Roswell, Georgia: Land of Suzuki, Peaches, & Heat

Roswell, Georgia is a beautiful place. It's over 90 degrees every day, has fresh fruit, and nice drivers. It is a very developed, young community. For you left brained readers, here are some statistics of its economics/demographics from 2009:

55% of households are married couple families
51% of people attained a bachelor's degree or higher
29% are under the age of 18
27% are age 25-44

Money Magazine has ranked Roswell, Georgia #76 in best places to live (2010), saying that "it has some of the best public schools in the state, the lowest crime rate in the region, and a myriad of outdoor activities..."

Forbes ranks Roswell #10 in America's 25 Best Places to Move (July 2009).

Travel + Leisure Magazine ranked Roswell #6 in Coolest Suburbs Worth a Visit. "Located 20 minutes north of downtown Atlanta, on the banks of the Chattahoochee River, Roswell has been winning over young urbanites (the population's average age is 35) with its mix of Old South and the culture and food of a cosmopolitan city. This bike-friendly, walkable community has an established restaurant base, exquisitely repurposed 19th-century architecture, and an evolving art scene that includes three theaters."

In addition, Roswell ranked 3rd (2006) in Frommer's - Best Places to Raise Your Family: The Top 100 Affordable Communities in the U.S.



From the statistics, you can see that Roswell is an ideal location for teaching Suzuki. There are many young families who see the importance of learning music and can afford its costs. Also, did I mention that they have great weather there?

Here is it's weekend forecast:

...pretty toasty, but ideal for a person who doesn't retain heat very well.

 <-------------- This is Canton Street, only a half mile from where I was training.

I have been turning into quite a foodie since my summer travels. I like to try popular restaurants where I can eat healthily. Each day I eat out once, typically at lunch when the prices are cheaper. My favorite restaurants are on Canton Street, which is at the city's heart. Most of them have outdoor seating next to the bricked sidewalks.

I typically do not eat meat unless it is organic, locally raised, or from the ocean. Therefore, I opted for vegetarian options most of the time. The following were my 3 favorite restaurants:

1.   Roux -- Black Bean Burger with side of Jalapeno Cheddar Grits

2.   Zest --  California and Rock 'n Roll Sushi

3.   Ceviche -- Veggie Burrito with mushrooms and extra avocado



This week I have been studying Suzuki Book 4 with Teri Einfeldt. She is an instructor at Hartt School in Connecticut. Teri is a well-educated professional musician with good knowledge and experience in the material we are covering. It has been interesting watching all the different students in our observations because they all learn so differently. Some learn well by addressing them with challenges. Others need more hands-on, kinesthetic learning, while some need to think through how to make a certain technique work well.


Today we observed a video during lunch called How Difficult Can This Be? from a PBS broadcast by Richard Lavoie. It teaches how learning disabled thinkers process and handle typical class environments by taking teachers and creating a scenario that handicaps their thinking process.
Example from the film: The teachers all sat in a circle, playing the game where you build a story with each individual adding one sentence. Each teacher was able to clearly communicate what he was thinking and wanted to contribute. Then they had to play the game again with one rule: no words with the letter "n." The teachers had a much harder time processing what they were wanting to say, which resulted in a lot of hesitation and stuttering. The posed instructor then pressured the "student" to hurry up in giving his answer. This then caused the "student" much more frustration, and decreased the speed of his processing even more. Whenever one of the teachers used an "n" in a word, every single one of the others either laughed or called her out on it. This is actually a typical trait of a learning disabled child because they want to point out that others make mistakes too, when they're so frequently called out on their own.

Interesting.


Well, tomorrow is my last day of training. I will be headed out to visit my aunt after a final lunch with my fellow trainees on Canton Street, then I'll be back in South Bend for a couple days.

Then....
Next Stop: Chicago!

Michigan, Art, and Music

My departure from Memphis was very time compacted. I arrived in South Bend, IN at around 3:30am and crawled into bed with my sister. Sharing a bed is a sort bonding time for us because we sleep talk to each other. I slept about 7 hours and said goodbye to my sister while we were fully awake before her departure to New York and to their German exchange student before she went home. Then I showered and headed out to a friend's wedding in St. Joseph, Michigan that began at 2pm. As you can tell from the photo below, I am not anticipating my own wedding anytime soon.

