Category Archives: Learning
More thoughts on Ottawa Institute
I’ve been home for 5 days now so my thoughts are starting to come together in some semblance of organization. Remember: I teach children to play the violin using the Suzuki Method, which is a way of teaching that mimics the way children learn language. They start by hearing the language, and then repeating it [...]
It’s good to have land
Concrete, observable, and reproducible. Any assignment you give a student in a lesson should be those things. Concrete (something very specific that they can do), observable (they can tell what it is and what they should see or hear happening) and reproducible (they can practice it at home and understand what they are doing). Or [...]
Text messages
I was both an early and a late adapter for text messaging. I wasn’t the first of my friends to start, but I definitely text all the time now. Back when texting first came into the world, I mocked it. I said, why not just make a quick phone call? How annoying to type in [...]
Déjà vu all over again
Well, things didn’t turn out in our favor today. They could have been worse, but (seemingly as usual for the past decade) life will continue on a temporary part time basis. Suffice it to say (for those of you not “in the know”) that being a musician is a tough job and auditions are the [...]
Suzuki teaching seminar
I am suffering from brain overload. As usual after hearing Susan Kempter talk I have a thousand thoughts bouncing around in my head. I attended a teaching seminar at SIUE today—the topic was “What I learned since writing How Muscles Learn: Teaching the Violin with the Body in Mind”—and the speaker was Susan Kempter, my [...]
Crazy week ahead
15 hours of class with Pamela Wiley for the Mark O’Connor Method Teaching seminar since Friday…and now it’s another week. I owe you a review. I need to reflect and go over the books and CDs again before I write my full review. What’s going on this week? First off, Chris goes on tour to [...]
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