When I was a young girl, I wanted to be a violin teacher and performer. Even during the years when performing was one of my favorite things, when I got home to the privacy of my room, I found myself teaching imaginary students how to learn the concepts I myself practiced.
I can’t believe how time has flown as I complete my first internship through the MIE at New England Conservatory. Looking back over my goals for this last semester, I am amazed at how much ground I have covered, but how much this experiences has only spurred me to want to learn more. Teaching a four-year-old as part of the internship, I have been challenged in ways I haven’t expected, yet have had such wonderful ah ha moments. One of these moments happened just last week. I wasn’t being able to get across an important technical aspect regarding his bow hold. My student was frustrated, for good reason, by the lack of progress, and mom wasn’t understanding the importance of setting posture correct. I made my way to Susan Jarvis’ office, the wonderful Suzuki teacher at NEC prep, and observed for three hours until I could come away with a hopeful solution: the penny game. With eight pennies total, four were the teacher’s and four, the students. Set in different piles on the stand, each time the student was able to achieve set technical standard, I lost a penny to his/her stack, while if the standard was not achieved, a penny from the student’s pile was added to mine. So, I began the lesson with excitement. We were going to conquer! At first try, I got one of his pennies; second, he got one of mine. But as focus began to wander, I began to clearly earn all the pennies until he only had one or two left. The world collapsed. Trying to work through why he was crying, I asked him if he was missing his mom who had needed to quickly leave. He said it wasn’t that, so I asked him if he was crying because he didn’t like the game. He shook his head no. He finally soulfully expressed that, “I never, ever want to loose”. It was so, so sweet and honest…seemingly not only about the game, but a fear that he couldn’t do it…couldn’t play violin…and wouldn’t be able to ever feel like playing was easy. Well, I never want to loose, either, so I was was able to understand and tell him some of the things that have helped me! Thankfully, he was able to fair and square win the game in the end, realizing that keeping his fingers on the bow was actually not impossible and could be fun. At the end of the lesson he was tired of me helping him guide the bow. Hesitantly, aware that the ground we had gained might be lost, I backed off and witnessed him perfectly integrating technical impossibilities!!! Through the experience, not only did he learn, but since I could see him playing a full bow, I could see how his elbow wasn’t coming around enough to give him the freedom to be relaxed in his hand. I also learned that even four year old children have terrible fear of failing.
I am in the process of learning how to make learning the violin a success story for students. This is the beginning of my journey.
