Have you ever made a bucket list? I don’t know about you but when I think of a bucket list, I think about making a list of big life items or goals like in the 2007 comedy with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman; see the grand canyon – ride on a sailboat, drive highway 1 through California.
For some reason, I’ve never felt the urge to set big life goals like these, but I AM all about the little ones. In fact, my New Years reflections have in recent years not included formal goals but what I call “little life intentions” – something I talked about back in episode 174 if you want to hear more.
So when I think of bucket lists, I tend to think of them in small-scale, seasonal chunks and that’s what we’re talking about today on episode 194 of The Piano Pantry Podcast. I’m Amy Chaplin and I love sharing doses of practical and sustainable rhythms for your teacher life. Here’s your fall studio teacher bucket list, my friend.
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I know we’re already 5 weeks into the fall season, but in piano teacher world we have to talk about Christmas music before we talk about fall and Halloween themed things – you know how that goes – so last month I had to get right to how to plan Christmas music in episode 192. I also had to talk about digital organization before the early bird deadline passed for the Organize Your Life with Notion workshop passed, so that was episode 193, and here we are.
It’s the week of Halloween so while we’re a month into fall, I think the timing is still totally appropriate, don’t you think? I do. So we’re all good, right?! We still have PLENTY of time – PLENTY of time to enjoy the fruits of this beautiful season so I have eight things for you, OK?
Just 8 super easy things that will add a little *joie de vivre* to your teacher life in this season. (That’s “joy of living” in French, but so fun to say so I’ll say it again – *joie de vivre* .
1. Do one seasonal activity for your students
Now listen, I know some of you love your seasonal resources. You download every worksheet, every game, every freebie piece you can because you think it makes things more fun. And look, I’m sure it does. But I also don’t want you to think that you have to do this for every season and holiday that comes around because it can just be a LOT to have so many different resources with different colors and themes and what not.
If this is your thing, you do it – live it up. But I think most students will feel the joy of the season with just one or two little seasonal activities. Maybe it’s a song, or a game, or a worksheet or maybe even just a treat you hand out, but it doesn’t have to be all of the above. Maybe you only do seasonal things in your group classes.
For your bucket list, I want to encourage you to just pick one. That’s all. Have fun with it but don’t go and make yourself cut up cards for 12 different games just because you think it’s an easy way to make lessons more fun. One is all you really need.
If you scroll back to episode #88, you can get my list of my top 10 favorite Halloween resources for lessons. Don’t worry, as always everything you hear today is linked in the show notes. Get the link in your podcast apps show notes or visit pianopantry.com/podcast/episode194 directly for those links.
2. Touch base individually with studio families
This is a great time of year to be intentional with connecting with your studio families. There are lots of ways you could choose to do this. Maybe you drop everyone a text and highlight one win their student has had in lessons over the past month. Or maybe you take 3 minutes at the end of everyone’s lesson to run out to the car and get a quick face-to-face. I went through a period for a couple of years where I liked sending voice messages to families once in awhile with updates. You can hear about that in episode 144.
Before our fall break two weeks ago, I texted every family a quick note reminding them there were no lessons the next week and also letting them know that I had sent the student home with a special fall treat – jar bread – which I’ll tell you about next.
It doesn’t always have to be a formal evaluation, just an intentional connection with studio parents. Two months into the semester is always the perfect time to do this so the same goes for early to mid March as well right before spring break.
3. Enjoy at least one seasonal food
Of all the changing seasons, I feel like the move from summer to fall is when the desire to see a change in meals hits the hardest. We move from tomato bread to tomato soup and from grilling to roasting. I think fall eating though often gets relegated to the inclusion of pumpkin bread. It’s not fall unless you’ve had pumpkin bread!
I’ll be honest, I’m not a big pumpkin bread lover. It’s fine but I don’t understand all the hype around it – and it’s has to be a darn good one too.
My favorite way to include pumpkin something is through a soup called Three Sisters Soup. I actually call mine Three Sisters Pumpkin Soup because the soup base is made of pumpkin. This is a cozy, hearty soup that celebrates the “Three Sisters” — corn, beans, and squash — which were traditionally grown together by many indigenous peoples of North America, including the Lakota Sioux.
There is no one authentic recipe for this soup ~ it can be made, and is made, in a variety of ways, with different combinations of ‘sisters.’ A lot of recipes use more of a brothy base with diced tomatoes but I like using a broth base and adding canned pumpkin. The recipe is available on Piano Pantry if you want to try it out.
If you enjoy baking, you can also try a recipe I just posted to the blog. It’s a jar bread recipe meaning it’s baked in a pint-size wide-mouth ball jar. The original recipe and the way my mom always made it is with applesauce as the base which makes for a super moist bread. You can also substitute pumpkin as well though if you’re one of those pumpkin bread people.
I gave those jar breads away to my students as a little fall treat before break and they all seemed to love it. I’ve also had fun making ghost nutter butters for studio classes in the past if would rather just assemble a fun treat.
Whatever your jive is – try to enjoy *one* food that screams fall-time to you.
