Reflective Practice
This past February President's Day week, several of our Suzuki School faculty and I participated in a teachers' workshop on Suzuki Early Childhood Education with special guest teacher trainer Wan Tsai Chen of Calgary, Alberta. We had a very fun and informative week around the origins of the Suzuki belief that education begins at birth and maybe music education begins in utero. As many of you know, the first human sense is hearing, and the pregnant mother's voice and musical sounds around her are already being heard.
The Suzuki Early Childhood Education music class is centered around adult and baby interaction to music. There is a lot of movement, listening, resonance and response in the folk songs, rhythmic chants, and music being heard. It is very physical but also is planting some important musical seeds. Starting early and creating a musical environment at home have many rewards.
Talent education is the expression used by Dr. Suzuki to say that ability is developed. It is not inborn, but nurtured through the environment, by the care of the parents, or by the presence of a positive environment. In our case, we are teaching music, so we believe that having a musical environment will lead to not only musical growth from the months in utero, but that the presence of music and early musical experiences will teach students to be more sensitive to their environment and also enable all kinds of learning as the baby grows older. In the course with Wan Tsai Chen we were encouraged to observe and also to reflect.
We all know that learning a musical instrument takes practice. The small, repetitive steps of musical instrument learning lead to success, and a better understanding that complex patterns or technique can be learned when broken down into smaller steps. Dr. Suzuki would say that his approach was "learning by doing" or "learning through the senses." He also said that it was "knowledge plus 10,000 times" that produces an ability into becoming a "talent." For us in the Suzuki world, talent is an extreme ability that appears to be effortless and natural--so much so that it seems inborn.
But sometimes this is not enough. We have all seen some students who try and try and still do not seem to make as much progress as others. This was a question that is often asked and pondered. Why might that be? In the end, a noted Suzuki teacher Merlin Thompson(https://merlinthompson.com/) of Canada (www.teachmusic21c.com), came up with a new expression: "Knowledge plus 10,000 times divided by 'reflection'" would lead to the development of a new talent. That is what we were challenged to do during our weeklong workshop with Wan Tsai. We were asked to observe each other, and observe the children. What were their reactions, and what worked best to keep them engaged. We were very fortunate to have students with whom we could practice our new early childhood music curriculum. We joined together to reflect on Suzuki pedagogy, our personal goals and how we can lead our students to be better learners by themselves.
Ability = Knowlege + 10,000 times
reflection
Reflection is not easy to encourage in our children. We are often led to "tell" them what to do. Dr. Suzuki wrote in his book Ability Development from Age Zero: "reflection is also an ability...Human growth is completed upon a reflective base..." (p. 85) In order to encourage reflection, we guide parents to think about asking their children questions during their practice sessions: Which finger plays this note? Does this part sound right to you? Let's listen to the recording, and then can you tell me what parts might sound different?
Teaching our children to reflect can be a slower and longer process, but can be the most beneficial in the long term.
As we embark upon our ten-day practicing leading up to the Playathon at the Shops at Chestnut Hill, or simply as part of your daily practice at home, what can you do to encourage reflection from your student? How can we encourage them to evaluate their own progress? This ability to reflect on one's own can lead to better practicing in the future. Furthermore, using inquiry and discovery together can have less conflict during practice sessions and thus make it feel that you are on the "same team" since the evaluation comes from the student and not via an adult's judgment. Maybe we can all think about this---encouraging reflective skills can lead to better consensus of the direction we should all go.