![\"\"](\"https:\/\/suzukiassociation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/H35A2536c-4-1024x577.jpg\")
Susan is now a tenured art history professor. She teaches undergraduate lecture classes and graduate seminars, mentors grad students, navigates the challenges of being part of a university humanities department in the twenty-first century, and keeps up her own scholarly work with research and publishing. Her world, including not just the subject matter she teaches but also the setting and the age of her students, is very different from mine as a violin teacher of children and young teens. When we catch up, though, teaching is often what we end up talking about. It\u2019s been surprising to notice how often Susan and I are thinking about the same things, and how the most essential components of good teaching turn out to be the same no matter who or what is being taught. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like many teachers, Susan and I have found ourselves becoming more sensitive over time to who our students really are and what they may need from us. Perhaps many of us who had an easy time as students ourselves have struggled with the fact that our own students don\u2019t always respond so easily. As teachers, we suffer when we get stuck in a fundamentalist mindset: This student would be fine if they [or their parent] would just do what I say! Eventually we may learn to recognize some times when it\u2019s healthy to drop our idea of how things should<\/em> go in order to engage with a student\u2019s reality. A few years ago, Susan shared with me something one of her own mentors had told her, which has stayed with me as some of the best teaching advice I\u2019ve ever heard: \u201cYour job isn\u2019t to get the student to write the paper you think should be written. Your job is to help the student write the paper the student can write<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the Covid pandemic, while I was seeing my students only on a computer screen, a lot of my usual \u201cshoulds\u201d stopped being relevant. With an indeterminate wait until we\u2019d ever again play together in person, any motivation for all the students to play all the same things was on pause. I\u2019d joined the Distance Learning Forum on Facebook that Carrie Reuning Hummel started as a resource for Suzuki teachers learning to teach online. When teachers began sharing that some of their students seemed to be depressed at home and listless in their lessons, a number of colleagues replied, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you ask them what they actually want to learn? Ask them what they\u2019re listening to. Ask them what music they like.\u201d I\u2019m so grateful for this advice! I\u2019d been expanding my students\u2019 shared repertoire for a few years, both to introduce non-classical styles and to include a greater diversity of classical composers, so I already had a framework and a mindset with some wiggle room in it. But when I really opened up to my students\u2019 own interests, I was astonished by what became possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One student had come to me as a middle schooler with a pretty awkward technical setup after starting violin at school. A couple years later, we hadn\u2019t gained a lot of traction in physical technique, practice time, or repertoire. The student was stuck in Book Two as if Handel Bourr\u00e9e was quicksand. My teaching ideas worked fine in lessons, but the outcomes didn\u2019t seem to stick very well. One day, through the laptop screen, I asked him what he\u2019d been listening to lately, and he responded nonchalantly, \u201cAdagio from Sonata in G minor by Bach.\u201d Did he mean he was listening to the solo sonatas and partitas? Yes, he did. It was his own initiative\u2014I hadn\u2019t asked him to do it. How wonderful! But when he said he\u2019d like to play that music, my mind reeled. What do we do when students\u2019 goals seem unrealistic in light of their present level of engagement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I could have said, \u201cYou might be able to get there eventually if you at least quadruple your practice time and follow more closely the steps I\u2019m already trying to give you.\u201d But I wasn\u2019t confident that for me to simply double down that way was likely to help. Was there some way to say \u201cYes\u201d instead of \u201cMaybe later\u201d? I remembered reading once that Yo-Yo Ma had begun learning the Bach suites for cello at age four, just a few bars at a time in his lessons. My student was game to try working this way, and we spent the next months on the Courante and Allemande from the first cello suite, transcribed for violin. It was slow going, but the student was diligent and thoughtful in his work with the music. He became excited and engaged in a way I\u2019d never seen him be. When lessons and other activities resumed meeting in person, he joined a Baroque chamber ensemble I was directing, where he became a reliable, receptive one-on-a-part player. Today he continues to perform in the early-music ensemble at his university. