Merri Scott and Gary Scott: Radio Shows 2022 “Teachers Lifetime Achievement Award”: Madeline’s Monthly Article & Musical Tips Blog & Radio Show for April 2022
Our blog/article and Radio Show features our Radio Show’s 2022 “Teachers’ Lifetime Achievement Award” winners, Merri Scott and Gary Scott. They leave lasting legacies to generations of students they have inspired, motivated and encouraged for successful futures. Included is an article on the lifesaving benefits of listening to baroque music in the background while radiologists analyze patients scans and images.
Playing Baroque music in the background in classrooms, in the hallways and on school buses to and from school helps students to relax, allowing them to concentrate and do a better job on their work.
Many of the world’s economists, linguists, teachers, researchers, writers, authors, scientists, doctors, engineers, mathematicians, chemists, and others have studied and played musical instruments since they were children. These eminent individuals have integrated music into their thinking process.
Our article of the month for April 2022 is “10,000 Steps for Soup” by Madeline Frank, Ph.D.
Our Radio Show’s 2022 “Teachers’ Lifetime Achievement Award” winners are Merri Scott and Gary Scott. Feature Question for April 2022: What achievements did they accomplish?
https://www.madelinefrankviola.com/one-minute-radio-show-2022/
Merri Scott and Gary Scott are our Radio Show’s 2022 “Teachers’ Lifetime Achievement Award” winners.
Merri and Gary Scott have taught over five generations of students to be wise investors, self-publishing writers, and to
speak Spanish. They are the parents of five children, and nine grandchildren. Their children are a provider of free medical procedures, a veterinarian, an attorney, a consultant on country development to the World Bank and United Nations and an owner of a performing arts school.
Gary and Merri Scott are “passionate about their ability to share their experiences as stimulating ideas and useful resources to help students live a healthier, more affluent and fulfilling life.”
They enjoyed traveling and teaching courses in dozens of countries including England, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Aruba, Belize, Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Nevis-St Kitts, Jamaica, British and US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Ecuador as well as the US.
In 2014, I read an article about Merri Scott studying with Dr. Georgi Lozanov, medical doctor and Father of Accelerated Learning.
Merri said, “Dr. Lozanov taught us to use in his classroom the slow movements of Baroque composers Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Corelli, Tartini, and Pachelbel. The music played is slower than a person’s heart beat and relaxes the students and helps them remember more.”
She continued: “He taught through the power of positive suggestion, that with a “relaxed and focused state of mind learning becomes joyful.” He believed in removing roadblocks to learning. As a medical doctor his approach was holistic.”
Merri and Gary Scott continued Dr. Lozanov’s work by offering their “Super Thinking- Super Spanish” Course. I immediately signed up with my husband to take their course that July. Later we also took their Self-Publishing Writing and Investing courses. We learned so much from their classes and formed a warm friendship with them.
Madeline: “How many years did you and Merri teach your “Super Thinking-Super Spanish” course?”
Gary: “Merri created the Spanish course in the late 1990s as we began to take delegates to Ecuador. She was one of the few people who was taught in the USA by Bulgarian educator Georgi Lozanov who had institutionalized the use of Baroque music in Eastern European education. Many years before Merri had an import business helping orphanages in Mexico create papier-mâché products that could be sold in the US. She drove thousands of miles in Mexico and taught herself Spanish so she knew that thousands of words in English and Spanish are the same. She combined the ideas of a ready-made vocabulary and brain enhancing music to create a course that helped students learn how to communicate in Spanish in just three days.”
Madeline: “Did you and Merri also teach your Self -Publishing writing course and investing course using Baroque music too?”
Gary: “Yes in the live courses. The self-publishing and investing courses were created earlier than the Spanish course, but once we realized the potential of the music we taught students how to use the music to get into a state of relaxed concentration so they could focus their thinking for longer periods of time without stress. We never did add a music session specifically into these courses but created a separate Super Spanish Workshop that we offered separately. “
Madeline: “How many years did you and Merri teach the Self -Publishing course and the Investing course?”
Gary: “I was doing the investing courses over 40 years ago. That’s how Merri and I met. She attended a course.”
The Self-Publishing course came later about 25 years ago, first as an in person course”
Madeline: “Are any of your children teachers, writers, and investors too?”
Gary: “Yes. The deal we had with each of our five children was they were required to work part time if they wanted our financial assistance in university. Our youngest Eleanor took a degree in performing arts at a London university and her part time job was as a teacher at a franchised singing-dancing-acting school for children age 5-14.”
