What I Learned about Teaching from Learning to Crochet

With a hook and a string of yarn, loops entwine in an array of patterns to create a work of art. The equipment is simple, the outcomes stunning. By varying colors, fibers, and stitch patterns, an artist can create limitless changes in a fabric, and after investing time, effort, and careful thought, there exists a unique product that embodies the creative transformation of simple materials into something beautiful. Sound familiar?

My interest in learning crochet began as a young girl watching my mother work up inspiring creations. I borrowed a hook, found projects in catalogs that inspired me, and selected my favorite colors of yarns from the craft store. Sadly, my initial flame of interest dimmed quickly and extinguished completely after a short time. Many of my early attempts failed to meet my expectations. My frustration at my inability to accomplish what I had set out to do led to my concluding that “I’m just not good at this.” How did that happen?

The goals I set for myself were unrealistic and poorly defined, creating a sense of immediate failure rather than attainable success, providing little motivation to persist through errors, little room for wondering why errors occurred, and, ultimately, little desire to continue.

My childhood experience with crochet is not unlike the experiences of many children who pick up an instrument for the first time. For every child’s face that lights up in anticipation of their first lesson or music class, there are other students who stop music study after a short time. Despite the encouragement of parents and teachers, they continue to believe “I’m just not good at this.” All of us who teach music have met these former students as adults, who, upon learning that we are music teachers, begin to reminisce about how they played an instrument for a short while, quit, and wished they hadn’t. We may be tempted to offer encouragement like “It’s not too late!” but many of these individuals are likely to remain embedded in their perceptions of themselves as failed musicians. Research has shown that how one views themselves as a musician is a stronger predictor of continuing music study than actual musical ability.1

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Now as an adult, 20 years after my initial, failed attempts, I decided to teach myself to crochet. I dusted off my crochet hooks, wound my yarn, and hit the ground looping. Importantly, I recrafted my learning process after reflecting on why I had quit in the first place. I made sure that this time around would be different in a few distinct important ways:

• I reframed the types of goals that would define my success
• I allowed more time for creating, making, and correcting errors
• I created more opportunities for discovery and varied applications of my new skills

Perhaps most important is the fact that my own goal-setting and timelines were unencumbered by the time constraints that typically characterize schools, lessons, or other curricula. Yet, the essence of my learning experience with crochet can be replicated when we help children learn, ushering in more effective skill development in young music learners. Students develop skills at different rates with a wide variety of attitudes. While the potential music-maker in each student is envisioned by their teacher, this vision is not always enough to overcome students’ self-perceptions. Although we cannot change a student’s past experiences, we have the capacity to structure learning environments and tasks that can nurture their present and future creative music behaviors and positive feelings of self-efficacy. What do students bring into their first music lesson in terms of experiences and attitudes about learning? What is it about their early learning experiences that may shape their beliefs and perceptions of themselves as music-makers? What distinguishes the learning experiences of those who have made music making a life-long journey from those whose musical fabrics came undone?

Redefining the Immediate Goal

When we are fortunate enough to witness artistry in any form, we typically observe an end product that was the result of countless hours, iterations, frustrations, and accomplishments. Thinking about long-term goals can be particularly motivating and attractive: learn to play a favorite song, make a blanket for the guest bed, or paint a watercolor to decorate a blank wall. In fact, these kinds of goals are often what motivates people to engage in learning in the first place to get to the good stuff.

But this time, I started learning to crochet again with absolutely no project in mind. There were no special patterns to follow or calculations of yarn length to be made. One no-frills hook, one budget ball of yarn, one rectangle—every row the same, every stitch the same, every time. My goal was to crochet a really (and I mean really) uniform stitch while keeping each row the same size each time with no pressure to produce a finished garment at the end. Just a simple task: start, observe, refine.

Learning new skills involves the accomplishment of many smaller, proximal goals, and sequential moments of accomplishment along the way motivate learners to continue pursuing skills of lasting value. Focusing only on long-term goals like “learn [insert new piece]” can have a detrimental effect on the early learning process if there are not meaningful, smaller accomplishments to celebrate along the way. We as teachers have the capacity to structure learning sequences around these small, tangible accomplishments that approximate our ultimate goals.

If there is no immediate end product, what is there to aim for? A whole lot, actually. Artists achieve many goals and discoveries while engaging in their craft irrespective of having a product to share when they are done. Obtaining a uniform stitch, playing a perfectly in-tune E, and drawing the bow so that a full tone rings from the instrument are all extremely satisfying accomplishments, and should be celebrated as such. Students often need our help to direct them to these moments of accomplishment. When we pare down what students really need to know to start doing things that all great musicians do, we begin to make space and time for celebration and discovery.

