(This is what we learned in beginning orchestra today.)
Today I visited our school’s beginning orchestra for the first time. There were 12 children: 10 violinists, 1 cellist, and 1 violist, all having had one lesson a week for the last two months. And in front stood our incredible orchestra teacher: a mother of 5 who is teaching these children as a volunteer, for the love of children and music. Can you imagine?!
I visited to lend a hand, to instruct and correct. You know what I realized? Just tuning 12 instruments alone by yourself can take a third of the class time! What an advantage it would be having two instructors there: one to teach, one to go around correcting and modeling correct posture, bow hold, etc.
We need some more violin-playing volunteers!
The best part of being there was seeing that the children were happy! There was a good feeling in the room. The children patiently waited as the others had their bow holds corrected. They worked hard. It’s not the same pace as private lessons, but what delight they had in being able to play their first song and begin learning “Twinkle, Twinkle!” I was so happy to see what they had accomplished!
Where there is not funding for music in the regular day-time instruction, the only way we can have instrumental instruction is to have extracurricular instruction. And the only way to keep it affordable is with the help of volunteers. What a gift volunteerism is!
I decided it would be helpful to create a page about violin bow holds and tuning as a parent resource. Go here to visit the new violin resource page!