At 4pm, my official journey to Twin Lake, Michigan began. The maid of honor was letting me stay with her. So she gave me a key, and I was on my way! I arrived at her apartment a little before 6pm and discovered I was still an hour from the location of the training that started at 7pm that night. Please don't ask me how fast I drove to make it there in time.

The location itself was very different from my previous week because it was in a literal campsite about a half mile from the main parking. The weather was nice and it's a pretty beautiful camp, so I enjoyed my walks to and from the car. Except for the morning I got lost while it was raining with enough force to rinse a tattoo off someone's body. I made quite an entrance into the masterclass lesson with my hair and t-shirt fully soaked through.

Rebecca Sandrock, my instructor was raised in Japan from the age of two and was instructed under the direction of Dr. Suzuki himself, so she was very informative with knowledge from the primary source. I am glad to have had training from her to compare her teaching to others who have mainly learned from secondary sources who brought the method from Japan to America. These secondary source teachers have learned from musicians who have refined the method, which is good, but some of what Dr. Suzuki intended to teach has been lost in the process. So I am glad to have had the opportunity to be instructed by Rebecca to better understand the teacher and man that Dr. Shinichi Suzuki was.

I was staying with my friend in Wyoming, Michigan (just south of Grand Rapids), about an hour from the camp. Therefore, I had to factor 1.5 hours of driving time each way. This means that I had to leave at 7am and arrived back at my friend's apartment around 10pm every night. It was a very exhausting few days!! Thankfully, I did not have much homework this time. On my last night, we finished early enough for me to go into Grand Rapids for dinner with my friend and her roommate.

This is what I discovered was less than five hours from my home of eighteen years....

A NATIONAL ART CONTEST FESTIVAL!!!!!!!!!! Grand Rapids hosts an art contest each fall that uses city-wide venues that people can view free of charge for 2.5 weeks. The particular art piece pictured above won recently and is still plastered on the side of the business wall. I enjoyed my short visit there, and am planning on gathering from college friends to go back to visit over a weekend during the festival this fall.

Dr. Suzuki's Philosophy, by a former Suzuki student

Dr. Suzuki’s Philosophy

Written by a Suzuki student

June 11, 2012

"Man is born with natural ability"—Shinichi Suzuki, Nurtured by Love (7).

Dr. Suzuki’s philosophy revolves around the beliefs that ability is developed and environment affects who a person becomes. Therefore, instead of living in an environment that could stunt and damage a child’s potential ability, Dr. Suzuki wanted give all children the opportunity to develop their own aptitude. He desired to change a person lacking ability into a talented one, a mediocre person into an exceptional one (8).

The foundational thought is that all Japanese children speak Japanese. They all speak it with fluency and without difficulty. A child is immersed in his mother tongue since birth, whereas most other education is taught years later and with much different techniques. Dr. Suzuki began applying principles of mother tongue teaching to violin by creating an environment immersed with music.

I am a product of Dr. Suzuki’s teaching methods. My mother enrolled me in a Suzuki music school when I was three years old. She was dedicated to helping me learn to play because she saw the value it would have on my overall development. She attended all my weekly private and group lessons, practiced with me around five days a week, and made sure I was listening to the song I was working on at least five times per day.

From the book Strengths Finder 2.0  by Tom Rath, I consider my biggest strengths to be a drive for achievement, the need to act when a decision is made, adaptability to respond to demands of the moment, analytical thought that seeks truth, and discipline to create order, plans, and structure to my life.  I believe many of these attributes of myself surfaced because of my training at the Suzuki school. There were constant goals I was trying to accomplish, which drove me to work harder. I had to learn how to respond quickly to changes in music and musicians I was playing with. I achieved things I never thought I would have been able to. In my training in violin, I was taught to tackle obstacles and not avoid them. In middle school, I questioned how things worked on the violin and analyzed how to make it work better. My practice was disciplined and structured beginning with my mother’s oversight.

Throughout my life, I became identified as the girl that played violin. I was the primary violinist in my private school, my family, and my church. I could not remember what life had been like before I played, and I could not imagine what my life would be like without it. It seemed like from an early age, people just expected me to become a professional violinist. I became frustrated, because I felt like someone else had chosen who I would become. Although I had chosen to play the violin, I did not create my musically manipulated environment. I felt like if I didn’t keep pursuing the violin, my life would be a waste because of all the excellent training I had acquired.

