TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

As a music educator, Tee seeks to work with her students and their parents to create a musical environment for her students that encourage the lifelong love of music. Tee believes in cultivating a positive learning attitude as well as curious mind in her students, aspiring to constantly challenge and motivate her students. Learning music is also made more enjoyable through creative activities and learning methods.

Beyond creating delightful lessons and a supportive environment, Tee cultivates discipline in her students such that they are driven to achieve excellence through regular practice. Her efficient practice routines, along with strict violin techniques, provide students with the tools and skills needed to meet the challenges of a wide range of violin repertoire.  

For Tee, music is not a goal in itself. Instead, she believes that music education helps build character, elevate self-esteem and confidence, as well as cultivates discipline and eagerness for excellence. She guides her students to cultivate effective practice habits and techniques well as become independent learners from a young age. Her guidance enables her students to become their own teachers as well as recognize progress in their own playing.

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Tee’s violin pedagogy has been highly influenced by her wonderful teachers and mentors Dr. Jonathan Swartz, Mr Andres Cardenes, Mr Foo Say Ming and Dr. Margaret Schmidt. She has also learnt from music educators such as Mimi Zweig, Brenda Brenner, Sherry Sinift and Rebecca Henry from the Violin Teacher’s Retreat at Indiana University and Paul Rolland String Pedagogy Conference. Tee has also received Suzuki teacher training with Mr William Starr, former President of Suzuki Association of Americas.

Tee’s teaching approach is also shaped by her teaching experiences as well as in-depth exploration of other pedagogy and music education methods. Recognizing that every student blossoms in a unique way and possesses distinct learning styles, interests and strengths, Tee organized her pedagogy into a doctoral research paper “Violin Curriculum Incorporating Visual, Aural and Kinesthetic Perceptual Learning Modalities”. Tee believes that weaker modalities in students cannot be neglected and needs to be strengthened through modality strengths to prevent a child’s violin learning from stagnating in future.

Tee’s violin pedagogy encourages holistic violin learning, which includes aspects such as balance and movement, violin technique, practice skills, Kodály rhythmic syllables, solfege, musicianship, creativity and performance techniques. Through her experiences as well as research, Tee also uses well-crafted progressions for learning rhythms, notation, repertoire, and violin technique, in her teaching, which has worked exceptionally well with all her students. Tee also focuses on building a strong technical foundation for her students to facilitate their musical expression.