Book Report: Mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck

I read a lot of books on psychology, specifically educational psychology. One really great book I'd like to share is Mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck. I was first introduced to Dr. Dweck's work a number of years ago at a Suzuki conference where she gave the keynote speech. Her presentation showcased her fascinating work and findings, many of which have stuck with me, most particularly because I felt I had experienced my own mindset shift during that same year. I hadn't realized I had undergone a mindset shift until it was defined and I learned about her work. I later read her book, which delves into much of this same research but in a much more approachable writing style. I highly encourage you to read this book - I have two copies to share - but hopefully this 'book report', if you will, gives you an idea of Dr. Dweck's fascinating research.

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The basic premise of Dr. Dweck’s book is fairly simple: the attitudes and beliefs with which people view themselves guides a large part of their lives. These beliefs strongly affect interactions with other people as well as how successful people are in school, work as well as other domains.

“Our mindset is not a minor personality quirk. It creates our whole mental world.  It explains how we become optimistic or pessimistic.  It shapes our goals, our attitude toward work and relationships, and how we raise our kids, ultimately predicting whether or not we will fulfill our potential.”—Dr. Carol Dweck

People either exercise a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. Those with a fixed mindset believe their talents and abilities cannot be improved through any means. They believe they are born with a certain amount of talent and do not wish to challenge their abilities or push themselves beyond their capabilities due to the possibility of failure. Individuals with a fixed mindset frequently guard themselves against situations in which they feel they need to prove their personal worth. Challenges are frequently viewed negatively, instead of as an opportunity for personal growth and people with a fixed mindset often feel the need to prove themselves. Lastly, people with a fixed mindset believe if you have an ability, then learning isn't necessary, that ability should show up without any effort at all or there is no ability.

People who practice (and practice is a key word here) a growth mindset believe abilities can be cultivated and improved through effort, hard work and persistence. When presented with an obstacle, those practicing a growth mindset tend to rise to the challenge. Often, people of the growth mindset do not fear failure; instead, they view it as a chance to improve themselves. Growth mindset people have a love of learning as a result of the belief that abilities are developed, not inherent.

Ability vs. Accomplishment - Mindsets in Education

"Musical ability is not an inborn talent but an ability which can be developed. Any child who is properly trained can develop musical ability just as all children develop the ability to speak their mother tongue. The potential of every child is unlimited."  —Shinichi Suzuki

In a school setting, a fixed mindset limits achievement and leads to inferior learning practices, such as cheating. However, achievements take clear focus, effort and many learning strategies.

PRAISE and the problem with it

Sometimes, by praising children, we diminish them. Praise should be given to effort and persistence rather than intelligence or talent. For example, if a child worked hard on learning a passage in a piece of music, then the hard work and effort must be recognized. However, if another child completed an assignment little effort and achieved the expected results, assign a more difficult task rather than praising him.

The growth mindset in education focuses on expanding the students' knowledge and ways of thinking and investigating the world as well as instilling a lifetime love of learning. Grades are not seen as an end in themselves, but as a means to grow. Grades don’t define the student but offer the opportunity to make an effort, learn and grow. The best thing we can do as teachers is teach children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes and enjoy effort and learning.

Every word or action sends a message of judgement and fixed traits or development. Dweck encourages giving praise from a growth mindset, praise that acknowledges hard work, achievements and effort, not intelligence or ability. In addition, when mistakes happen, feedback that helps fix the mistake is more constructive than judgements or excuses. Dweck's findings found that lowering standards for low-achieving students does not help. Rather, presenting tasks in with a growth mindset and offering feedback is more effective.

“Praise should deal, not with the child's personality attributes, but with his efforts and achievements.”—Haim Ginott

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Though education is the most interesting facet of this research, I also found the research in sports and in the workplace very interesting. I've included a few tidbits from virg 

Sports Findings

Finding #1: “Those with the growth mindset found success in doing their best, in learning and improving. And this is exactly what we find in champions” (98).

Finding #2: “Those with the growth mindset found setbacks motivating. They’re informative. They’re a wake-up call” (99).

Finding #3: “People with the growth mindset in sports took charge of the processes that brings success - and that maintain it” (101).

Business & Leadership and its Environment

A growth-mindset environment involves:

• Presenting skills as learnable
• Conveying that the organization values learning and perseverance, not ready-made talent and genius
• Giving feedback that promotes learning and future successes
• Presenting managers as resources for learning
• Fostering alternative ideas and constructive criticism - independent thinkers AND team players.

