About Paule and Christie
Hello and welcome!
We are Paule (left) and Christie (right), the creators of Practice Notes. We, along with Christie’s daughter Manon, use our Practice Notes every week to make our music lessons and practice sessions more effective and more meaningful and we believe you can too.
Our Story
Does your child resist practicing or become easily frustrated during practicing? Does your student find it difficult to follow through on their practice assignments at home? Are you hesitant to talk to your teacher about what’s really happening during home practicing?
That was exactly our experience. It was a dreary February during Manon’s second year of violin lessons when practicing finally ground to a halt. Even though it quickly became clear that we weren’t making progress at home, it felt impossible to talk about. We were three hardworking partners -- teacher, student and parent -- yet discussions about practicing ended quickly in tears. After several difficult lessons in a row, we decided to start exploring ways to gather information to help us improve our communication around practicing.
We pooled our resources and experience, Paule as a passionate teacher and teacher-trainer and Christie as a journal designer and practitioner of reflective learning, to create a notebook guided by a simple set of journal prompts for taking notes during lessons AND during home practicing.
We focused on helping Manon (and ourselves, as it turns out!) become more observant during lessons and practices and more comfortable sharing her experiences. We worked on building trust between the three of us so that we could all feel comfortable having difficult discussions about issues like frustration, resistance, failure, and struggle. After all, they are such important and necessary parts of learning to play an instrument and growing as a person.
Our approach has evolved over time leading to many thoughtful discussions about subjects like how to repeat practice assignments at home, how to be on the same page using the same words with the same meanings, how to deal with frustration and roadblocks in ways that don’t derail an entire practice session, what to focus on during assignments and repetitions, and ultimately how to practice with purpose.
Now Manon just jumps right in with her difficulties and frustrations. They’re often the start of some of our best and most productive conversations. We’ve gone from frustration being something to hide to having it be the thing that moves us forward and gives us momentum. We celebrate every step forward because every challenge overcome is a reason to celebrate.
It doesn’t mean we don’t still encounter challenges. We do, but now we’re so much better at overcoming them and at working together, each of us contributing our unique skills and experience, to develop useful practice strategies.
Together, we know we can accomplish anything and it’s made possible through thoughtful note taking and follow up discussions. We created our notebooks and this website to share what we’ve learned on this amazing journey. You’ll find our notebooks in our shop and a growing collection of videos and blog posts to help you make the most of them. We’re also always happy to chat. Please feel free to drop us a line anytime with your questions and feedback.
Paule’s Bio
A native of Dunham, P.Q., Paule Barsalou holds a D.E.C. from the Conservatoire de Musique du Québec à Montréal, a B.A. in Music Performance from Laval University (P.Q.) and an M.A. in Performance and Suzuki Pedagogy from the Cleveland Institute of Music (OH). Her main teachers and mentors have been Michele Higa George, Daphne Hughes, David Cerone, Kathleen Winkler and Gyorgy Terebesi.
Paule has been teaching at the Suzuki String School of Guelph since 1989 and became the Artistic Director of the school in 2004. She is a Suzuki teacher trainer approved by the Suzuki Association of the Americas. She is a guest clinician at institutes and workshops throughout Canada and adjudicates at music festivals throughout Ontario. She is the principal second violin of the Guelph Symphony Orchestra. Paule is a former director of the Southwestern Ontario Suzuki Institute held every August at Wilfrid Laurier University in Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario which she led from 1996 to 2009. She lives in Guelph with her husband, pianist Ken Gee.
Christie’s Bio
Christie Zimmer earned a Bachelor of Commerce from McMaster University and a law degree from Western University. She has worked as a lawyer, a newspaper columnist, an artist and, since 2011, as a designer and consultant specializing in guided journaling and purposeful reflection.
In addition to creating and selling guided journals to journalers in North America, Europe and Australia, she has given workshops and created workbooks in guided reflection and goal setting for a variety of audiences and purposes. Her consulting work includes customized Journal Day presentations for high school students, reflective goal setting workshops with staff at TD Bank in Toronto, the creation of reflective learning worksheets for the BioPath Professional Development Program at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and the creation of a reflective workbook to complement the curriculum of the P.A.R.T.Y. risk prevention program for youth at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Christie lives in Guelph, Ontario with her husband and two daughters, where she is a Suzuki violin parent to her daughter, Manon.