Suzuki Piano Teacher (SAA Book 6/7)
Suzuki Early Childhood Education Teacher (SAA Level 4/5)

Due to this health situation that is being experienced globally, the Suzuki Association of the Americas had the wonderful idea of creating Suzuki Online Seminars—SOS—offering Suzuki teachers the possibility of maintaining their continuous training even though classroom training courses have been suspended.

What a great idea! What an excellent way to continue nurturing not only our knowledge and our mind, but also our spirit through these short seminars, that last only 5 hours, and become fresh water that fills us with encouragement, inspiration and energy, and that allow us to continue our training in order to keep teaching our students.

While it is true that this pandemic shook us all, forcing some to suspend classes due to the uncertainty of what was to come, it is also true that the majority of Suzuki teachers, used to looking for strategies, found and are finding new ways to monitor their students’ learning as well as giving parents containment and support: blessed be the Suzuki Triangle and also the Suzuki Association of the Americas, which, coherently to what it proclaims, it is that “mentor” who works together with the teachers for the good of the parents and students, being the perfect model of the triangle of our dear sensei Shinichi Suzuki.

What can I tell you about SOS courses? what excites me the most?. Until this day I have taken three extraordinary seminars, all of them with complementary information to the training courses, which not only refresh the ideas but also provide valuable new information which invites introspection in order to refine the way we teach. From the comfort of my home, and through a virtual platform, I have been in Guelph-Ontario1, Mexico City2 and Flagstaff-Arizona3, listening to wonderful, humble and passionate teachers who with great enthusiasm share their teachings and experiences. I have been surrounded by extraordinary colleagues from Brazil, Canada, the United States of America and Mexico, most of them new friends who have been added to the list, and who I know I can now count on. I have had the opportunity to charge myself with energy, which I so much needed, after having migrated from face-to-face classes to virtual ones; Being both, the head of a Suzuki school and head of 2 Suzuki teacher training festivals (Institutes), I had to quickly make difficult decisions in order to not interrupt our students’ classes—SECE, piano, guitar and violin—and to be able to continue the courses of the next school year.

It is my desire that many teachers in the Americas make the most of these wonderful seminars and also that SAA continues to offer this alternative of professional enrichment through these On Line Seminars.

1 Lange, Gail. Preparing for the first Suzuki Piano lessons.
2 Olivares, Joaquín. Desarrollo de habilidades antes de Estrellita.
3 Galindo, Diana. The Technique Toolbox for Piano—Teaching Big Technique with Tiny Toys