If you don’t know who Mark O’Connor is you can visit his website or his wikipedia page to learn a bit about him.  He is a fiddle player who has become a very successful “crossover” artist.  I performed with Mark O’Connor when he played his Fiddle Concerto with the Youngstown Symphony many years ago.

A couple of years ago Mark announced that he was coming out with a brand new method for teaching children.  This method would involve listening and would have ten volumes.  This method would be brand new and completely revolutionary.  This method would involve American music.

Well, as a Suzuki teacher always looking to improve my teaching, the idea of a revolutionary method is exciting!  However…the Suzuki method already uses listening, has ten volumes, and (let’s not forget) was brand new and completely revolutionary, no matter how much people like to dump on it.  Before the Suzuki philosophy swept the United States there were not enough string players coming through school to fill our orchestras…nowadays there are so many good players auditioning for each spot in an orchestra that very few get a job.  The concept behind the Suzuki Method wasn’t to create professional musicians though—it was (and still is) to help children become better people.  To make the world a better place through music.  Or as Susan Kempter said the other day, to offer an alternative…

Okay, so where does that leave us?  A few weeks ago I learned that there was to be a teacher training seminar for the first two Mark O’Connor method books at Webster University.  The cost:  $100, which INCLUDED the two volumes with CD ($29.95 each, only sold at Shar).  What a fantastic deal!  I signed up immediately. (You know I love my teaching seminars).

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to meet Mark—he was in town on Wednesday and Thursday, but I wasn’t able to get to the workshop until the teacher training officially started on Friday night.  His assistant and editor Pamela Wiley was teaching the course. 

Did I have preconceived notions about the method?  Yes, I’m sorry to say.  I’m suspicious of people who seem to be out to make a buck at the expense of children, and selling the book at only Shar smells like buck-making to me.  Additionally I felt (in advance) that much of what Mark said about his method was insulting to the Suzuki method since that truly was a revolutionary method.  Group classes, listening to recordings repeatedly, parental involvement, very young children playing the violin, and teacher training…all of those fantastic ideas are FROM the Suzuki method (philosophy) and that in today’s music teaching take for granted as things that people do. 

I do have students that grow tired of the Suzuki repertoire.  Often these are students who aren’t progressing the way they should because they aren’t practicing or listening.  But perhaps they just aren’t inspired.  I also have students that do not use the Suzuki method (modified OR full-fledged).  For these students I am constantly looking for better ways to teach them.  THAT is why I jumped on this workshop!  Plus, did I mention it was only $100?

I showed up Friday night with a friend.  We checked in and received our books.  Class started, and it was pretty evident that the teacher was a disciple of Mark O’Connor.  She firmly believed in everything he was doing, which is good for a teacher of the method.  It was also pretty evident that this was not a method for beginning teachers to teach, but for those already pretty well versed in teaching…okay, fine, it’s brand new.  But subtle jabs towards Suzuki kept coming “This is SUCH a better way to teach low 2” or “ HERE is how you really play up-up bowing” or “This is much easier for children to learn than Allegretto.”  Okay…maybe I’m overly sensitive.  But again—let’s not pretend that Suzuki doesn’t make the method possible!  Without ALREADY trained Suzuki teachers teaching all over the US, there would be no real framework for the O’Connor Method to spread. 

Enough of the negative.  What’s good about it?  Well—it’s all American music.  Which is just fantastic for students to relate to.  None of those dead European composers (well, other than Dvorak?!).  Plus each piece or song has a little story about it’s history, which is really interesting and informative. 

But the cool part is:  the children are encouraging to start improvising RIGHT away.  Usually people are trained in a classical manner and then learn improvising, or perhaps start on the fiddle and learn to improvise but never really learn in a systematic way.  But with this method, perhaps kids can improvise in a variety of styles and play classically as well (I say perhaps because there are only two volumes so far, and nothing is proven.)  In just a few days, I myself have learned so much more about improvising and a variety of styles (olde tyme fiddle, blues, irish fiddle) than I have in my life.  I even feel I could teach my students to do this!  And if you start early, well, you won’t be so scared later in life.  Four year olds improvising!  Well, that is almost as exciting as thousands of children playing the same song together .  Why is improvising important?  Well, creativity in music (as in life) is always an important skill.  Improvising is one part of creativity.

I doubt I will become a true Mark O’Connor method teacher like Pam Wiley, but I will certainly use the songs and ideas in my own teaching.  Another teacher told me the thing they liked best about the workshop was how Pam had really embraced these new ideas after teaching Suzuki for such a long time—she felt it meant that she would be able to keep growing and changing as a teacher throughout her life, and that you can teach an old dog new tricks. 

