I've always been interested in teaching; the old cynical saying, "those that can’t perform, teach" falls on deaf ears with me. I had a good example for a teacher, my father, who was a professor, not in music, but in genetics at a univeristy in Michigan. But his teaching style must have rubbed on off on me, perhaps in the way he helped raise me. One on one, I found him to always ready to listen to what I was trying to say, rather than always correcting me. When there was need for correction, of course, he was willing and ready to help. He was always challenging me to do my best, not necessarily what the world says is "Number One", but the absolute best I could do, which was normally enough. In those circumstances where my best wasn’t enough, he taught me how to learn from my mistakes without beating myself up over them. Towards his students, he was always fair in his tests and if you worked, you did well; no tricks were involved, simply hard work. These are some of the traits that I try to embody when I teach.

For instance, when a student comes in who has no prior experience on the instrument, I assign small easily attainable goals to start with, such as "How to Hold the Instrument or the Bow". Through these simple, but important tasks, I can get a sense of how coordinated a student is, or how physically "talented"; it is a fact that some children are, by nature, more or less gifted in terms of relating to the instrument physically. However, whether a student is gifted or not actually has little bearing on how much success they will have on the instrument. What matters is how dedicated they are and how hard they work. Most beginners are young, between the ages of 4 and 7 or 8. Can we talk about "dedication and hard work" at such a young age? Yes; but again, tasks must be formulated with a clear, well-defined goal in mind and the most important thing is that a daily effort be made to improve. By this I mean each day, a young student, say six years old, can be expected to do about fifteen minutes of work, or even ten minutes at the early stages of study. But consistency cannot be underestimated. This is where the physically gifted students sometimes fall short because they rest on their talent, which will take them through about six weeks, but after that, it simply becomes work for even the most talented; the old saying "Talent is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" rings true here. Of course, this work is made to be as engaging as possible; I’ve choosen a method that best addresses the young student at their level. One that doesn’t "dumb down" to much, but isn’t dry either. The method I’ve settled on currently is "Adventures in Violinland" by Shirley Givens. Full of fun illustrations, the issues it addresses and the order in which they are addressed shows an attentiveness to detail and technical fundamentals that is wonderful.

Let me close with a story: A couple of years ago, I was teaching at a music school in Connecticut, while finishing my studies at Yale. I had about eight students of varying age and ability. One of the students however had a nervousness about her that at first I couldn’t understand: whenever someone else was in the room, she froze up and couldn’t play, literally frozen with fear. I observed this in the first lesson but somehow she loosened up and throughout the course of the next year, she showed herself to be a wonderfully good-natured girl, somewhat given to patchy work, but nonetheless we made wonderful progress. Finally, it was time for me to give the students over to my successor at the school. I wanted her to hear the students for herself and so she sat in the background while I taught. Unfortunately, the same thing happened, this particular student froze and in this case, burst into tears! This was frustrating because I wanted her to be able to show to others how hard she had worked, but she always froze, incapable of putting bow to string. The end of year recital was upon us in a few weeks and I resolved to leave the decision up to her if she wanted to play or not. I purposely gave her repetoire that would be somewhat easy for her, because I realized that she had this mental block to overcome and the least she needed to worry about was getting all the notes. Week after week I reminded her to keep working on the piece while concurrently, we worked on other, more challenging things. When the recital rolled around, I was delighted to see that she present, but she still hadn’t decided whehter she wanted to play or not (I had asked students to come regardless of whether or not they wanted to play so others could have an audience). Over 50 people were in attendance, although it seemed like more given the smallness of the room we were in. When her time came to play, she looked over at me, got up and proceeded, by memory, to play confidently and flawlessly. The story still makes me gulp back my emotions. That she could overcome the mental block she had was so meaningful to me. I helped, but in the end, it came down to her dedication and effort and that is what teaching is all about.