Summer School 2019: Helen Hienkins-Lewis

Helen Hienkins-Lewis

ESTA Report 2019

I am very grateful for the Nannie Jamieson Nutshell Bursary sponsored by Pirastro, which enabled me to attend the ESTA Summer School 2019.

My attendance at the Summer School has left me feeling inspired, refreshed with new ideas and rejuvenated as a violin teacher. It was a wonderful week to learn during workshops as well as to talk and share ideas with other string teachers during social time.

The Rolland Basics Upper Strings sessions with Joanne May were particularly inspiring. Whilst I use some Rolland techniques already in my teaching, I now have many more practical tools to draw on, ranging from new ways to introduce bow hold, left hand position, shifting, vibrato and movement whilst playing. I have already started using strategies suggested with students learning to shift position and will try out many of the beginner strategies with my new starters in September. I am taking Joanne’s advice in using and looking out for cheap tools to aid learning, such as toilet rolls for shadow bowing, plastic straws to check for any bow hold tension and pencils grippers for marking the bow balance point. I feel I now have a wider resource bank of ideas I would like to use, including giving verbal instructions once!

The Mark O’Connor sessions have given me time to reflect on incorporating a different approach to leading my beginner string group. In September I will be using some pieces from Mark’s orchestra book to introduce playing folk music, playing the tune or harmony lines as well as improvising skills. It was great that Maggie O’Connor gave a demonstration on how to “chop”, which I will definitely have my students learn and use.

Yoga for Musicians with Jane Fenton linked very well to the concepts of movement in the Rolland sessions as well as the injury prevention workshop with Sarah Upjohn. I enjoyed the focus on the spine in these sessions and it has made me reflect on how to use warm up and warm down activities more within my teaching, as well as ensuring my students are tension free and sitting correctly.

Getting the Best out of Pupils by Paul Harris gave a good insight into how the type of questions we use and the type of praise we give is so important. The power of the word “might” within questioning, as well as praising effort rather talent are a few of the may points that will be useful to incorporate in my teaching.

There is so much more I could say about the Summer School that was inspiring, but I would like to finish by thanking all at ESTA for making the week so enjoyable and varied.