Progress Out of Sequence

I've been thinking a lot lately about acknowledging progress with my students. The other day I was finding myself slightly frustrated with a student who was "still" not playing with a full tone. She has been studying with me for two years so I was starting to question whether or not I had been doing enough to address this issue, and wondering why I couldn't seem to get through to her on this topic. 

Then, it occurred to me how incredible this student's progress has been in almost every other way. When she started with me two years ago, she had played only at school for 1 1/2 years, struggled to play early book one pieces, and could barely read music. She's now playing book 3/4 level music, can shift consistently to third position, plays with a nice vibrato and excellent intonation, and can sight-read well for her level. This fall she auditioned for two groups outside of school orchestra and was accepted to both. So while her tone still needs improvement, almost every other aspect of her playing has improved exponentially.

I think it is easy as a teacher to see the step-by-step sequence of learning the violin (or any complex skill) as a straightforward sequence that must be taught in order, but I am continually reminded that not all students will learn exactly step-by-step in the order I have in mind. With this particular student, she almost overnight figured out how to read music after struggling for over a year, and as soon as she took off there she was so impatient to move forward and learn more pieces that it was pretty much impossible to hold her back to work on tone, and in retrospect I am glad I didn't. One of the groups she now plays in and loves would have been completely out of her reach if I hadn't let her advance in repertoire more quickly than I normally would and had forced her to sit on old pieces and perfect her tone production. Will she eventually have to dig in and work on her tone? Absolutely, but I think by then, she'll be ready and have the maturity to recognize the importance of playing with a bigger and better sound. Until then, I'll keep bringing it up, but also acknowledge all of the amazing progress she has made in other areas.