What a vegan cookbook and music teaching have in common…
Making ourselves superfluous as teachers.
I love to cook from scratch–in grad school, you could count on me to show up to a studio gathering or weekend party with a freshly baked dessert or appetizer. I even catered two of my degree recitals! (Never again, though. That’s too much multitasking!)
However, I’ve never felt that confident cooking without a recipe and often struggle with meal planning. That’s why I was excited to pick up my copy of Nisha Vora’s Big Vegan Flavor at my local bookstore last week. This cookbook is huge (over six-hundred pages long!) and is essentially a masterclass in basic techniques, maximizing flavor, and creating the building blocks for your own recipes and meal combinations.
As I was reading and highlighting my way through the first chapters, I realized that Nisha and I have similar philosophies when it comes to sharing knowledge.
One of my primary goals as a violin teacher is to make me superfluous. I want to help my students become self-sufficient and their best self-teacher during the week between lessons or when they eventually leave the studio.
That’s where metacognitive and cognitive strategies come into play.
Cognitive strategies are the techniques and approaches that we use to solve problems. These are the everyday practice strategies we use to improve our technique and master tricky passagework. (Our cooking techniques, if you will.)
When we use metacognitive strategies, we’re thinking about our thought processes. They help us analyze problems and determine which cognitive strategies would be most effective to use. We can also use metacognitive strategies for self-reflection, evaluation, goal-setting, and long-term retention. (If we continue our cooking metaphor, these are the strategies that help us decide how we want to cook an ingredient and combine it with other components to best suit a dish or weekly meal plan.)
When we incorporate both cognitive and metacognitive strategies into music lessons, we facilitate self-regulated learning. We’re not only equipping students with tools to solve problems; we’re helping them understand how to analyze the problems in front of them and apply their learning processes to any scenario.
Today’s musicians recognize the importance of having a repertoire of practice strategies. There are so many great resources available, including the Bulletproof Musician blog and a new book by Molly Gebrian on the neuroscience of practicing that I’m eager to dive into. But I’m less certain that we’re teaching musicians how to think and effectively analyze problems in the first place.
The good news is that it’s pretty easy to fix that using metacognitive and other self-regulated learning strategies. They are simple to incorporate into the music studio and practice room (if you keep a practice journal or set process goals, you’re already experienced at using some metacognitive strategies!). Plus, I think they make the learning process more collaborative between teacher and student.
While I will have to get back to you on my cooking journey, stay tuned for more on metacognitive strategies and working with students next week!
If this is the first time we’re meeting virtually, hello! My name is Erika, and I’m a violinist, teacher, and certified Franklin Method Educator. My mission is to rethink traditional teaching approaches to help musicians play with confidence and ease. If this resonates with you, here’s how you can connect with me:
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