On Sunday, 8 May, our families spent part of their Mother’s Day celebrating our students’ deep learning accomplishments. KSMA hosted its first Graduation Concert, using the levels established for us by Dr. Suzuki.
Prior to the concert date, students whose teachers believed they were ready made video recordings of their graduation piece. Our faculty watched each video and made comments on the student’s performance and overall development. The comments will be shared with the students at the private teacher’s discretion. Each student’s video is viewed and commented on by three teachers.
Dr. Suzuki chose the pieces which are graduation pieces because these pieces represent the first time that all of the skills learned up to that point appear together in the same piece. So, while it may be that every skill in a particular graduation piece is something a student has had in at least one previous piece, it is the first time that all of the skills are in the same piece…what an accomplishment!
In our current society, there are far too few opportunities for our children (or us!) to experience the all-important opportunity for learning something deeply. Polishing graduation pieces has given our students just the beginning of the opportunity to do what we would like to experience regularly…deep, multi-tiered and multi-faceted learning.
Dr. Suzuki often talked about how memorising the notes, fingerings, rhythm, articulation, intonation (strings), bowing and bow divisions (strings) and tempo of a piece are the beginning of the learning process. Once we have learned the “nuts and bolts”, then we are ready to begin learning the music of the piece! This idea is not unique to Suzuki, but how lucky we are that it is one of our foundational elements.
Congratulations to our students for their work in getting ready to really learn these pieces…both individually, and as members of their group class in preparing for the concert!
