Apprenticeship

You know how some days develop their own themes? Tuesday was one of those days for me. The theme for that day turned out to be apprenticeship.

I started my day with a speech session where my client is my apprentice in correcting an articulation error. This is one of the highlights of my week. I love this client and we always have a great time together and he is a wonderful apprentice.

I then watched a video that one of my families submitted to me. The father was giving his son his first “official” piano lesson. Wow was that a powerful video segment that showed great apprenticeship. How hard the son worked to do what his dad was showing/telling him. After learning about the black keys the dad sat at the piano and played a song that they made up the words for (it went to a familiar tune), and provided the son with a role in which he would be competent. They tried over and over until after about 5 minutes they were able to complete the whole song that was the greatest moment. I saw beaming smiling faces with true emotion sharing and a “high ten.” The apprenticeship was established. In that one shining moment at the end I saw competence (both father and son), emotion sharing, episodic memory and terrific non-verbal experience sharing. I am so looking forward to seeing this apprenticeship progress. I know it will be a great one!

I finished my day by meeting with another of my speech clients who is also my apprentice, but has also started a new apprentice role with his mom. They have started doing some home-schooling for part of his day. This has turned out to be a great experience for both mother and son and I love hearing about what they are discovering together. I am sure this will also be a great learning experience for all of us. I am excited to see how this develops as well.

Isn’t apprenticeship great? How else would we learn new things if we didn’t have masters to guide us. I’m looking forward to finding my next apprenticeship role.

Talk to you soon,
Erin