Learning Together

When my mother stays at my house, I sometimes wake up to music while she practices the piano. During her last visit my son Tommy taught her how to add ornaments to Bach's "G Minor Minuet," a piece they both play. As a child Mom spent hours at the piano, eagerly wanting to learn. She never had the opportunity to have piano lessons as a child, though. In the early 1970's while she was living in Bogota, Columbia, a friend introduced her to the Suzuki Method. Suzuki believed that if parents first took lessons and practiced before their children, they would be better prepared to help and motivate their children to play. She began lessons, hoping to learn herself while giving her children the music instruction she had dreamed of as a child. She practiced her way through Suzuki Piano Book One, also practicing with my older brother Jason when he began lessons, until they moved to San Antonio, Texas, where there were no Suzuki Piano teachers.

Mom had five children and little time for practicing on her own after she finally found a new Suzuki teacher years later. We all began to take lessons and she practiced with my younger siblings but no longer took lessons herself.

Having children that play the piano did not completely satisfy my mother. Three years ago, when she began homeschooling my niece, they both began Suzuki piano lessons. I have watched her practice, struggle, and persist. Learning a new skill, never easy, becomes harder as we age, but she has committed to take lessons for ten years. Through her example, I learn a lot.

Too often we give children the impression that learning is childish, merely preparation for life. How can we show them that it is really a continual process that offers joy and fulfillment? By modeling our message.

My mother loves giving advice to parents who are helping their children learn to read. She begins by asking, "What is the most important thing you can do to help your child with reading?"

"Read to them" is the usual answer.

"Wrong!" she triumphantly answers, "You need to read yourself."

For our children to have enthusiasm for learning, they need more than the trappings of an enriching environment. They need to have a zeal for education genuinely exhibited and communicated by their parents. As Margaret McFarland said, "Attitudes aren't taught. They're caught." I want my children to catch a positive attitude about education. Here, as in other things, pretense and hypocrisy will fail. They will only reinforce the notion that learning is like an immunization--children need frequent shots, adults need an occasional booster, and no one likes it.

Learning, studying, and even doing assignments along with children benefits the entire family. Children become motivated and see examples of learning in progress, parents gain empathy and learn to see their children as teachers, and everyone has a shared educational experience.

Shinichi Suzuki said, "creating desire in your child's heart is the parent's duty." He said that we do this through the environment, of which the parent is a vital part. Young children naturally want to do the things they see their parents do. I see this in my 16-month-old daughter, Helena. Nearly every day of her life, she has seen me write in my planner and my journal. Now she wants both my favorite pen and my planner or journal every time I use them. No diversion seems to quench her enthusiasm, so I am constantly deciding whether I want to endure a tantrum or risk getting ink marks everywhere. Right now my desire for quiet is winning more often, so the pages of my journal, planner, and Helena's and my clothes are full of scribbles. I have been instrumental in creating this desire in her heart even though I wish I hadn't. As parents, we can capitalize on this natural motivation to help children catch a love of learning.

It seems obvious that the perfect parent setting the perfect example would create the perfect situation for children to learn. But it's false. I think the greatest example we can set for our children is to be imperfect but continually trying to improve. If they only see us doing things we are already capable of doing well, they may never understand that no one begins as an expert. Often, when I check my children's math, I don't use the answer key but work the problems myself. My kids love it when I make a mistake. I think it takes the pressure off of them to always perform perfectly. When I practice pieces on the piano, my children can see that I play wrong notes or poor rhythms, and sometimes I have to practice a spot repeatedly until it becomes easy, just like they do. In the writing class we have over the phone, my mom has been doing the papers, too. I have see the benefits and now do at least some of the writing assignments I give myself. When we read our papers to each other, I like to point out areas where I think I could improve. My daughters and nieces get ideas of how to improve their writing without feeling like their efforts are being criticized.

Sometimes when I practice piano with one of my children, I wonder why they can't just play the right notes the first time. Later that day, as I feel frustrated at my own inability to get my fingers to play the right chord even though I know which keys should be played, I regain the ability to empathize with them. Learning, while always rewarding, rarely comes easily. For the Shakespeare class I taught this fall, I asked all my students to write an original sonnet, a task I considered straightforward at the time. However, when I decided to compose one myself, I understood the effort required and gained appreciation for Shakespeare's genius when my results seemed rudimentary and awkward compared to his.

I have also learned to see my children as teacher, another commitment in Chick Moorman's The 10 Commitments. This blog entry is the result of a few weeks of effort, and I have relied on my daughter Karina's help to take it from a jumbled mess of words into a somewhat organized progression of thought. When I see myself as a fellow student, I find that the other students can teach me just as much as I can teach them.

More than anything else, though, the process of learning together makes education a shared experience. A few months ago my son Tommy prepared a report on John James Audubon for Grandma's history class. I found books at the library, and we all read them along with him. When I saw a book with selections from Audubon's Birds of America at Costco, I knew it was the perfect present. A few weeks later when we stumbled upon the small Audubon House and Art Gallery in Key West, Florida, our whole family was excited to find out more about our new interest. Because we all learn together, my family is creating a unique culture of education and interests.

When she began playing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star Variations" on the piano almost 30 years ago, I think my mother wanted to give her children the opportunity to play music, something she also wanted for herself. Even though at this point her slow progress has driven her to the point of quitting several times, I hope she realizes that the music she creates in her mind motivates, teaches, and enriches her children and grandchildren, making our family culture vibrant, and the pieces her fingers haltingly play are masterpieces as a result.