer I don’t. I also make it clear in the policies why I do this– to share my teaching discoveries with other teachers. Because the videos are for teachers, the audience is teachers.

You might be surprised to hear that of my 25 students only 1 of them asked not to be published online.

At the moment, my entire studio is under the age of 12. As my students grow older I will start discussing the posting directly with them and making sure they are comfortable.

I don’t have plans to post “challenging” lessons online or any video where the student might be percieved as being ‘bad’ or ‘wrong.’ I think lessons like these are important to review and watch, but I think a better place for those videos might be a presentation or a patreon video.

Finally, my channel is not monetized right now. I haven’t made these decisions yet, but it is possible for me to toggle in the future whether I want one of my videos to be monetized or not. I could end up monetizing the videos that just feature me and my thoughts but not monetizing the videos that feature student performances.

2) Teacher Training Before a Teacher Trainer

Another concern I have is the perception that I’m putting the cart before the horse. That I’m posting about teacher training before I have even collected the experience or become a teacher trainer.

This is where my confidence (link) comes in.

In the SAA you aren’t even able to apply to be a teacher trainer until you have tuaght for 10 years or have moved several students through all of the books. I recieved my first unit of training in the Summer of 2014. So in 2.5 years time I will be able to apply to be a teacher trainer. When I do, I will already have needed to collect recitals and lessons from the whole span of repertoire. I’m not going to wait until 2024 to start collecting and really reviewing my footage. That process of refinement needs to start now.

Furthermore, I believe that your mind should always be one dimension ahead of your challenge. When you are a violinist you must think like a teacher in order to get better. And therefore teachers should think like teacher trainers. Putting my archive out on YouTube forces me to think like a teacher trainer.

Finally, just going through the motions of publishing my work helps me to make changes that I otherwise might just sweep under the rug. I clean up the studio, put on my teaching uniform, and prepare the space so that I can invite the student in as well as the camera. They get a better version of me because when I’m documenting I don’t let anythign slide.

3) Fear of failure.

Related to above. I’m afraid that if I operate in public I will lower my credibility. If expert teachers see my teaching on YouTube they might find reasons not to hire me for institutes or workshops.

This is just a fear that will always crop up. It is simply a fear of vulnerability.

And I know from Brene Brown that if I lean into vulnerability, that, in and of itself, will be noble to people. I know that I’m a good teacher. Not the best, but good, decent. I’m going to be vulnerable and share my work because I want the Suzuki community to bring that ethic of sharing over to YouTube. I don’t need to be the best in order for that to happen.

Furthermore, if a trainer or institute director uses YouTube to decide they don’t want to hire me then that is okay. I have more work to do. They saw reality and it didn’t align with their expectations. I’d much rather be hired later for the real skill of my teaching than be given a cosign that I don’t deserve because my teaching was a mystery. It will also be that much sweeter when my skills grow through the roof by doing this exact process.

4) Students won’t experience me as giving them my full attention.

My biggest concern of all… I worry that they think I’ll use them as a means to an end. That the only reason I teach is because I want to be a teacher trainer. That they are only a stepping stone.

I’m afraid that they’ll think the most important relationship is me to YouTube, not me to them.

I worry about this one a lot.

This is the rub in my Enneagram Type 3 personality (ambitious, success oriented) integrating to 6 (loyal, thourough, planning ahead). I’ve talked about this elsewhere (link) but as a 3 it is my life’s work to forsake my own interest and dedicate myself to the safety of a handful of individuals around me. I think of my studio– the literal 25 children I work with every week– to be the most important relationship in my professional life. They are the people who I will spend my decades with. They are the individuals who will shape me into a teacher trainer. They are the individuals who trusted me and believed in me from the beginning. They are everything. I’m constantly asking myself how I could give more back to the studio.

I am scared that they will think I care more about our YouTube videos than our lessons.

I have a few strategies I’m trying, though.

