The end of the school year is near for many of us in the northern hemisphere. As you’re literally and mentally wrapping up the past 9-12 months of your teaching year, now is a natural time to consider what the past year gave and brought to our lives.
Each season brings new things, whether it’s experiences, apps, friends, courses, foods, teaching resources, or special moments. There is so much to experience in life and teaching, and yet at the same time there are many things that become constants, whether it’s for a season or for years on end.
Today I’m looking back at what impacted and influenced my teaching the most in this season.
To help me compile this list, I literally walked around my studio and looked at my space and the items that were surrounding me, I did a quick scroll through my Instagram feed to see if anything stood out, and briefly scoured blog posts and Friday Finds I shared with you over this past year.
In fact, this list started as a general list of what’s impacted me the most over the past year but it become long enough I decided to split it into two episodes. Today we’re looking at what impacted my teaching specifically and next week I’ll share what impacted me in other ways – whether that be business, life, work habits, and otherwise.
I’m Amy Chaplin and this is the Piano Pantry Podcast. A big thanks as always to my teaching friends on Patreon who support the work of this podcast and to all of you for being here today. Let’s get on with the list.
So, the first few things things that impacted my teaching directly in this season are kind of a combo package tied to my physical space so bear with me as I describe it to you.
First off was finally finding a layout for my teaching workspace that I felt I could smoothly move myself in it physically. I’ve tried all kinds of setups over the years from alternating which side of the piano I teach from to using side-by-side pianos – you name it. I’m a big rearranger of furniture so I’ve always enjoyed playing around with this physical dynamic.
I feel like I finally nailed it though this year and I was totally shocked at what it took to make a difference.
So, I keep this little desk next to my grand piano that has a couple drawers and a file drawer. On it is everything I use for lessons like highlighters and white out tape and dry erase boards and my laptop, post it notes, you name it. It’s about 3 feet wide.
I’ve always placed it in-line with the front of the piano but this year I set it back several feet which gave me way more space to move around which brings me to the second part of the impact of my physical space and that was standing a LOT more.
In fact I probably now stand 75% of the time. Pushing my desk back has allowed me the space to get a different view of my student. This means, at times, I stand back a little toward the desk and face them so we’re more face-to-face rather than having to turn their head completely sideways all the time to see me.
I don’t stand in this spot the whole time, but I love having that different perspective where we can look each other in the eyes more easily at certain points in the lesson.
I’ve also embraced the piano top as a workspace. I used to set out items I was using for lessons that day on a cabinet nearby or folding table but now I just use the piano so I have it all right in front of me. This has been a big game changer – it’s pretty much covered year round now.
As part of this new physical layout, it’s going to sound funny but I added a 40” high pub-table to my teaching desk space. I had purchased this for entertaining in our home but didn’t know what to do with it when I wasn’t using it, so I brought it down to my studio and voila – I have a laptop stand.
If you can visualize this, what I did was place the pub table behind my teaching desk so half of it protrudes over the desk and creates an elevated tabletop. I put my laptop, water bottle, and portable Bluetooth speaker on the pub table now.
It makes it so easy to quickly write in notes about lessons either during the lesson or between. It also gave me more work space on the desktop below for other items without having to have the laptop sitting on it.
So, to recap, my teaching was impacted by four things connected to me moving more comfortably in my physical space: moving the teaching desk back so I have more movement space, and so I can access the entirety of the piano top for storage and can face the student from a different angle on occasion, I stand a lot more, and now use a pub table as a laptop stand.
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The next thing that impacted my teaching was a Keyboard Spinner Set from Keys to Imagination. This is a set of 3 mini games – Keyboard Space Race – which is just white key letter names, Chromatic Keyboard Cruise – which addresses sharps and flats on the keyboard, and Interval Drag Race which is intervals on the keyboard.
Each has a small spinner board and cute game pieces. These were just the perfect fun little games to insert into lessons for students on occasion I even pulled the interval one out a few times for some of my older students but with a twist that they had to do the intervals within a major scale of which they landed so if they started on A and got a 3rd they had to do a Major 3rd and move to C#. The next round – say they got a 4th – they would move to F# – so we didn’t just do it on the white keys which made it more challenging for them.
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The next thing that impacted my teaching was my friend Christina Whitlock’s new Building Better Music Readers Course.
This 12 week course had lots of practical advice and activities that you could implement into lessons with your beginners and even older students every single week. I was especially reminded to return to concepts even when you think a student has them mastered and to keep concepts as much as possible in baby steps or micro progressions.
It’s a terrific course that both new and seasoned teachers like myself can benefit from.