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the next year or two I grew more and more confident in making space for my students to direct some of their own learning. This change made the most dramatic difference for students who had been falling through the cracks and weren\u2019t easily making progress otherwise. In a time when young people at large are struggling for a sense of meaning and hope, witnessing these students become joyful and captivated was a powerful motivation for me. These breakthroughs didn\u2019t just represent musical success\u2014it felt like I was witnessing the students come more fully to life as human beings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I talked about my experience with Susan, it turned out that she had language right at her fingertips for what I\u2019d been discovering. Colleges and universities have had to address what\u2019s been widely described in recent years as a crisis in young people\u2019s mental health. Susan had recently attended a presentation by Liesl Wuest, Director of Learning Design and Technology at Emory University, about designing college courses to enable students to better flourish. Wuest draws on concepts from Self-Determination Theory and also addresses unseen barriers, from learning differences to socio-cultural gatekeeping, in order to specify the aspects of pedagogy that allow students to thrive.1<\/sup> When I shared with Susan my excitement about welcoming students\u2019 own interests in our lessons, she told me that making room for choice was one of these pedagogical points. From her summary of the presentation, I jotted down this formula: \u201cWell-being depends on having a sense of agency. A sense of agency depends on Choice, Accessibility, Transparency, and Community.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was immediately struck by the thought that Suzuki pedagogy is powerfully aligned with three of these four points:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I love thinking about Suzuki pedagogy as a setting in which our students develop a sense of agency and well-being. Agency is the experience of having the power to take action. It\u2019s the opposite of passivity. And I take well-being to be the opposite of depression. I don\u2019t think the goal of well-being is for everyone to necessarily feel happy all the time but, rather, that we want to experience a sense of vitality and engagement\u2014the \u201cmore fully alive\u201d feeling that I felt from my students when I began allowing them more choice in our studies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Choice is the remaining, fourth component of agency and well-being. Unlike the other three, this one isn\u2019t directly built into Suzuki pedagogy. In fact, much of our pedagogy rests on not<\/em> letting students choose. We tend to lean instead on the many advantages of a predetermined repertoire. We emphasize the ways that structure is healthy and necessary for young people. And we\u2019re keenly aware that we have the responsibility to transmit our expert knowledge accurately to students, who can\u2019t yet know how it will unfold for them. All those things are true!<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I\u2019ve come to believe that lack of choice causes some Suzuki students to stagnate or clash with their teacher and eventually to drop out. It makes sense if you consider the notion that limiting someone\u2019s agency can leave them feeling powerless and depressed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I suspect that many students these days arrive in the music studio with a steep deficit in their experience of agency. When we talk about today\u2019s young people being overscheduled, what strikes me now is that it\u2019s not so much that they don\u2019t have time to relax but that they don\u2019t have time to exercise self-direction. Back in the 1980s, Susan and I and our friends spent hours playing freely outdoors each week, acting on our own ideas together. With that need for healthy autonomy met, we were receptive to the experience of highly-structured education in a way that many kids today may not be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some students seem to have a stronger need for autonomy than others. Whether it\u2019s inborn or developed out of their individual life experiences, I now think of this trait as an actual learning need. With that framework, I notice that choice actually works in tandem with the other three components of agency. Unless I can offer choice to the students who need it, my pedagogy isn\u2019t truly accessible to them. My instruction isn\u2019t transparent if a student experiences the Suzuki repertoire as an arbitrary, authoritarian set of hoops to jump through, or if they perceive me as blocking access to the rest of the world of music. If I fail to welcome the generative energy that students can bring, they experience a weakening of relationship and community. I notice that our entire community is richer when everyone shows up more three-dimensionally. Meaningful student choice\u2014which means making space for students\u2019 own self-direction\u2014has turned out to be the missing piece in my pedagogy, helping the Suzuki philosophy better serve my twenty-first-century students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are a few examples of ways to create opportunities for choice. From small shifts in language to big changes of curriculum, it\u2019s a menu that we can\u2014ahem!\u2014choose from:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve learned about opt-ins from observing great teachers in action. When Elise Winters-Heute is writing down a student\u2019s practice assignment, she asks even young beginners to decide how many times per day they\u2019ll repeat a given task. On the first day of Institute masterclasses, <\/strong>Ed Sprunger asks the families if there\u2019s anything they hope he\u2019ll teach them that week. As soon as I brought that question to my own students, one child asked me eagerly, \u201cCan you teach me how to do that thing that sounds like whining?