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.

With two of my 20 students I embarked on a project to overhaul their practice.
I met with them every single day.

The first two weeks were just me and the child. I aimed during this time to create practice structure, inject fun and warmth into the relationship, and to keep the practices short and sweet.

By taking on the role of practice partner, I essentially required consistent timing from the family every single day. Their teacher was showing up at 9:00AM no matter what. They had to stretch and strain, push and pull, their family life to accommodate a regular practice. I imagine this was a first for the families I worked with. And, of course, this is a practice in and of itself.

I chose, in the first two weeks, NOT to involve the practice partner at all. This move gave parents a guilt-free opportunity to take a vacation from violin, meant that I was the only “practicer” in the room, and in many ways liberated the student to practice in a fundamentally new way. As we know from neuroscience, our brain makes connections quickly but is terrible at unlearning. The best route to habit-change is radically divergent habit creation.

As a teacher I learned, when entering the practice relationship, that I needed new/interesting skills and challenges to make the practice worth doing. If the child wasn’t at their stretch point, they were bored. And a bored child makes for a difficult practice. This started to shape my own lesson teaching where I would offer parents some twists and ‘take it to high-gear by…’ to deliver mid-week.

A side-effect of my daily alone time with the students is that are relationship deepened beautifully. Before the overhaul lessons with these two students were my least favorite/most difficult of the week, an unconscious sentiment I’m sure both parent and student picked up. This vicious cycle of frustration and guilt led to an increasingly tenuous, strained relationship. When I was responsible for the lessons, gently nudging it toward positive and productive work every day, both student and teacher (and therefore parent) relaxed, smiled, and wanted to come back every day. Of course meeting a practicing daily also meant I was part of their daily life– meeting stuffed animals, learning about unusual snack choices, and discovering favorite practice games.

After two weeks of this I brought the parent back, but as an observer only. Instructed to stay out of view and as non-distracting as possible, they watched closely at what I did and didn’t do. I would send emails and texts encouraging them to look out for a particular technique or a theme. I asked these parents to report back to me on particular questions…
What most surprised you?
Which word was said most often?
When did the child have the most fun?
What is the child able to do now that they were’t able to before?

Of course this also pulled the parent into our fixed practice time (they had to make sure they were available at 9:00AM every single day, too) and our routines. I asked them to take careful note of the often overly-particular routine I had set up with the child. Good morning, a ritual movement activity, tuning, watching game and bow, review game with one focus, preview spots with the penny game, working piece hourglass, listening game, etc. The same way. Every day.

Finally, after a month of work with the child and two weeks of parent observation (along with that homework and some pointed conversations with the parent over the phone) I turned practice over to the parent. BUT, I stuck around to observe. They would set me up on their computer at the same place, same time, and I would watch rather than lead the practice. Again, this required they showed up to practice consistently–molding their life to fit practice rather than practice to fit life. It would be embarrassing to stand up the teacher, right? After I observed I would send email and text message notes to the parent. Pointers I thought would help. In the two weeks of 15 minute observations every day I would occasionally take back the reins for some or part of the lesson to demonstrate a practicing principle to the parent.

Finally, after six weeks of this, I turned the practice completely over to them. Though I still check in most lessons by asking about the routines we developed.

I know. Six weeks of every day lessons sounds like a lot to private violin teachers. But I think we mistake the effectiveness we have in our 30 minute lessons. For 630 minutes of my life, or 10.5 hours spread over six weeks, we fundamentally changed the practice relationship and effectiveness, as well as my own relationship with, the student and parent.

Time well spent.