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The implications of Dr. Dweck's work on music education and general education are profound! Even simply changing our language, we can help shape a child's mindset. This book report only covers a tiny bit of the intriguing information Dr. Dweck covers in her book. Her website offers a wealth of information beyond the book.

One of my goals as a teacher is to instill a love of learning as well as challenge students with opportunities to help them grow and develop their ability. Just as Dr. Suzuki repeated over and over again, the potential of every child is unlimited, we just have to help them and give them the tools to grow talent and ability.

Reading Music, part 4 - The Next Level of Rhythm

Now that you know all the basic symbols for rhythm, we have to organize all those symbols in a meaningful way.  

But first, let's review what the beat is and how to find it. The beat is the steady rhythm of music, just like your heartbeat. If you can match your heartbeat by tapping to it, you can match the beat of any piece of music.

From here, we organize rhythm on the staff. Bar lines divide the staff into equal sections, or measures. Measures may also be referred to as bars. A double bar line denotes the end of the piece. 

The lines make reading music easier as they divide up the all information on the page into smaller sections.  

Each measure will contain a specified number of beats. This amount is specified at the beginning of the music, after the clef symbol, in the time signature. The time signature looks like a fraction symbol at the beginning of the music. It's not a fraction! Please remember this or it will totally confuse you!

A time signature defines the amount and type of notes that each measure contains. There are a variety of different time signatures and each one specifies a different amount of beats for the measure.

4/4 is perhaps the most common so I will use it as an example. 

In the time signature, the top number represents how many beats are in one measure. Not notes, but beats. So in 4/4, there will be 4 beats. A single measure can contain one note, a whole note, but that whole notes equals 4 beats. There are infinite measure combinations to reach 4 beats but the key fact is that the measure will contain 4 beats. 

The bottom numbers defines which type of note equals one beat. When you are tapping the beat in a 4/4 time signature, you are tapping a quarter note. 

If the bottom note is a 2, the beats equals a half note; it it's an 8, eighth note. But don't worry about time signatures with 8 as the bottom number - they are slightly more complicated and make more sense once you and your child get the hang of time signatures and how it relates to rhythm and the beat. 

Just for fun, there are various types of time signatures and a single piece may have different time signatures. In other words, the time signature may change at any point in a piece. A piece may start in 4/4 but can change to 2/4 or 3/4 at any point. 

The various types of time signatures are: 

simple: 3
4 or 4
4


compound: 9
8 or 12
8

complex: 5
4 or 7
8

mixed: 5
8 & 3
8 or 6
8 & 3
4

additive: 3+2+3
8

fractional: 2½
4

irrational: 3
10 or 5
24


But keep in mind, you and your child will only really encounter simple and compound meters. And the compound meter doesn't even show in the Suzuki literature until Book 2. So don't worry about the others - I just find it neat to see all the different (crazy!) time signatures! 

Last music reading post, I outlined a number of different rhythmic values and their symbols. However, what I left out was dotted rhythms. These notes look similar to half notes, quarter notes, whole notes, eighth notes, etc., however, they have a dot attached.

This dot does impact the duration of the note. It involves a bit of math to figure out but here's how:

Add half the value of the note, to the note. For a dotted half note, you take the half note (2 beats) divide it in half (which equals 1 beat) and add that back to the half note, for a total of 3 beats.

This same rule applies to every note that is dotted. Take, for instance, a dotted quarter note:

Half of a quarter note is 1/2 a beat, or 1 eighth note. 1 quarter note plus 1 eighth note equals 1 and 1/2 beats. 

Typically, we see a dotted quarter note immediately followed by another eighth note, which equals 2 full beats.

We see this in May Song and The Happy Farmer. Look for these there! 

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This is by no means a complete list of everything music reading related. There are many more dotted rhythms and time signatures, rhythms and rests. But these are the basics to get you started with music reading. These things are also a starting point to build on as you and your child learn more about the symbols and reading music. Also, this works so much better when you actually put it into practice and do it versus reading it on a blog. :)

Happy Spring Break!

I hope everyone has a wonderful and relaxing spring break. For those who are traveling, have a safe trip!

Looking forward to seeing everyone back and refreshed next week!

How to Practice: Setting Goals vs. Time

One of the most-often asked questions I get as a teacher is "how long should my child be practicing?"

This is a completely reasonable question but it's not so easy to answer. There's not a concrete answer, no black-and-white time limit each student should adhere to.

