One comment I get occasionally from a few of my neurospicy students is “I’m sorry you have to put up with me”
And it breaks my heart a bit every time. Honey, who told you that just because your brain works differently, you are someone to be “put up with”??? You are not a defective cog in an educational machine, my dear. You are a richly unique individual who is fully deserving of your teacher’s time and attention and effort
I’ve been working on a response for the next time a student says this to me, and I think I may go with a video game analogy (because practically all of my neurospicy kiddos also love video games)
The thing that is fun for me in teaching isn’t regurgitating the same technique for the same music endlessly for years. It’s meeting each individual where they are. And some students focus well in lessons, and it’s like playing a video game on medium difficulty
But when I have a student whose mind is working 1 million miles per second and forgets to pay attention to their body because they’re so invested in the thought they just thought, or the thing they just noticed, that’s playing on hard mode
And I don’t know many dedicated gamers who make it their life goal to avoid hard mode. The challenge is what makes it worthwhile
So yeah, student, you may be a challenge for me, but I hope you can believe that that’s a GOOD thing, that you’re the reason I want to keep teaching. You should never have to apologize for the way your mind works or for the way you learn
By the way, there is no such thing as an easy mode for violin teaching, lol. Humans are gonna human, every time, and every student is at *least* medium difficulty mode 😂