Violin instructor teaches children with autism and special needs

   “It’s not what life has to offer us; It is, rather what we have to offer life.” – Viktor Frankl, psychologist, author, Holocaust survivor.
 Weiser resident Michelle Cannon and her husband, Dale, never saw it coming.
 With a shared love for the violin, they set out to further their careers instructing students under the auspices of their own non-profit, but they didn’t count on where that would lead them.
 In 2005, the pair left Idaho for North Carolina where Michelle ultimately earned her master’s in violin performance and pedagogue. She soon discovered her own children, Joshua, now 19, and Shea, 17, who both have autism, responded to music.
That’s when Michelle and Dale realized the direction they wanted to take with their organization, and their lives.
 Now living in Weiser, the pair run their non-profit Community Suzuki Music School, where they teach all students, of all abilities, but specialize in instructing children with autism and other special needs.
 “It all started when I was in grad school at East Carolina University,” explained Michelle, who earned her undergraduate degree at Boise State University. “Two of our kids were diagnosed with a severe form of autism. I was playing my violin at home, practicing six hours a day, and my son would coddle up to me, sit down and be quiet.
 “He would run around and just scream or yell, not because he was in pain or upset, he just screamed, but he wouldn’t when I was playing. He would be calm, and sway to the music, and my husband and I thought that if music was doing this for him, what could it do for other kids.”
 It inspired her to enroll in a PhD program through the University of North Carolina Greensboro where she studied, in part, the neuroscience of autism and how music affects the brain.
 “I wanted to know why music had this effect on people with autism, so I was able to do research a little bit outside of music, and that was really cool,” Michelle said. “When we left in 2005, it was just going to be for a couple of years and then we were going to go right back to Idaho, but we stayed until last year when we moved back to Weiser, during the Pandemic.”
 The Cannons spent the last year caring for Michelle’s elderly parents and trying to keep their family, which has ample medical challenges to start with, healthy and alive.
 Now that COVID is seemingly burning out, they have just recently restarted in-person instruction, but also continue to offer online lessons, many of their students in North Carolina remaining loyal to the school from 2,500 miles away.
The School
 The Community Suzuki Music School is based on a method of instruction developed by the late Dr. Shinichi Suzuki in Japan, following the aftermath of World War II.
 The Suzuki Method is based on the principle that all children possess ability, which can be developed and enhanced through a nurturing environment, according to the school’s website.
 “Following World War II, Dr. Shinichi Suzuki observed that most children learn to speak their own language with relative ease,” the website states. “He believed that if the same natural learning process was applied to teaching other skills, such as music, these skills may be acquired just as successfully. Suzuki referred to the process as the Mother Tongue Method and to the whole system of pedagogy as Talent Education.
 Pedagogy is defined, in brief terms, as the art, science, and/or the approach to teaching and delivering instruction.
 “We have found that many children with special needs gravitate toward something like playing the violin, and I think creating the environment helps a lot,” Michelle said. “From personal experience, you put your child in school and it’s, ‘Oh, they can’t do this, they can’t do that, we need to put this intervention or that intervention in,’ and your child’s doing this wrong and he’s doing that wrong,’ and that’s what special needs parents get.
 “But when people come to violin lessons with us, there isn’t an agenda or developmental scale they have to follow. The child comes to us and it’s, ‘Oh, that’s amazing, you held a bow today!’ and ‘Oh, you made a sound on your violin!’ and the child feels accomplished and then you build on that. Each little step is a huge celebration of accomplishment.”
 The Cannons have recently acquainted themselves with Bee Tree Folk School owners Dennis and Sandra Cooper, and are currently discussing a proposed fiddle clinic that could potentially be called “Family Fiddle.”
 “Our non-profit has 30 little violins, and we would have people just drop in and learn the fiddle,” Michelle said. “It would run off of donations, so if someone couldn’t afford to come to Family Fiddle, they could come and we would have an instrument for them, and if they couldn’t afford to make a donation, great. It would be just a community, open activity. This has all been such a great joy!”
 The Cannons charge $25 per half-hour session, or $50 for an hour, which is economical compared to what it costs for private lessons in other areas.
 For more information, visit www.communitysuzuki.org, call (208) 550-9740, or email either Michelle or Dale at mlchinncannon@communitysuzuki.org, or dalecannon@communitysuzuki.org.