Karen Zethmayr

For beginners 12 and under, the process includes a detailed intro for parents. As typical for Suzuki's curriculum and approach, parent participation is central. For preschool children, I engage primarily with the parent for the first several weeks, in which they learn some basic variations that give them the hands-on background they need as nurturing "home teachers".

For older students, we spend the first lessons on two fronts: working with pieces they have learned so far, challenging them to enhance "old" repertory with new techniques, primarily with the bow. The "new territory/old territory" routine carries on through their lessons, just as it does with the students I start from the beginning.

 BMus, Lawrence University (1965), continuing after graduation with Scott Willits in Chicago, Georgio Silzer in Berlin, and Anastasia Jempelis at Eastman School of Music.

It was Professor Jempelis who trained me in Suzuki's approach and supervised Eastman's pre-college Institute in which I taught during the three years we lived in Rochester.

I teach primarily at Monroe Street Arts Center in Madison Wisconsin. I hold to our price structure there, which is posted on our website https://www.monroestreetarts.org/private-music

As a young mom of two, feeling the pinch of parenthood on my playing abilities, I stumbled upon a course in Suzuki pedagogy.

Learning Suzuki's cluster of playing and teaching techniques, and having the opportunity to teach in the same program, thoroughly restored and reinforced all my previous training.

I have worked with preschool children (and incidentally with the same age group as mother helper in a Montessori school and later in a Headstart program), elementary and middle school kids, beginning and continuing adults, and autistic kids.

I encourage all my students to overlap their lesson times if it all possible. That gives them duet times at the beginnings and endings of the lessons.

Two of my students have had back-to-back lessons for a long time, and their dads and I have quietly encouraged them to be a little less competitive and a little more supportive.

During one of their overlap times, I was thrilled to see them do a 4-part round with their dads, one dad singing, one dad playing violin, and both boys playing.

Find out what the teacher's lesson routine is, and what you will need to do in the time between lessons, in order to reach your goals. Usually people will need a meet and greet lesson in order to help you decide if the teacher's approach is a good fit.

For parents, how much time do you have in this phase of your own life to spend taking this journey with your child?

Especially if the child is under 12, this is not a drop off program. Young children need someone taking notes and understanding how to build success at home during the week.

You can find a lot of Suzuki approach information and resources at

https://suzukiassociation.org/

In the beginning, expectations are very simple, and we don't immediately jump into a world of daily hour-long practice sessions.Practice is, however, essential.

We start small, and we build. Regularity of practice is much more important then number of minutes. How we achieve that might be one of your in-person questions.