“She liked this so well that after graduation (with a small loan from Mom and Dad – that she paid back early – and a big loan from HKSB Bank) she bought one of these franchises. Within a few years she was the youngest franchisee but with the largest attendance (she had acquired five of the schools) out of hundreds of these schools. Later she and her husband decided to leave the stress of a life in London, sold the schools and moved to Cheltenham Gloucestershire where she started her own school. That she runs to this day.”
“Though the school’s goal is to help every child gain skills and confidence she also helps students who want to pursue a career in the performing arts. In a short time after she started, she had one student performing in London’s West End in “Aladdin”, two in “Sound of Music, two in “Carousel”, one in “Lion King” and one in “Les Miserable”. She continues to send these students for auditions in the West End and for national tours and has had many west end successes over the years with My Stage School students appearing in tours across the country, commercials and TV shows.”
Merri and Gary Scott won their 2022 “Teachers’ Lifetime Achievement Award” for advancing the knowledge of five generations of students to have successful futures in learning to be wise investors, self-publishing writers, and speaking Spanish.
To read Merri and Gary Scott’s blog and hear their 2014 Radio Show click on the following link:
https://www.madelinefrankviola.com/merri-and-gary-scott-teach-super-thinking-super-spanish-using-baroque-music-studying-a-musical-instrument-makes-you-smarter-september-2014/
Gary Scott is busy writing his second novel, the 64th Symphony.
To entice new readers as an introduction he is making his first, the “65th Octave” available FREE at
garyascott.com/2022/02/14/1502.html“
Gary and Merri Scott’s Courses are available below:
Self -Publishing and Super Spanish courses can still be purchased at their website. Both courses are $79. The Super Thinking Workshop is $49.95.
The links are
https://garyascott.com/catalog/ecuador-spanish-course
Self-Publishing course
Super Thinking Workshop
“Love Baroque Music? It Can Also Help Improve Concentration and Learning” (Dec. 9, 2020) by Greta Bradman from ABC Classic
Ms. Bradman, “And it turns out there is one period of classical music that is worth singling out as especially powerful at helping you focus. In fact, in the hands of some health professionals, Baroque music may be life-saving. A few years ago, a radiologist by the name of Dr. Mohiuddin became interested in exploring how he and his fellow radiologists could make small changes to their work environment to help them handle their massive workloads.”
She continued, “Radiologists spend a lot of their time in a ‘reading room’ where they analyze patients’ scans and images, hunting for even the tiniest of abnormalities. It is painstaking work and the stakes are high. After talking with one of his colleagues, Dr. Mohiuddin realized they both reported benefits from listening to Baroque music (music from around the years 1600-1750) in headphones as they worked! He decided to test whether the music promoted concentration. He had all the radiologists at his hospital take part. For a number of weeks, they listened to the music of Vivaldi and Handel through headphones while they worked. The productivity of the radiologists improved. The amount of radiology slides they got through in the reading room increased. They reported greater accuracy in their work and their work satisfaction also went up. But not only that. Dr. Mohiuddin had them do some tests before and after the trial and found that listening to Baroque music was associated with increasing their spatial reasoning, attentiveness and concentration.”
At the same time in China ,“brain imaging research led by Dr. R. Gu found that listening to Baroque music (they used music by Vivaldi) has a positive influence on learning efficiency, that is, on your ability to pay attention and remembermore. Baroque music with certain characteristics (including a tempo of between 50 and 80 beats per minute and certain mid to lower frequencies) was particularly effective. The researchers said, “brain imaging research using electroencephalography found that Baroque music can bring about a balanced, stable, calm state of mind and improve learning efficiency.”
https://www.abc.net.au/classic/read-and-watch/music-reads/baroque-music-for-concentration/12651580
10,000 STEPS FOR SOUP BY MADELINE FRANK, PH.D.
Many of you, on a cold winter day, have enjoyed a hot bowl of soup. Maybe the soup you were having was from Campbell’s Soup.
In 2001, Campbell’s Soup Company stock prices had fallen and performance had hit rock bottom. In order to survive, they hired Douglas Conant as the new President and CEO. Within a few days, he realized that the company had an extremely toxic culture. Great people were leaving the company in droves.
He observed, “You can’t expect a company to perform at high levels unless people are personally engaged. And they won’t be personally engaged unless they believe their leader is personally engaged in trying to make their lives better.”
How did Doug Conant turn around Campbell’s Soup Company?
