5 Things I’m Loving This Week–January 29, 2016

This post was originally published on the Plucky Violin Teacher Blog on January 29, 2016 so links and resources may not be current.

A weekly round-up of tips and resources for music teachers.

I can’t believe January is basically over!  This month has just flown by for me.  I’ve been working on my teaching resolutions, though I haven’t been as consistent as I wanted to be.  I wanted to practice more consistently and, while I have been much more consistent, I haven’t made it happen every day like I wanted to.  I’m not too disappointed though, because I’ve been a hundred times more consistent than i was last year!  So that’s something.

One sad thing about this January is that my violin-teaching, blog-writing sister has now moved far away to Arizona.  (You can read her blog post about starting a new studio from scratch here…)  All of my hopes and dreams of starting an amazing little violin school dashed in an instant.  While I am happy that her husband has finished his Master’s and found a great engineering job, I am pretty devastated that they left Utah, and took my niece with them too!

To cheer myself up, I scoured the internet and found some pretty fantastic resources for violin teachers.  Here are my favorites from this week:

1. Here is a fantastic blog post by Suzuki dad, Alan Duncan. Efficient practice is so tough for most of our students (and if we’re being honest, probably for us too!) Here are some great tips for avoiding procrastination during practice times.  This is a great one to share with your studio parents.

2.  I’m a long time fan of Music for Young Violinists, Heather Figi always has some great free music and exercises for Suzuki students and her free Winter Music Packet is no exception!  I especially liked the third position exercises and ringing tones etude.

3. I am so excited for Parents as Partners Online.  I always learn so much, and get such great inspiration from these short videos.  I highly recommend you register, and get as many of your studio parents to register with you as you can.  It’s wonderful.

4. I recently finished listening to The Power of Vulnerability and Daring Greatly by Brene Brown on Audible and I just loved how much insight those two books gave me into myself and the people around me.  I was really excited to see this blog post on the Music Teacher’s Helper site relating Brown’s work to how we frame our reactions and responses to things our students (and their parents) do and say.  Here’s my favorite quote from the blog post:

“I don’t think we need to turn music lessons into counseling sessions, but working through some of a student’s underlying beliefs about themselves as musicians could be a critical factor in how long they stick with music, or how willing they are to perform in the future. It may be even more important in the long run than conquering a chord pattern or fingering problem in the moment.”
I’ve only recently started using Music Teacher’s Helper, I thought I didn’t need it before.  Now that I’ve tried it, I have realized that I didn’t know what I was missing.  It’s pretty great!

5.  February’s book club pick is Nurtured by Love by Dr. Shinichi Suzuki.  I am so excited to read this book again, I am always so invigorated and motivated by Dr. Suzuki’s philosophy and love of children and music.  What an amazing person.  I’ve got my Kindle version downloaded and my physical copy on my nightstand.

Thank you so much for reading, and thank you for your emails and comments. I love hearing from you. Be plucky, my violin-teaching friends. You’re the bomb.