Twinkling Suzuki Style

After years of watching my friend's daughters work hard and achieve at Suzuki violin, I finally moved to an area where a trained Suzuki teacher lives. JillyBoo fell in love with her her violin, Jezebel Sweetpea, from the first day that we opened her case.

That day was the culmination of many years of research, reading, desire and preparation on my part. Generally speaking, I am not a pushy stage mom. We definitely follow our child in our household. When JillyBoo was a baby, a friend gave me two of Shinichi Suzuki's books: Ability Development from Age Zero and Nurtured by Love. I was inspired by the hardships that Suzuki faced and his ideas regarding growth and development. The idea that children are able to learn their mother tongue with practice and repetition rang true to me in terms of child development.

Early in my teaching experiences, I used woefully little repetition, or spiraling in my teaching. I found that to have enduring learning experiences, my students needed multiple encounters with material in various ways. Suzuki supports this, too, in suggesting that students hear beautiful music, play beautiful music multiple times to really internalize it.

JillyBoo has, for the most part, embraced the Suzuki method whole-heartedly. The look on her face when she is playing well is priceless. That one look, that, nobody-needs-to-tell-me-I'm-doing-a-good-job-I-know-I-am, is proof to me that building self-esteem only comes from honest work.

I am rereading both Suzuki books 4 years after my initial read, and find that Suzuki's stories are complimentary to the process, as would make sense. During this second read, I picked up on one of Suzuki's big ideas: Act when you think. There is a somewhat hilarious passage that Suzuki relays in which his sister says that she thought that maybe she should invite a hungry man to dinner. Suzuki chides her for not acting immediately. I do appreciate the meaning behind the message, but if my brother were so condescending, I would get a little hot around the collar!

That said, I'm trying to act when I think, and it's giving me tremendous ADD. I'm doing laundry-hey-where is that birthday wrapping paper I need for the party? Drop laundry, run to closet, find paper, set on table-hey! I should put these books away! Books away-uh, why can't I hear the dryer running? Oh yes, I didn't start it yet.

The amazing part is, I'm actually able to get more done, but I think that this method doesn't allow for prioritizing. Gift wrap is not as important as having clean chonies, after all!