Recently, a reader named Liz asked the following questions in the comments to this post:
I would really love to hear more from you about what works when trying to teach your daughter. I’ve been puzzling over how I would go about teaching someone like Riley (I’m a violin teacher). Is there anything that has been done that’s really effective?
I was wondering if maybe giving her warning in advance would be effective (like, this week we’ll work on bow holds, next week we’ll work on tuning, week after we’ll learn a new piece of music, etc.). Then maybe getting the actual feedback wouldn’t sting so much?
Also, when does the anxiety bit kick in? Is it when she gets the instruction (move your fingers like this…), or if she doesn’t get that instruction quite right. Or is it more that she’s upset that she hasn’t been practising properly?
Also, you said that she experienced the same thing with learning the piano and then was able to pick up from watching you learn. Would it help if the teacher started showing you the same thing while she watched?
Again, I’m just throwing out the ideas that sprang to mind, I have no idea how well any of them would work (or how many have already been tried). I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Liz, thanks so much for the questions. I’ll do my best to answer. First let it be known, what I am saying can only be applied to Riley, no broad sweeping generalizations about autism because the kids are all so different. Also, these are my observations in general on teachers, not just on cello.
The one essential thing to be successful when working with Riley is to do it in a spirit of love. This is tricky, because you can’t make a teacher love her. It can’t really be taught. She is a challenging child, and if a teacher is teaching to fulfil their own ego, they are going to quickly resent Riley, and resort to blaming her (or her parents) for their own failure. Believe me when I say no one is trying harder than Riley. No one wants to follow the rules and please their teacher more. A teacher has to have a lot of self-awareness of their own emotions, because your buttons will be pushed. If you are someone who says, “No. I’m fine. It’s my job!” And deny, deny, deny what you feel? You scare me. Because your words don’t match your energy, and that is very confusing for a kid like Riley. She may not read social cues well, but she feels energy, and a tight smile slapped over a seething face does not fool her. She reads loud and clear that in your opinion, she is the problem, and she internalizes this.
A teacher has to be more concerned with helping Riley achieve competence, than worried about their own competence. Teachers who are out to prove what great teachers they are don’t do well with Riley. Riley will stump even the most seasoned teachers. They aren’t going to get it perfect. This is what Riley is here to teach. She’s wired in a way which makes it impossible for her to conform to the old way of teaching. Even if she wants to! If you are going to be successful with her, you will need to stretch and grow. If you choose to expand, the rewards will be magnificant. You will experience euphoria. Much frustration along the way but oh the nirvana, when it clicks. And then it might not click the next time, and you have to accept that, and keep looking forward.
I was wondering if maybe giving her warning in advance would be effective. (like, this week we’ll work on bow holds, next week we’ll work on tuning, week after we’ll learn a new piece of music, etc.) Then maybe getting the actual feedback wouldn’t sting so much?
Advanced warning can work both ways. Sometimes warning just gives her time to ruminate! Picking one thing to work on, and only one thing to offer feedback about per lesson does sound like a good idea. It does not guarantee she won’t melt down over the feedback, but to limit it to one goal would be less threatening. She’s had lessons where she can’t get through a 20 second song without being corrected six times. Bow grip. Elbow. Placing of the fingers on the strings. Posture. Bow on string, etc. These tiny bits of feedback, were given in a loving and gentle way, but were still too much for Riley to process while attempting to play a piece.
What would work better is to have the teacher mirror her, and ask Riley to point out what the teacher is doing wrong. Make it a game. I correct you. You correct me. Make it light hearted. Go OVERBOARD with wrong posture. Be breezy. Music lessons tend to be so very serious.
Also, when does the anxiety bit kick in? Is it when she gets the instruction (move your fingers like this…), or if she doesn’t get that instruction quite right. Or is it more that she’s upset that she hasn’t been practising properly?
The anxiety bit is her baseline. If you were holding her hand, walking down the street, you would be surprised how often her body flinches over typical everyday sensory bombardment. Your hand would get squeezed out of fear, more than you can possibly imagine. This is Riley, keeping it together, minute by minute throughout her day. Now add the grave seriousness of music lessons. It’s “important.” Now add a processing delay, that gets forgotten about because she’s so darn smart. You give an instruction, and just as her brain starts to make the correction, you give another, and another and what you really need to do is just stop talking, and give her a minute to process the first thing. Have you ever had a lot of people talking to you all at once and you just want to tell them all to shut up! One at a time please? I imagine this is what too much rapid fire feedback is like for her. Only she can’t tell a grown up to shut up. What she can do is scream and hide under a table. I don’t think she is upset because she hasn’t practiced properly, I think she is just overwhelmed in general at her lessons. And she’s a perfectionist. A teacher can’t match Riley’s perfectionism with their own perfectionism. That will sink a lesson every time.