Autonomous Success and Error Correction

Much of my crochet adventure, notably, was spent alone. This is significant, as it provided me the encouragement to progress on my own timeline. I was able to hone in on the kinesthetic feel of how I moved my tools, to analyze my work, and to make adjustments all according to my own pace, uninfluenced by others. When needed, I was able to access expert crocheters via video to help refine my work, correct confusions, and provide necessary models. But these videos were made more meaningful because I had spent significant time practicing the skills alone, noticing successes and trying to fix errors.

Music study is often rife with deadlines and expectations of finished products without much time for students to spend creating on their own. Students’ practice may be done alone, but student autonomy in setting goals and creative exploration is rarely afforded space in the music classroom or private lesson in the presence of an expert. With a pep rally on Friday, a concert in three weeks, and solo and ensemble festival in January, it is no wonder that we feel limited in our ability to provide this type of time for our students.

My time spent alone, however, was crucial to making more meaningful crochet memories than if I had been guided through each step by an expert. I figured out how to maintain even tension while finding a comfortable way to hold my hook and yarn. I noticed the anatomy of each stitch, identifying how to count the numbers of stitches in each row reliably. At one point I discovered that I was stitching incorrectly for about two hours before I noticed my mistake. Two hours. What a bummer. But by the time I had fixed my stitch, I understood what I was doing even better than if a teacher had guided me to do it right the entire time. Additionally, it opened my eyes to how stitches could be intentionally altered to create different patterns in the fabric.

Many well-intentioned teachers try to get students to the “right answer” as quickly and efficiently as possible. But the right answer is just the right answer, and often a poor indicator of understanding on its own. Building student autonomy into a lesson can be as easy as asking a student to play a task on their own a handful of times with the understanding that you will ask them what they noticed at the end. Perhaps even with a prompt to focus on what they notice in terms of intonation, articulation, or tone.

Even the youngest students will begin attending to important aspects of their playing, developing their own vocabulary for what they hear and feel. Making and refining these associations on their own builds a more lasting memory of musical concepts while also building confidence in their own ability to evaluate their playing.

Discovery and Variation

Behind every track downloaded and painting on the wall are hours upon hours of creative experimentation. Goals are generated and tested without the burden of perfect execution or being tied to an end product. The feedback brought about by the creator is more salient as opposed to being driven by what a critic or teacher might say.

Redefining “correctness” allows our students to incorporate variation around developing the various skills required for music making. Put another way, there are some things you have to do “correctly” and habitually in music making, but the ability to vary these skills affords a more meaningful understanding of what you are doing. If the only opportunities our students have to demonstrate their playing skills are within the narrow contexts of our to-do lists as teachers, there is no guarantee that they will understand what we actually have intended for them to learn.

While there are certain non-negotiable elements of performing (intonation, rhythm, ensemble, etc.), we should ensure that our students understand that there are many pathways to successful performance. Although our time with students is limited, we can pose questions that highlight opportunities for choice-making: What if you took more time on this fermata? What if you started Lightly Row on a different string? What if you changed the articulation?

Why do these questions matter? Because they introduce variation and flexibility, allowing the student to develop a different perception of what is “ok” when learning their instrument. Just as a crochet stitch looks different with different fibers or a different size hook, Twinkle takes on a new mood when explored on different strings. Whether or not we include certain discoveries in a performance is a decision independent of the value of discovering new ways to play familiar repertoire.

Conclusion

Revisiting crochet with refined intention has reminded me of what I love about learning and music. Unburdened by my inevitable accidents and errors along the way, I experience immense joy and find myself motivated by my successes and my failures. This type of unplugged creativity, much like leisurely playing my instrument, helps engage my hands and mind in a pursuit dominated by rewarding and joyful experiences. The nature of what made my renewed efforts in crocheting so different from what I experienced as a child, I believe, has powerful implications for how we think about and approach early music learning for children.

Music learning, performance, and teaching are like strands of yarn that make up the unique fabric of individuals’ experiences as musicians. Within those strands may exist mistakes, unexpected turns, and many (many) adjustments along the way. And yet, our musical fabrics persist, preserving a record of the ways our musical lives have endured and been shaped over time by the efforts of ourselves, caring teachers, and inspiring colleagues.

Resources

1 Demorest, Steven M., Jamey Kelley, and Peter Q. Pfordresher. “Singing Ability, Musical Self-Concept, and Future Music Participation.” Journal of Research in Music Education 64, no. 4 (2017): 405–420. [url=https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022429416680096]https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022429416680096[/url]