Many of my students have seen this graph in my studio:

While this does give a lot of information on the effect of length of practice on progress, it doesn't quite tell the whole story. Duration and frequency of practice is important and there certainly is a relationship between practice duration, practice frequency and progress. But duration and frequency are not the only aspects that determine progress and success in learning a musical instrument. 

First off, how do you define progress? I try to de-emphasize the notion that progress is simply moving through the books and learning the next piece. First, progress looks differently for every kid. Also, progress in learning a musical instrument involves much outside of learning the next piece in the book. Progress for me means a number of different things. Progress means:

• deeply, very deeply, learning skills
• the ability to transfer current knowledge and skills to new domains
• learning how to figure things out on your own with limited outside help
• one day not needing me as a teacher (yes, I am essentially trying to put myself out of a job)

Progress is an overall increase in the educational well-being of the student and helping develop the student into a well-rounded musician and human being. 

Progress does not only mean learning the next piece and then the one after that. 

Looking closely at the graph, it indicates that a student who practices two hours a day will learn 2 books a year. In my experience, Book 1 takes the longest for most students to finish. It's the foundation book and I like for students to take 2 years to complete Book 1. That way all those foundation skills and techniques are rock solid and building on those skills won't result in a total collapse or frustration. To list them all would take quite a while, but they include: 

• focus
• singing
• hearing pitch
• holding the cello properly
• holding the bow
• using the bow correctly on the cello
• playing with a good tone
• playing in tune
• adjusting when out of tune
• playing on all four strings
• playing with different finger patterns
• staccato, legato, marcato, 
• preliminary shifting exercises
• fingerboard geography
• note reading
• tuning the instrument
• playing with others, etc.

WHEW. That's a lot of skills. And that doesn't even come close to covering them all. Book 1 takes time. Yes, it's tedious and Twinkle is borderline painful because it takes a long time but your child will greatly benefit from fastidious development of knowledge and skills. It's hard to see it in the moment but just know there is light at the end of the Twinkle tunnel. 

As for learning two books a year with 2 hours of practice, sure, it's possible. But there are lots of other things that students need to learn outside of the Suzuki repertoire that will take time away from strictly getting through the books. For example, there are several pieces and technique books outside of the Suzuki repertoire I incorporate in my curriculum to develop well-rounded and artistic musicians. 

The Suzuki books are great but solely focusing on achieving completion of those books is akin to trying to become a well-rounded chef by only cooking through one series or one style of cookbooks. There is more knowledge that needs to be learned from other sources. Yes, this takes more time but it's worth it for the development of well-rounded musicians and accomplished learners. 

Also, many students start between the ages of 3-6. Can you really get a 3 year-old to practice for 2 hours? Nope. How about a 6 year-old? Probably not. Not only is it hard to get a little one to focus and pay attention for long periods of time, they simply do not have the physical endurance to withstand long practice sessions. It ain't gonna happen. That isn't to say a highly dedicated 7 year-old can't devote 2 hours daily to practice but I think that delves into other issues I'd rather not get into here. I believe kids should be kids. Enough said. 

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If practice isn't determined by a set time limit, than what should it be determined by?

Goals. More specifically, the setting and achievement of specific goals within a given practice session. This may take more time at first but practicing without setting a goal is a lot like getting into your car without a destination in mind. You end up driving around in circles for a long time before (maybe) arriving where you want to be. And you waste a lot of time. I'm not about wasting time. 

Practice, lessons and rehearsals are made up of many, many aspects. But what we need to do as teachers and parents is help break everything down into the smallest unit of learning, identify accomplishable goals and set up students to accomplish those goals.  

Set achievable goal and accomplish that goal. Don't mindlessly play through everything without a goal in mind for each piece. Even if the goal is to review, make the goal 'review with a good bow hold' or 'play review pieces with the best sound possible'. And remind your child about the goal or point before they play each piece. This will bring a very different focus to the practice and also results in less frequent messy repetitions of the pieces. Every messy or sloppy performance is a reinforcement of that skill. Please avoid this! We don't want to reinforce poor cello playing!

Here's a few examples of clearly defined practice goals:

• Practice the preview spot in Song of the Wind 10 plucked times or until it looks easy for the fingers, with clear, ringy notes every time.
• Practice the shift in Minuet No. 2 12 times with a moving thumb and in-tune G#. 
• Practice the 3rd section of Perpetual Motion until it feels easy and effortless before playing the whole song. Then add it to the rest of the song. 
• Practice the bowing in line 1 of Minuet in C 6 times, in a row. If there is a mistake in one, add an additional repetition, making it 7, etc. 
• Play Mississippi Stop Stop Twinkle for good, clean 'stops' on every Mississippi Stop Stop. 
• Practice X piece until it feels easy, not until it's correct. 

