It’s the start of a new year. A natural time to make goals and think about where we want to go in the next 12 months. I like asking students and their families to set goals for the year and you can see my planning sheet for that by clicking here. As a teacher I also like to think of my studio as a whole, and what good habits I could help my students develop over the next year. This…
I am writing this on New Year's morning. It's a very natural time to be looking ahead and making goals. It's not the only time to think this way though. The start of a new school year or the start of summer, or any other new season in your family's life are all good times to re-evaluate and make new goals as a family. Why goal setting is so powerful: It's easy to lose sight of what we are trying…
Each year on the blog I like to share a roundup of the best resources from the Suzuki Triangle from the year for teachers and parents alike. To read last year's list click here. My goal is that this helps you find anything you may have missed over the past year and also gives you an easy way to share resources with families you work with. I am already excited about new things coming in 2019 and can't wait for…
Last week I published an article with gift ideas for students and received a request from a parent to follow up with a list of ideas for music teachers. *Full Disclaimer: Any gift is wonderful and as a teacher I appreciate that a student, or family, has thought about me and wanted to give me a gift of any kind. I do believe it is the thought that counts. That said, many teachers I know have more music mugs and ornaments…
Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means I earn from qualifying purchases. I am only recommending ideas I really recommend to students! Now that Thanksgiving has passed in the US, our house has started preparing for the holidays. Decorations are going up and we’re all crossing our fingers the cats don’t take them back down again! If you are a parent of a music student, you might be thinking ahead to gifts for your children, like I…
“We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act it’s a habit.” - Will Durant (often attributed to Aristotle) As a music teacher, I think a lot about excellence. How do I teach with excellence? How do I develop it in my students? How do I help my own children develop it? I’ve always loved the quote about excellence being a habit because I have come to realize how accurate it is that what we do…
I've learned a lot about practice since my middle school days when I was just started to practice totally on my own. I don't remember anyone giving me any steps to do it successfully. Everyone assumed I'd been practicing with an adult since before I was three so I probably had some idea of what I was doing. I didn't have any clue. And as I have a large crew of students entering this age and about to start this…
Last month I attended the Portland Creative Conference: a one day conference of creatives from all different fields, that supports the arts in Oregon. Speakers included an art director, a footwear designer, an author, musicians from the group “Portugal.The Man.”, the studio head for the company that produces Halo, and a television writer from the TV show “Scandal.”
It was a wide ranging group but there were common themes that came out between all of these speakers.
Art plus motion
Fashion intersecting with a love for basketball
Art plus gaming
Part of the reason I make time to attend events like this is that I know how much hearing ideas from people outside my field fuels my own creativity and gives me ideas for writing and teaching.
How do we take this idea and use it, as parents and teachers, who work with children learning music?
How can the other interests our students have tie in, to help them make more artistic choices?
To become expressive players?
Music is a creative art and a discipline. Sometimes we get ultra-focused on the discipline. Practice becomes a series of commands for the student to carry out. Flaws are pointed out and (hopefully) practice reduces them and they disappear. We are precise. We ask for controlled movements and use of muscles. We learn to repeat things more than we want to, in order to improve. This is the discipline involved. And it does take discipline to practice every day To…
It seems like there should be an exciting, flashy solution to solving the challenge of getting practice in and overcoming practice challenges. An app or a new book or some secret tip that will make everything work. The good, and not so exciting truth, is that there is a very basic answer. The #1 way to overcome practice challenges is: Having a Routine. Routines are not the most exciting topic but they are incredibly important. Here are some ways that…