Also, you said that she experienced the same thing with learning the piano and then was able to pick up from watching you learn. Would it help if the teacher started showing you the same thing while she watched?
Yes. She would learn from watching me, if I were so inclined to learn the cello. I am frankly burned out from having to be at every single lesson of anything she has ever taken for the last ten years. This mom has never had the pleasure of cheerily dropping off her kid at cello, martial arts, clay class, gymnastics, dance, piano, a friend’s house, violin, Girls on the Run, any activity ever. I have to be there and I have to be “on.” If I have to take the lesson myself, it is hardly worth paying someone else to teach her.
So, the main things I would say are check your ego at the door. Use less words. Three compliments for every correction. Rediscover your own sense of joy, and share that part of you with your students.
Teachers are incredible people. I love when teachers want to learn. I love when they are interested and ask questions, and want suggestions. As painful as it is, I also respect when they admit they are in over their head. Riley’s cello teacher is a warm person, who is really used to teaching cello a certian way. I believe she could have been successful with Riley because her heart was in the right place and she had a lot of self-awareness. Her ego was not the problem. (She might have developed a twitch not being able to correct Riley’s bow hold!), but I know she could have done it.
The thing is, there is an excellent music therapy program we believe will suit Riley’s needs better, so that is our next move. I’ll be posting more about that later.
A final thought on teaching. It isn’t a downloading of knowledge from a wiser person to a less wise person. Think about the really good teachers you’ve had. What was happening? It felt fluid, didn’t it?
My friend Zoey makes jewelry out of “found words” in vintage books. She was delighted to discover the Sanskrit symbol for “teaching” is the same as the one for “learning.”
Teaching/learning.
Learning/teaching.
They are co-creative endeavors.
Michelle, great answers! I need to keep all three of your main points in mind as I homeschool Adam.
Not enough can be made of a teacher that seeks out these answers! Thank you for answering them!
Nae,
I need to keep all three of my points in mind too! Remind me.
Carrie,
You are right. Great questions from Liz.
Your answers may be specific to Riley, but I think the application is much wider.
Fantastic questions and amazingly insightful answers. I agree with Courtney; I think the answers/techniques CAN apply more broadly. The key is a willing teacher.
My husband always says about Nik “When the right teacher is ready to learn, Nik has much to teach him/her.” I think that’s true about all children.
Wow, what wonderful and thoughtful questions from a teacher, don’t we all wish that our children’s teachers would ask questions like these?!
Wonderful, Michelle. And wonderful Liz, too.
What a beautiful and insightful exchange. I so love the freedom of the Internet, and that we can all learn from each other in this way. Thank you so much for sharing this dialogue. My heart goes out to the teacher, as well, who clearly wants to engage fully with her students.
Wow! All teachers, regardless of who their students are, would benefit from reading this. I can hear Carrie quoting ET – “touch with gentle awareness.” Thanks, Michelle, for a great lesson.
I think ET also said,
“Phone home.”
Like Michelle said, what works for one child on the spectrum may not work for another. I have a different perspective. I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome when I was 7. Before that my parents and teachers already knew I was different from other kids. I am now about to finish my PhD in economics, at a very prestigious university.
I had a lot of trouble with school in elementary and middle school, because I was very frustrated by making mistakes but also very easily bored. I wanted challenging material but then I wanted to handle it perfectly. I still do, but I have learned better coping skills!
I resented teachers who turned things into games or gave me silly compliments. I felt like they were being patronizing. I am smart and I knew that I wasn’t getting the result I wanted, so the compliments seemed fake. Also, they just confused me. I didn’t know what to change! What helped me was very clear feedback.
I took horseback riding lessons and after I finished jumping a course, my instructor would have me stop, face her, and then she would say “these are the things you did correctly” and list them. Then she would say, “these are the things you need to change.” Then she would tell me what I had done and what I should do differently each time. Then she would remind me of what I should NOT change. Then she would pick one thing I should change the next time, and we would save the other things for later. The format was always the same. Telling me what I did wrong was ok because it was always matched with telling me what to change.
This worked so well that my parents asked my teachers and aide at school to use the same system. I liked it because it was predictable and also honest. By the time I was in high school I was able to “translate” what a teacher said into this format, even if the teacher said things differently. In college, I would go to office hours and ask those specific questions: tell me what I should do the same next time, and tell me what to change. It got harder when there weren’t always specific things to change.
Now that I do my own research, there isn’t always one right answer, and my professors don’t know it in advance either. But I can still use mostly the same way of learning. After every attempt to answer a question (for me, usually a “regression” or a type of mathematical calculation) I try to list the things that make sense and the things I should experiment with changing. And when I teach, I give the same feedback I like. I think my students like the predictability. I get good teaching reviews.
I am not criticizing Michelle’s answer about what works for her daughter. I am just adding what works for me, another person with Asperger’s Syndrome.
Thank you Nathalie. That is very helpful.
I LOVE that she asked.