\u201d We began that student\u2019s pre-vibrato exercises that day, and she went on to develop an unusually rich and glowing vibrato. I think it was more meaningful to her because she\u2019d requested it herself. When established students grow toward and through their teen years, I\u2019m happy to see them reflect on their needs and help steer the lesson accordingly. I often ask them what they hope to address that day; usually their priorities aren\u2019t in conflict with mine, and the students\u2019 level of buy-in is much higher when more of the work we do is their own idea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, sometimes a student requests a temporary extension for something in their assignment, telling me they\u2019d like another week to practice it before showing it to me. Or if I want to address some pesky technical point but I suspect the student might not be \u201cwith me\u201d for it right then, I might ask whether they feel up to tackling it today or prefer to pick it up next week. I also let my older students know they can use a chair when they\u2019re tired. (Most kids are grateful to take advantage of this option now and then, and no one yet has abused the privilege.) It might seem paradoxical to a more rule-focused teacher, but inviting my students to honor their own limits seems to give them more energy. The same students who choose not to do some things in a particular lesson will tend to be ready the next time, with a learning agenda in mind that they\u2019re pretty excited about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I had a diligent, gentle ten-year-old student going into Book Four who didn\u2019t generally balk at the work of practice, but he could not stand Martini Gavotte! He couldn\u2019t say why, but we agreed to drop it from his review work for a while. (He understood that he\u2019d have to dust the piece off if we were going to do it in group.) For a year, he crossed out that title on his weekly review charts with such a thick scribble it nearly tore the paper. I don\u2019t think his playing suffered one bit from skipping this piece for a while, and getting to choose not to play it obviously satisfied some need for him. If students can\u2019t opt out, how can they ever meaningfully opt in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n A more unconventional thing I\u2019ve sometimes done is to start Book Four with students who were still working through Book Three but felt restless with it because they\u2019d picked up some Book Four skills in school orchestra. I told them we could start using their Book Four skills while completing the skills they could still learn from Book Three. When they finished one book they were already halfway through the next. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s always possible to say yes in some way to a student\u2019s learning desire. If they long to start a piece that\u2019s obviously much too hard, I can come up with a skill-preview exercise or offer the option of a different supplemental piece that\u2019s more accessible but has a similar character. Or if a young student really won\u2019t let go of playing something faster than they can manage, I might demonstrate some optional extra string-changing exercises that would help build their capability. Given this choice, some students eagerly take on the extra work, while others notice how complicated it feels and slow down voluntarily. Either way is a win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s the big one! This topic is worthy of a whole article on its own. My students love getting to choose some of their repertoire. (One bonus is that in order to choose a piece from the \u201cmenu\u201d I offer at each level, they have to listen to lots of possibilities.) They also benefit from exploring the additional styles I introduce besides classical, including fiddle traditions and historical performance. Students often discover that a part of their personality or their taste comes out more fully in one style than another, and then they have more access to those parts of themselves in any style. I used to worry that the easy fun of fiddle tunes might lure kids away from classical music, but that has never happened. In fact, many students just love classical music all the more if it turns out to be their favorite style\u2014which is the biggest opt-in of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A teacher doesn\u2019t necessarily have to be an expert in a given style to serve as a useful bridge for students. Sometimes it\u2019s enough to model being curious, receptive, and respectful of the tradition we\u2019re exploring together. Last week, out of the blue, two different students asked me about jazz violin: a twelve-year-old who said she\u2019d been learning \u201cLa vie en rose\u201d from the Louis Armstrong recording, and a high schooler who\u2019s been working on chordally accompanying fiddle tunes and learning about harmony. I told each student frankly that I don\u2019t know a whole lot about jazz, but I was able to point them to some listening and to some tutorial books we might explore together. I\u2019m thrilled to know that my students\u2019 curiosity outstrips what I can give them directly. There\u2019s a whole world outside the confines of their childhood violin studio, and I\u2019m glad that they feel empowered to explore it for themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Liesl Wuest, \u201cStudent Flourishing Through Faculty Flourishing: Self-Determination for All\u201d (EdD diss., University of Georgia, 2025), ProQuest (3253269153).<\/p>\n\n\nDiscovering Choice<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Ideas from Higher Education<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
Making Space for Choice<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Opt-ins<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nRespecting Students\u2019 Limits<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Relaxing the \u201cShoulds\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Finding a Way to Say Yes<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Branching Out in Repertoire and Style<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Notes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n