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Certificate of Merit and Other "Non-Suzuki" Approaches

 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 investigating things like competitions (more so than I had previously) and the Music Teachers' Association of California Certificate of Merit program (which is similar to the ABRSM graded exams).  I had always known about these types of programs.  I just never wanted to put forth the effort of participating in them because I was happy in my created Suzuki environment.  This isn't to say that I thought Suzuki was better; merely that I was happy with what I was doing and the results I was getting so I saw no reason to change.

I will spare you the trials and tribulations I faced in trying to apply to these various programs.  In a nutshell: there was a learning curve.  But I did end up getting a batch of students wanting to participate in these "non-Suzuki" extracurricular programs.

This leads us to the surprising (for me) realization that I was missing out on things pre-COVID.  Several of my students wanted to participate in these extra programs because that's what their friends in school or orchestra do.  While the Suzuki bubble was working in the sense that they were progressing as musicians, it was also isolating them a little when they tried to interact with the non-Suzuki crowd.  It made me realize that to truly teach in a holistic fashion, all aspects of a young musician's life must be developed.  One of those aspects is, in fact, operating in the non-Suzuki world. 


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