Just so you know, the link along for that course along with everything else I talk about in today’s episode is in the show notes at pianopantry.com/podcast/episode183
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Micro progressions has been I term I’ve been using ever since I launched my Note Reading Progressions resource back in 2021 which brings me to the 4th thing that that has impacted my teaching – the newest update of this resource which happened this past January.
This is a series that I put together that approaches note reading in sets of micro-progressions. That is, practice sets of as little as 4 notes at a time building up to a whole set. The series includes 5 leveled sets based on the landmark approach so, for example, level one is from Bass F to Treble G but within that level there are are 5 practice sets – each one connected to a hyperlink and QR code that will open that practice set in the Note Rush app.
So, for example, in level one, the first micro practice set is just the 3 landmarks, the second set is A, B, Middle C, D, and E, the third is middle C to treble G, the fourth set is Bass F to middle C, and the last set is all 10 notes from Bass F to Treble G.
Because each set also utilizes a numbering system, this series has made it so much easier for me to track what notes students are working on.
I keep it in a 1/2” binder for easy access during lessons and at the back of the binder there’s a whole bunch of Avery Address Labels that I can grab to send home with students to practice a small group of notes for the week.
There are even more sets in the series now besides the landmark approach set including a set that uses the approach presented in Piano Safari, a key-based sets, ledger lines, and more.
Having this all laid out in an easy-access binder right in front of me has been an incredibly useful tool this year.
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The 5th thing that impacted my teaching was utilizing dry erase boards a lot more. This one is thanks again to Christina and her BBMR Course. I’ve always had a dry erase board but didn’t utilize it nearly as much as I could have.
I’ve always loved the idea of being very selective and minimal in the amount of teaching games, tools, and activities I keep on hand and utilizing a dry erase board is the key to keeping things simple. Plus, kids love using them. Seriously, all we really need is a dry erase board!
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The 6th thing that impacted my teaching was a workshop I took last summer by Mary Ellen Pinzino called Emerging Music Literacy as well as her book Unveiling Artistry in Early Childhood Music. To be honest, I’m still processing and reeling a bit from all I learned in that summer workshop and from reading the book.
Mary Ellen studied Music Learning Theory with Dr. Gordon and has since developed ideas of her own ideas on developing the musical mind. Even though she was an early childhood teacher, I felt very drawn to her perspective and outlook on teaching.
Mostly, I entered into the workshop interested in learning her tonal syllable system, but walked away with so much more than I had expected! I don’t want to bog this episode down with details but if you’re at all interested in MLT and developing the musical mind I would highly recommend the book and workshop both.
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The 7th thing that impacted my teaching was finally having a hard copy of my Christmas By Ear book thanks to my GBC Pro-Click Binding Machine. The book is a digital download and I have always just printed off a few pages here and there for each student as needed. As the age of my studio has increased in recent years and my students can do more variations throughout the season, I find I really value having a hard copy.
Plus, the huge update of this book presents a lot of variety in options for students like picking out the melody by year, a chord chart builder which they can use to transpose, a full chord chart and a full lead sheet and a bank of accompaniment patterns so there’s lots of ways they can be utilizing the book throughout the season.
Not only that but I’ve come to realize more in recent years there’s just something different about having a hard copy book vs. music printed inside of a binder. It just feels so much better. I understand the draw of studio licenses but it just can’t quite replace the feeling of that piece of that hard copy piece of music in your hand.
Because a hard copy of this book has become of such great value to me, one of my summer projects is to make a hard copy version of Christmas by Ear available for purchase for the upcoming holiday season, so stay tuned!
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The 8th and final thing that impacted my teaching the most was Juan Cabeza’s Diversions book 1 and 2. Man, those books are serious gold. They are the best little etude pieces that are fun, easy to learn and perfectly pattern-based. Almost all my students now go through at least one of the books and I find they really love them.
While I’ve used them a little in the past, this year I really dug in and relied on the books a lot more and I’m so glad I did. They were a huge success.
Juan – you’re a genius!
Next week I’ll look forward to sharing more wonderful things that impacted my teaching life over this past year. I would love to hear what’s impacted you.
You can find me on Instagram at pianopantryamy on Facebook at Piano Pantry.
Registration is now happening for the Organize Your Life Digital Organization Retreat that I host ever summer at my home in Indiana. I can tell you now, this special event is unlike anything you’ve ever attended. It’s cozy, intimate, relaxing, refreshing, and yet you get a lot of work done that’s really hard to get done on your own.
You will work alongside a very small group of other teachers to tackle your way through a process for cleanup, reorganization, and future mindset of 6 key areas of your daily digital workspace: devices, computers, files, online content, media, and email. You will leave the retreat feeling mental clarity and relief from the little crazy things like file management that can weigh us down without even realizing it. Visit pianopantry.com/retreat for details. Early bird registration ends June 15.
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