Blossoming Character

Note: Yesterday the WiFi was down and so this is the post for Thursday and today!
Our next topic will be more technical on Monday, how to develop memory skills!


Teaching Music is about Relationships

Over the past years of teaching I have had the privilege of working with several students on a long term basis. The relationships that develop from this are rewarding for me for several reasons: one, it is simply amazing to be an active part of a child’s artistic development from an early age up to their adult life. From the first lessons in how to bow correctly, through the stages of beginning steps and the many recitals that come each year, the child grows into a fine musician and along the way develops life skills that we could call character traits.

Character Through Persistence

Persistence is one of the most common traits that all children develop while studying the piano over the course of 10 years or more. This one trait however is perhaps the single most important one for a child to develop to succeed at college and then outside in the world of community, business, education and government. How many stories have we heard of great people who have taught the world something about life, who had to have persistence?!!

The Life Cycle of Music Lessons!

I recently began to coach a student who has come back after a few years of college and then marriage. She has a child now and that child is coming with her mother to piano lessons as an infant. It is fascinating to me to observe this little baby respond to the music, smile at the studio children who come in for their lessons and begin to learn through the studio environment about music, art and relationships. She can not speak yet, but I’m anxious to hear what she will have to say in a year or so…

What is your child developing?

Perhaps you can think of other character traits and relationship building skills that your child is learning through music lessons, the studio environment, the parent, teacher and child interdependent relationship and home practice.

The Blossoming of a child’s character through:


Persistence, Patience, Love of Learning, Courage, Self Presentation, Nurturing Relationships with Adults, Artistic development, Empathy, Learning how to contribute to a Community of learners, Honesty in practice and lessons, Accountability, Respect for self and others, Listening to others and instruction, Creative Expression, and the list could continue for a very long time!


With Joy, Love, Peace and Hope,
Ben

Update

Dear Readers,

I will be taking today off to spend time in reflection and vision casting.

Enjoy your day,

With Joy, Love, Peace and Hope,

Ben

P.S. See you Tomorrow for a discussion on Blossoming Character!

Creative Imagination

Children love to be creative and have wonderful imaginations.
It seems that as children grow older these attributes become less emphasized in their education. Perhaps this is why there are so many adults who are so unhappy in their careers and lives.

What happens to childlike imagination?
Perhaps as children they were not nurtured in their creativity and their imaginations were not encouraged by teachers and parents and other well meaning adults.

Great People of imagination
Great people like Suzuki, Einstein, Edison, Gandhi, Beethoven, Picasso, all had highly developed imaginations.

Einstein
I remember reading about Einstein in my early twenties and being amazed at how he used pure imagination to develop many of the intricate theories and concepts that have shaped so dramatically how we now view the world.


Let us find ways to encourage children to be imaginative, then to be creative.

It seems that one and the other come together in children so naturally, and in adults we see a seperation of the two at times. A child can be imaginative and create an experience or object out of their imagination. Often adults will do one or the other. Let’s look hard at our own lives and see where we are imaginative and can begin to create something.

How to nurture your Imagination and Creativity

Maybe it’s simply imagining a fun vacation that we had in the past year and then posting pictures up on the fridge, or perhaps simply finding joy in arranging a vase of flowers on the table. These simple acts are everyday art!
With Joy, Love, Hope and Peace,
Ben

Tomorrow we will be talking about Blossoming Character

Revealing the Invisible

Most of a Student’s work is invisible. She (or he) will spend 30 minutes at a weekly lesson in front of a teacher with her parent helper and perform her lesson pieces and receive instruction on how to practice for the next session. Here the student is rewarded with praise and affirmation with a supportive parent observing and approving of her work in the class and a believing teacher who is offering encouragement and making honest comments about the work that has been done.

Never underestimate
Then the student goes home and practices for six days with her Home Helper. And the cycle is repeated throughout the year. At recitals a student is offered another chance to showcase her work through her performance and this is highly motivating! Never underestimate the power of recitals to motivate practice!

How do we help the younger student see their work on a daily basis? See it with a sense of accomplishment, and find motivation in the day to day practice between events?

Some Ideas:


Start a Practice Calendar

for every day that a students practices, she rubber stamps or places a sticker on the day! This is one of the oldest forms of making the invisible visible! After a month has gone by look over all of the markers for her work and praise her!

A system of accomplishment can be set up as well that will reward with achievement medals different levels of practice, for instance after 30 days of continuous practice there is a 30 day recognition award given to the student at the recital. This is great because is rewards with recognition, persistence and consistency, not simply memorization or facility.


Coloring Sheets

Other ways to mark the practice is to create sheets of 50 and 100 marks, that represent repetitions on practices and then hanging these in the studio or the home practice space. The pages can be a fill in the dots to make pictures, or simply color in different pictures with 50 - 100 spots to fill in!

Quilting

One parent had the fantastic idea of creating a practice quilt that marks certain accomplishments in a lasting way.

And these are simply a few of the ways that we can begin to find ways of Making the Invisible work of daily practice Visible!

See you Tomorrow when we will be discussing the Creative Imagination

With Peace, Love, Hope and Joy,
Ben