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 teacher from last summer in Kansas.  Her main focus in teaching is having students avoid tension altogether.  So many violinists (myself included) suffer from a variety of problems such as tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome, and many of these problems could be avoided by playing in a slightly different way.  It is harder to change when you get older, and much better to teach our students to avoid tension from the beginning. 

After the seminar we all ate dinner together and it was nice to catch up with a few old friends (shout out to Alicia Doudna!) and some new ones too.  The Suzuki world is a close knit world, and I’m glad to meet so many teachers who are both wonderful teachers and great people.

I’m still working on my review/thoughts of last week’s workshop about the Mark O’Connor method.  I’m purposely giving myself some time to think about it. 

I have decided to attend Ottawa again this June (I believe I mentioned that in a previous post.)  Even though I already have Book Five training, I know that Susan will talk about so many general violin related topics that I will learn more than I imagined, and that I will come home with a long bibliography (I have a short bibliography from today’s 2 1/2 hour workshop!) of books to read.  You know I love my books.

But really, I need to relax now—I’m missing the SIUE Suzuki Workshop this weekend due to a variety of gigs and rehearsals.  I’ve been putting a bunch of music together for tomorrow’s gigs, and Sunday is the opera.  I am looking forward to some quasi-spring-break time towards the end of the month. 

Today I went to a spinning class at my gym for the first time.   It was different than my regular class, but I imagine that each teacher brings their own style.  I enjoyed it, but it was a big challenge.  I decided to really push myself and run 3 miles on the treadmill afterwards (working towards that 93 miles in March goal!).  I felt pretty awesome after that, and used it as a good excuse to have two 7-layer bars with dinner. 

It’s storming outside…we have had our share of severe weather this week.  Hopefully tonight’s storms pass through somewhat uneventfully.

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 NY and Amherst, MA with the symphony so I’m on my own for next weekend.  Mike (my trainer) is out of town for the week too, and my muscles look forward to a short break.  I’ve signed up for a spinning class at my gym on Friday instead.  I am also behind on my long run so I’ve pushed that to Tuesday, and then again on Saturday.  I hope that’s not too close together. 

My to-do list is practically empty!  The only thing left on it right now involves a trip to the post office, which can’t happen until Tuesday anyway due to my schedule (If you are reading this and know something I have forgotten, please email or call me.)  A practically empty to-do list is SUCH a relief though!

Friday is the SIUE teacher workshop with Susan Kempter.  I’m excited to see her again, in fact, so excited that I went ahead and mailed my registration for Suzuki Camp in Ottawa (in June) so I can spend another week learning from her.  (There was a discount for getting the registration in early, so I took advantage).  I loved the camp in Kansas last year and was so inspired.

We start rehearsing for Cavalleria Rusticana this weekend for Winter Opera.  The performances are going to be on March 12 and 13.  If you want to come I would recommend buying tickets in advance as our last performances both sold out.

On top of all of that I have two weddings, numerous runs, and MANY students to teach. 

What is it they say about March?  In like a lion, out like a lamb.  So I’m in the lion phase…

Is that a lion?

Had you seen this picture before?  Isn’t it great? 

This entire weekend is dedicated to the Mark O’Connor Violin Method.  Last night for three hours, today for two three hour sessions and tomorrow the same as today.  The session is taught by Pamela Wiley who is a teacher in Charleston, South Carolina, is good friends with Mark O’Connor, and is an experienced Suzuki teacher who really seems to love her students.

I am Suzuki student at heart, and a well trained Suzuki teacher, who firmly believes that every child can learn.  I have studied Suzuki pedagogy with a variety of teachers and have been teaching for over a decade, so I have a wealth of my own experience to draw on as well.  So naturally I’ve gone into the seminar with a few pre-conceived notions of what works and what doesn’t work as well.  (I know I should try to avoid pre-conceived notions…but I am human.)

However, I’m going to wait to write up a full report until the seminar is done.  Some positive things:  improvisation is taught from the beginning, the children seem to really love the music, and the best parts of the Suzuki method are incorporated.  Some negative things:  without seeing the whole series as a whole it’s hard to say for sure what will happen (only two books are printed), and let’s not pretend that it isn’t greatly influenced by the Suzuki method, which was indeed groundbreaking and to pretend otherwise is frankly insulting. 

So that’s my two cents for now…more to come later.  I’m lucky to attend the workshop for a great price due to a grant from the Missouri Arts Council—so thanks to the Missouri Arts Council, you rock.

