As a fellow for the California Music Project, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to work with Ms. Shelley MacAllister and her beginning strings program at Trace Elementary.

Teaching young children has always seemed to be a daunting task, because they are always very energetic. The opportunity I was given to work at Trace has allowed me to discover, that the energy can be channeled towards learning music, making them the perfect students. They are very enthusiastic towards learning music. And with this enthusiasm, many students share with me the many ways of how they practice without their instrument, since they can't practice loudly at home.

A couple weeks ago, there was a student who described how he practiced singing his pitches while fingering his notes, because his violin was not tuned and didn't know how to tune the strings. In many ways, I feel that the students have taught me how to teach by sharing their learning experiences with me. This hands-on experience of teaching music has been fantastic.

~Yu-Ting Wang