He vowed to flip the culture from a “top down” leadership style to an inverted pyramid where the people inside of the company were the most important asset.
When he walked through the door for the first time, he observed the rusty barbed wire surrounding the corporate headquarters and a large level of distrust.
As a part of “The Campbell Promise”, Conant promised to treat everyone with respect and dignity. At the heart of the pledge was a guarantee that he would conduct himself with integrity and honor.
He realized that at the root of a toxic company culture is toxic leadership. During his first 3 years as CEO, he replaced 300 out of the 350 leaders within the company. This was unheard of in the retail industry. 150 were promoted from within and 150 were hired from outside.
What does “Leading with civility mean?”
It means acknowledging people’s contributions, listening better, respecting others’ time, and making people feel valued.
Conant wore a pedometer on his belt, put on a pair of walking shoes, and in headquarters buildings in New Jersey, at a production plant in Europe and in Asia. He interacted with as many employees as possible. His goal was to log 10,000 steps every day.
He engaged his team and asked questions.
These encounters helped him stay informed with the goings on through the company, enabling him to personally connect with people at every level.
Each day, he also hand wrote 20 notes to his employees celebrating their successes and contributions.
Doug Conant said, “I was trained to find the busted number in a spreadsheet and identify things that are going wrong.”
He continued, “Most cultures don’t do a good job celebrating contributions. So, I developed the practice of writing notes to our employees. Over 10 years, it amounted to more than 30,000 notes, and we had only 20,000 employees. Wherever, I’d go in the world, in employee cubicles you’d find my handwritten notes posted in their bulletin boards.”
His hand-written notes were “treasured more than an email message.”
Once the culture started turning around, Campbell’s Soup became a breeding ground for innovation. Whether it was the “rolling can gravity feeding shelving …clearly labeled soup…..retail display racks found in stores worldwide; or the concept of making a soup that would work in a microwave oven…The magic was on the inside.”
By 2009, Doug Conant’s “Change-friendly leadership”, at Campbell’s Soup Company had outperformed “the S&P Food Group and the S&P 500. Sales and earnings were on the upswing, employee engagement was at world class levels.”
Conant called his “daily interactions he had with employees, “touchpoints.”
“Listen, Frame, Advance.” His “3 Step Touchpoints”
How did he start?
Ask the question, “How can I help?”
1) “Listening intently helps you figure out what is really going on and what others need from you.” It demonstrates that you really care.
2) “Framing the issue ensures that everyone in the touchpoint has the same understanding of the issue.
3) “Advancing the agenda means deciding what next step to take and who will take ”
“Listen- Frame-Advance triad changes the communication dynamic from “It’s all about me” to “It’s all about us because we are in this together.”
As you practice Doug Conant’s 3 Step Touchpoints you will be better at “helping your employees feel listened to, respected and valued.”
Remember it all began with changing the toxic culture to one of “Civility and Respect”. Every year at Campbell’s, Doug Conant and his colleagues surveyed the organization to make sure leaders in the company were using the Campbell’s leadership model, with Inspire Trust at the center to increase engagement.”
If leaders fell short and “could not, or would not demonstrate their willingness to adapt their approach they were let go…..replacing those ;leaders with people committed to a more civil approach.”
How do you treat people?
You treat them with curtesy and respect, and ask them questions. © 2022 Madeline Frank
If you need a speaker or video speaker contact Madeline at: [email protected]
The Secret of Teaching Science & Math Through Music” by Madeline Frank, Ph.D. is available in book form, and newly updated as an e-book on Kindle, Nook, or iBook:
com(Kindle)
“Musical Notes On Math” by Dr. Madeline Frank teaches your child fractions and decimals, the fun easy way, through the rhythm of music, Winner of the Parent To Parent Adding Wisdom Award is available in book form, newly updated as an e-book on Kindle, Nook, or iBook.:
com(Kindle)
Wishing you and your family a happy April from your Non-Invasive Medicine…Music Expert, Madeline
For over 40 years, Dr. Madeline Frank has helped children and adults overcome problems through Classical music. Madeline Frank, Ph.D., DTM is an award-winning teacher, author, researcher, speaker, conductor, and concert artist. She has discovered a scientific link between studying a musical instrument and academic and societal success. Madeline Frank earned her Bachelor and Master’s degree from the Juilliard School of Music. Her education has included scholarships at the Juilliard School, Indiana University, and the University of Cincinnati and she has a violin performance diploma from the North Carolina School of the Arts. (C) 2022 Madeline Frank