Prepare yourself for the rabbit hole that is TEACHER TRAIN OF THOUGHT. You've been warned. I'm joking around lightly, of course. But it is funny to me how, in retrospect, I end up exploring new opportunities and approaches. So COVID-19 happened. As we all know. And with that came a series of massive teaching environment changes. My home studio and what was on my music stand and how far I had to reach for my tuner was all totally set up and perfect pre-COVID. It was an environment that allowed me to create this lovely Suzuki environment for all my students. That environment changed. With those changes I had to start thinking of different ways I was going to reach students. This is always the challenge with teaching, of course. But it became obvious to me which students were fine with steadily progressing through their pieces and which students maybe needed additional structure to their lessons. Enter the exploration of "non-Suzuki" approaches. I started inves
Since the quarantine I have taken on, with some trepidation, new students. As in, they were not studying with me before the shutdown. 100% fresh start... and all online. This experience has been interesting, to say the least. I will admit that I approached the whole "starting an online new student" thing with a toe dip rather than a full cannonball into the pool. The first one I took on was older (seven), her mom used to play violin in middle school, and I've taught her grandmother violin for some time now. Can't get much better than that, right? I have become bolder in subsequent new students. Younger students with less experienced parents. Each experience is so different! Each child responds to online lessons differently. Plus the nature of having lessons in their house (compared to coming to lessons in my studio) adds a grocery list of extra variables. Did the dog run through the lesson? Did the younger sibling decide to have a meltdown? Each week varie