At a young age, I had found my worth in being a violinist. Other people admired and praised me because I played the violin well. It seemed like my parents praised me most when I did something well musically. I became popular at school after I won a city symphonic competition. I thought God saw my value in my ability to play the violin too, because people at church told me how great it was I was using my talent for Him in the church. But there is more to me than just my ability to play violin, and my strengths existed before my studies of violin cultivated them.

Dr. Suzuki’s methods of teaching produce fantastic results. The idea of teaching at an early age by immersion in the home is brilliant. I am very grateful for all my training and am thankful to my mother, Dr. Suzuki, and my teachers for their dedication to help me learn how to play the violin well. I love playing the violin and want to continue my training at a university level music school.

The intention of Dr. Suzuki was not to produce professional musicians, but to develop good people. However, his methods seem to tie the student’s value to the instrument he is studying, because the instrument is credited for cultivating the good things in the child. If the student is finding his worth in the instrument, he will either begin to worship it or feel enslaved to it. Dr. Suzuki’s teaching methods themselves produce fantastic results musically, but I believe some of his base reasoning behind the music to be flawed.

Dr. Suzuki’s philosophy was to create an environment that maximizes a child’s ability and developed his strengths to make him into an overall better person. He succeeded in his pursuit. However, music alone will not create a mediocre person into an exceptional one.

Memphis! 06/08/12

Here was my beautiful view upon entering Memphis from AK. Don’t worry, Mom, I was safe and didn’t take my hands off the wheel to take the picture. I held my phone with my teeth and used my tongue to snap the photo.

I entered the city around 5 o’clock during rush hour.  The drivers here aren’t very gracious. I can probably count on one hand how many people have voluntarily let me in when I’ve tried to change lanes.

There was no one I knew of in Memphis to stay with during my Suzuki violin training, and the person I thought might let me stay with her fell through. So I left BoMo a little early to find somewhere to stay for the night.

Hotels in Memphis are expensive. However, I found one for $70 in an area just beyond a rough patch in town.

I had dinner at Huey’s, a popular burger joint in town. I read good reviews and had to park on the street because even it’s overflow parking was full. I ended up sitting in the very center of the restaurant by myself. Usually I don’t mind eating at restaurants by myself, but being in the middle of a busy burger joint quietly reading a book was a little awkward. So I ate half my meal and left to go find my hotel again.

Click here to follow to restaurant site

But my iPhone sent me to a different hotel where I got hit on and asked to smoke weed. So I left and found my actual hotel. Tonight I am staying at the U of M dorms where the worst thing I have to worry about are cockroaches in my bed.

I finished my first day of training and have really enjoyed the course so far. We began with playing all of Book 1 together and an overview of the course objectives and materials. By the end of the course I will have completed 28 hours of pedagogy sessions, 15 hours of student lesson observations, a two-page report of the book Nurtured by Love by Dr. Suzuki, a summary of Dr. Suzuki’s Philosophy, an outline for a Parent Education Course, a one-page chart summarizing the teaching points of the Book One songs, and played all the songs in Book 1 individually by memory.

Today I played all of the Book 1 songs individually by memory. It was very helpful to have already learned the pieces as a child. I didn’t have to prep for it at all since it was so ingrained in me.

The more I get involved in my training, the more thankful I am to my parents who not only sacrificed financially for me to have the Suzuki training as a child, but were disciplined enough to practice every day with me, go to my lessons, make me listen to the Suzuki CD every day, review all my pieces, and learn how to make music with me. The program has to have parents who are also dedicated to helping the child learn music to create the environment needed to develop their ability. So a shout out to Mom and Dad: “Thanks for spending so many hours and days helping me learn music. It changed my life and the way that I think.”

Tonight my new friend Shannon and I went to The Elegant Farmer for dinner (http://theelegantfarmerrestaurant.com/index.html). It was delicious and the waiting staff was very friendly. The restaurant itself purchases its ingredients only from local farmers. Shannon and I both try to eat as organic and local as possible, and will probably be dinner buddies for the week. Halfway through our meal, Shannon was feeling sick; and on our way back to U of M, she lost all of her dinner on the side of my car. She’s feeling better now and it was a bonding experience for us.

Well, my computer is about to run out of battery and I left my charger in the car and don’t want to get it.

So…toodles!

P. S.  Gas prices here are even better than BoMo's! Only $3.13!