• I don’t do anything with the camera in the lesson. It’s locked on a tripod and I focus exclusively on them
• I send them the lesson footage to use as a reference in their home practice (immediate benefit for them, too)
• I talk up the student and write about what went well when the lesson video is published
• I encourage parents to follow me on social media and share what I share with their own friends and family (celebrate what we have, it’s worth sharing)
• Make sure I’m a better teacher for them every week
• Re-invest in our studio and don’t post about it. Only they know the really, really special parts about being in the studio. The YouTube footage isn’t the highlights, it’s actually the lowlights, the B-sides.

I’m never to take fear completely out of the picture. Fear is inherent in vulnerability. But I’ve named my fears, I’ve named my workarounds, and now it is time to put out the work.

Do any of these fears resonate with you?

“I am the greatest. I said it before I knew I was.”
Muhammad Ali

“I am the greatest. I said it before I knew I was.”
drake

How I developed Radical Self-Confidence…

Greatness isn’t for me. Teaching serves students.

Slide into growth mindset. It can be what it is today because it will be better tomorrow.

‘I’ is a swinging door. A story. But the story has power. Tell that story carefully.

Just document. It can be what it is today because it is what it is today. Just trying to get down the history.

We are all our own media companies now. No-one else is going to come along and film me. If I want to document this experience I need to do it myself.

I made the case last week that we owe it to our Suzuki community to start teaching teaching on YouTube.

Today I’m listing all of the ideas I have for YouTube videos. These are videos a Suzuki Teacher could start posting tomorrow.

I might see a few of these ideas to reality, but honestly there are so many that I don’t have time to pursue. I hope you take the ideas and run! This is such an underutilized tool for teacher development. I actually frustrates me how little we are using this platform. Let’s change the future of teaching training by getting our stuff online, distributed, and accessible.

My ideas…

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One of my favorite channels on YouTube is Colin and Samir. They are two YouTubers on a mission to break down principles of content creation for content creators.

They follow incredibly sensational trends (the D’Amelios, MrBeast, Squid Game, Khaby Lame, etc.) but they are not sensational people. Instead, they use explanatory journalism (think: Vox) to unpack exactly what it is that creators are doing a good job of, why they are going viral, and how that work sits on a whole spectrum of media creation from the pre-internet era to today. They are even-keeled individuals who are using quality information, not sensation, to gather a following. And though their following is moderate, their work is exceptional.

One of my favorite aspects of watching the chanel is observing the way they tailor their own content to follow the advice they put out.

For example, while watching them analyze MrBeast’s approach to retention on his chanel your attention is retained by the strategies Colin and Samir have adapted for that exact video. Beautiful.

They demonstrate that the creator economy is booming.

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MIQ stands for Most Important Question. It is a concept I picked up from Joshua Waitzkin in this interview with Tim Ferriss.

It is a question to guide questions.

Pose it to yourself right now. What is the most important question to ask yourself? Not answer, not idea, not project. The most important question.

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So many of my ambitions in 3D modeling, film making, Virtual Reality, matrix building, and world building start with writing.

I put pen to paper every day, literally.

I have been recording my thoughts on this blog since 2014.

As I put more of myself on Instagram, YouTube, and online courses, as well as building out my studio policies and mothodology, please remember that they all started with writing.

For that reason we constantly need to be getting down our ideas in written form, and then (through writing) decide the best vehicle for that idea to be delivered in. Coming up with an idea and communicating that idea well are two different skills. But both are developed by writing practices.

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I developed 116 blog post ideas in two days.

How?

Well, I haven’t blogged since July 2021. I’ve been journaling every morning with Morning Pages and processing MIQ’s, but I haven’t packaged or posted any of those ideas for online consumption.

Since July I’ve had countless insights and serious breakthroughs. There was a lot to share. So much to mentally clear.

I can only imagine how many ideas a teacher who hasn’t ever blogged could generate in one sitting.

I use a couple of strategies for generating post ideas that I want to pass on to you…

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My whole aim is to deepen the lives of my violin students. To help them sense the universe in a whole new way.

I am not a performer. I don’t play in an orchestra, in a chamber ensemble, or gigs on the weekend. My only aim is to be an excellent teacher.

After I graduated from my masters program violin practice went onto a far back burner. I would practice in preparation for a Teacher Training course and of course demonstrate as needed in a lesson, but on the whole I practiced very little.

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