Here is a link to an article by Laurie Niles on violinist.com about the Method, and here’s a link to another of her articles about some Suzuki students and O’Connor students getting together…

This whole week has been full of gorgeous, beautiful, 60 and 70 degree days.  And yet, have I managed to run outside?  No.  In fact, I’ve barely managed to run at all, due to my schedule, a bit of laziness, and a stomachache one day.  Hopefully tomorrow I can get outside!

So what have I been up to?  It’s been almost one week since I got engaged—the week has flown by!

I’ve done quite a bit of wedding research already, and have determined that very little can actually be decided at this point.  We need to wait until Chris finishes a few auditions before deciding when to get married…probably in May we can set the date.  I’d love to get married here in St. Louis, but if we were to end up moving, then there wouldn’t be any point.  We’ve also realized we do want a nice wedding with lots of family and friends there to celebrate with us.  Other than that, I don’t really know.

I made an account with theknot.com and they gave me a “handy” checklist of items I need to do.  For instance, right now I should be doing the following:

• Get organized! Start a notebook/file folder to house all your wedding-planning paperwork in one place, browse our Wedding Planning Basics area, and download The Knot Toolbar for easy access to all your online planning tools.
• Envision your wedding style and wedding colors — formal, eggplant-and-gold hotel reception? Or a modern, black-and-white loft? Colorful, tented, backyard barbecue celebration? Or exotic, orange-and-yellow beach wedding?
• Send out a just-engaged video Ecard and submit an engagement announcement to the local newspaper. You may also want to have your engagement photos taken in time for this.
• Having an engagement party? Set a date, draft a guest list, and order the invitations.
• Start your guest list! Decide approximately how many people you want to invite. Request “wish lists” from both sets of parents, then compile.
• Envision your wedding dress. (It’s never too early!) Begin by figuring out which wedding dress style will look best on you.

That’s not even all the tasks on the checklist that I should be doing right NOW, just some of them.  Should I be putting a wedding announcement in my hometown paper?  Getting engagement photos taken?  I am definitely “envisioning” my wedding dress though, I do love a good dress-shopping occasion.  I am beginning to realize that wedding planning can be a full time job—even though I am a wedding vendor myself, I don’t think I realized quite how much CAN go into wedding planning.

I love planning things.  Before the cruise last summer I spent weeks planning our excursions and researching the various options, printed out an elaborate itinerary with each day planned out with what to wear and bring and where to meet tours.  It was great!  I really enjoyed the process.  I want to plan my wedding in the same way.  The different would likely be that it is all in one day and involves many more people, both in the planning stages and of course at the event.  I want to consider simply what Chris and I want but need to take other people into account as well.

Okay, enough wedding mumbo-jumbo:  What else has been going on?

I finished Ed Kreitman’s new book, Teaching with an Open Heart.  Wow!  It’s a great book.  Really inspiring and beautifully written.  I can’t say that I agree with all the new age energy talk, but do love so many of his teaching ideas.  I have never seen him teach at an institute and I should change that. Not this summer though—I may go to Kansas to do Book Five with Susan Kempter but nothing else.  I know her course would be great, and the Kansas Institute pricing is really quite reasonable.

I taught a bunch of students, as usual.  Some of the students are doing just great, and a few have Solo and Ensemble competition coming up in a little over a week.  Some are disappointing me in their lack of practice and focus…I keep trying to inspire them, but sometimes it just gets too exhausting.  I know every teacher has thousands of inspirational ideas to get students to practice, but sometimes I just feel like giving up—how hard do I really have to work for each student?  I’m talking about students who are old enough to know they need to practice in order to get better and just don’t.  Why do I have to make all the effort and get absolutely nothing back?  This is why I am making some changes next school year…I am tired of making all this effort for very little return.  I can definitely relate to school teachers—you can’t make a child learn.  And yet you are made to feel incredibly guilty or like a failure when the child doesn’t learn, when perhaps the failing ISN’T on your end.  And maybe it’s not a failing of the child either, but the circumstances.  Just a little vent

This weekend I am playing La Traviata with Winter Opera St. Louis.  I’m also teaching a group class at the St. Louis School of Music tomorrow afternoon, and I’m planning to run 8 miles, plus my spinning class on Sunday.  I am excited that Monday is a school holiday, particularly as I work through the weekend.  I think it’ll be a fun weekend though—Chris has off work Saturday night so we might go out to dinner.

Oh, and fun fact:  the owner of Franco, where we went after we got engaged, also works out at my gym with a trainer.  Mike evidently talked to him about that earlier in the week, and I saw him today, but was shy and didn’t talk to him.  Perhaps I shall work up the nerve another time.

What are your weekend plans?