I’ve been teaching some online songwriting classes for kids.

It’s been a lot of fun. We’re making up silly lyrics about tacos and learning to jam a little bit.

These kids have varying levels of participation. Some of them are all in, chanting rhythms and offering little bits of melody. Some will sing along when they’re on mute but refuse to turn on their mics to share what they are doing. Some will propose some lyrics or answer questions in the chat. And some won’t contribute at all — their participation is limited to observation.

Read More

The dining room table was strewn with tiny cardboard circles, little wooden figurines, and stacks of laminated cards.

These were familiar elements of Euro-style board games by now, but now we were playing a brand new game. Examining the pieces — like fifteen different kinds of pieces — I couldn’t make sense of any of it. I tried to be patient as my husband read the rules, but I found myself getting sleepy and struggling to concentrate. The words passed through me without meaning. As he turned the pages, I didn’t feel as though I was getting any closer to knowing how to play this game.

Read More

A friend of mine was struggling with a new skill.

She confessed that she was “not really cut out for it.”

Regardless of her actual ability, this statement limited her results. It was a convenient place to hide.

Read More

“I just don’t remember learning this,” the student said in frustration, slumping over her math book.

My colleague could only say the truth, as absurd as it sounded. “You don’t remember learning this because you’ve…never learned it before. This is the first time.”

After a couple of years of reviewing and remediating, it was hard for this student to see that the concepts in front of her were new. It required a shift in attitude from her: Instead of a determination to persist even though she felt like she “should already know this by now,” she now had to adopt a sense of curiosity and openness to the unfamiliar.

Read More

At a party for The Little Middle School, I watched a student cut herself a piece of cake.

It was a challenging motor planning exercise with many elements. At what angle should the knife be held? What side of the cake should I cut into? How do I deal with the fact that my height relative to the cake is not optimal? How do I get the cake onto my plate with this cake knife? How do I balance the weight transfer of the piece of cake onto the plate I’m holding if my dominant hand is busy with the cake knife?

She managed — barely. But it was time well spent. The more she practices such tasks, the better she will get at them. There is no shortcut and no substitute.

Read More

I frequently draw on my experience as a music teacher to solve problems in other subjects.

In music, the effectiveness of various learning strategies and tactics can be quickly and easily heard. Therefore, as I experimented, it became obvious which ones to keep using.

One of the most straightforward of these was simple repetition. But the key, I discovered, was to repeat something until you saw results, compressing your effort into a short period of time.

Read More