My goal for every practice is to make any given skill easy rather than getting it right. Getting it right once does not mean the skill is learned. However, practicing something for ease automatically ensures it will be correct and repeatedly correct because it's effortless to execute.  

If you achieve your predetermined practice goals in 12 minutes rather than the 30 minute you budgeted for practice, fantastic! Go read a book for the remaining 18 minutes. Or practice more! Set another goal and achieve it! You and your child will find this practice much more motivating than playing through everything. The goal was determined and was met - that's a pretty exciting thing! And it makes students want to come back for more because it's such a positive and rewarding experience, much more so than just playing through Allegretto mindlessly thinking about what's for dinner. 

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Next time you pull out the cello to practice with your child, work with your child to determine accomplishable goals at the start of practice or before you start something new during the practice. 

Start small. Start with something achievable in a short amount of time - think 90 seconds to 4 minutes maximum. Yup, that short. Don't bite off more than you both can chew. Setting the goal to learn all of Etude when you only have the first 4 notes is setting yourselves both up for failure and disappointment. 

Celebrate! Praise your child (and yourself!) on achieving the pre-determined goals. 

Happy (goal directed) practicing!

Reading Music, part 3 - The Basics of Rhythm

A few posts ago, I discussed the basics of reading pitch and how to read pitch. The other component to music reading is rhythm. Without rhythm, our music would sound like a robot talking rather than natural human speech.

First step to learning about rhythm and more specifically, how to read rhythm is to find the beat of any piece of music. The beat is the steady rhythm of music, just like your heartbeat. If you can match your heartbeat by tapping to it, you can match the beat of any piece of music.

However, this does take concentration and if you get distracted, you will likely lose the beat. Keep track of it - the beat is the most basic element of rhythm and you'll need it to organize everything rhythm-related around it.

Take Twinkle,  Twinkle Little Star for example - can you tap the steady beat? Not the rhythm, but the ever persistent, never stopping beat. If you are familiar with a metronome, a metronome provides a steady, constant beat.

Rhythm is the organized pattern of sound. It's related to the beat in that we organize rhythm around our beat. It does not matter how fast or slow the beat is, we can still organize our rhythm around this basic element.

Once we can find the beat and identify the different between the rhythm and the beat, we discuss how all this looks on the page. How do we know how long to hold a note?

There are symbols with different note values that tell us how long (or short) to hold a note. The duration is always based on the established beat.

But first, here are the basics of the symbols we use to indicate how long or short to hold a note. How long or short the note is to be played is based on it's appearance.

Every note is made of a note head and a stem. Sometimes, there is also a flag.

Each of these things, the presence or absence, will impact the duration of the note. 

The chart below tells is a great quick reference to the symbol, it's name and how many beats it is assigned. 

However, more often than not, we see eighth notes and sixteenth notes in groups of two or more. Those symbols look slightly different only in that the flags are then connected together to create beams across multiples. Instead, they look like this:

This just makes reading a sequence of eighth notes easier to read. 

The next image is a note hierarchy which indicates how the durations of notes are related to others. At the top is a whole note. A half note is half the duration of a whole note, so a whole note is as long as two half notes. Likewise, a half note is as long as two quarter notes. A quarter note is as long as two eighth notes, and an eighth note is as long as two sixteenth notes, so on and so forth. 

Now these symbols are used for pitches and indicate the duration of the pitch. There is a different (yet very similar) set of symbols used to indicate the duration of silence in music. We call silence in music a 'rest'. There is a symbol with equivalent values to corresponding note duration to indicate silence. Therefore, there is a whole rest, half rest, quarter rest, etc., just like the notes. Just like our note head and stems, rests can have flags, too, that indicate shorter and shorter rest duration. 

See the below chart for note values and their corresponding rests.

Just like we count to hold the duration of a note, we count to hold a duration of rests. Please try to not blow through the rests and ignore them! The silence in music is just as important as the sound! 

There are a few other items related to rhythm, but I'll cover that in another post. Again, these are the basics to get you started. The other items I leave until later to introduce to students until they have a firm grasp on the basic concepts of rhythm. 

Stay tuned! Part 4 will cover: bar line and measures (how we organize music), time signatures & dotted rhythms.