4. Add in a seasonal drink
You might be a creature of habit but I personally love changing up my morning drink every once in awhile. In the summer I drink iced coffee or no coffee but in the fall I like adding Pecan milk to my hot coffee.
I’ve been through years where I loved trying all the flavored creamers but my tastebuds have directed me to simpler flavors with less sugar these days.
I do think it’s fun though to change up a creamer or rotate to a different flavored tea or switch to a flavored coffee – whatever it may be. It’s little things like this that can help us break our routines, keep things interesting, shake it up, and help us live dangerously! LOL
In general anymore, my favorite way to do coffee is either black, with whole milk, oat milk, or pecan milk. I don’t like lower fat milks, half ‘n half, full cream, coconut milk or almond milk in my coffee. Isn’t it crazy how many choices we have these days!
By the way, Trader Joe’s has a really great Maple-flavored coffee I discovered this year. I don’t personally care for the pumpkin-spice one but love the maple flavor.
5. Make a social connection
Speaking of coffee – why not make it a goal to enjoy one with a teacher friend?! Invite a teacher you haven’t met yet that lives in your area to coffee one day or even a handful of teachers over for brunch on a Friday or Saturday morning.
Don’t keep yourself disconnected from the wider community. Since we are such a solo profession, we have to be intentional about making connections with our colleagues. Cheer each other on.
If you don’t have many teachers near you, then come join my little circle of teacher friends on Patreon! We meet every Wednesday for power hour from 11-12pm Eastern time and on the 5th Wednesdays which happen 4 times a year, I’m now hosting a coffee hour teacher chat where we can just connect and share things that are both working for us and not working for us in that season.
Visit pianopantry.com/patreon for details. I would love to see you there!
6. Do something musical for yourself
Last month we talked about planning Christmas music for your students but what about yourself? I know I’ve let too many years go by when I just pull out a trusty favorite or wait until the week before Christmas before I start playing any Christmas music for my own pleasure.
In all honesty, I don’t always even get around to playing for pleasure – and only playing pieces I need to prepare for church services. I often struggle to take time to just sit down and play for my own enjoyment.
Something I’ve recognized in recent years is that the massive amount of options out there can easily make me shut down and just not want to play anything. I now it sounds backward but it’s like I sometimes have a hard time focusing on playing for enjoyment because it’s hard to settle on what I want to focus on. I feel like I only have once a year to enjoy these books so it’s like if I can’t play through all my Christmas music I just don’t play it at all. Do you ever feel crippled in this way?
How about together we make an effort to find a Christmas piece to work on just because we want to play it for fun? I’m going to try and commit myself to sharing what that piece is here in the next weeks. Will you join me?
7. Read a cozy themed book
Do you ever try and read books that put you into the mood of the season? For example, I keep trying to time reading Kristin Hannah’s book *Winter Garden* in the wintertime. It’s been on hold from my library for a year so I finally just bought it and plan to read it this winter.
I love making an effort to pick just one book each season that fits that season. This year I went for *The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society* by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows which was the book my library picked as part of their “One Book, One County” read pick. They do it every fall and the idea is to get everyone reading the same book.
I’ve seen the move before but hadn’t read the book so I grabbed it. It’s presented as a series of letters between an author, her publisher, a beau, and members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which was formed during the WWII Nazi occupation on a whim to protect themselves from soldiers watching eyes.
For me, it’s a slow book but it definitely has a cozy feel to it that feels really nice in fall. I rated the book 3/5 stars mostly because I don’t do well with slow laid/back books.
Here are a few more recommendations if you’re interested. The first three are works of fiction and the last one is non-fiction
1. Big Stone Gap by Adrianna Trigiani
Set in a quirky, tight-knit coal-mining town in 1970s Virginia, the book follows Ave Maria Mulligan, a self-proclaimed 35-year-old spinster and town pharmacist whose quiet life is upended by the revelation of a family secret.
2. Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Inspired by the shocking real-life scandal of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, this book follows a Mississippi River shantyboat family whose lives are shattered in 1939 when the children are wrongfully seized and sold by a corrupt adoption-ring operator.
3. Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah
Set in a small Pacific Northwest town, this book is the story of a traumatized, feral young girl who emerges from the wilderness and is taken in by a dedicated child psychiatrist.
4. The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
In *The Art of Gathering*, Priya Parker challenges the conventional approach to hosting by arguing that meaningful get-togethers require clear purpose, bold rules, and intentional boundaries rather than just good food and polite conversation.
Since we’re entering a season of gathering, I think that last one is definitely worth considering!
Whatever kind of book you like to read, I think it’s a fun way to invite the season in – and one way that is perhaps not though of as often as things like eating pumpkin bread or sharing holiday-themed activities with our students.
Lastly,
8. Do something outside
Fall time is my favorite time for outdoor morning walks. Temperatures between low 50’s and low 60’s always make for the best walking weather. Maybe your outside time is stepping outside between each lesson, doing a lap around the block once an hour while working on a big project at your computer, walking the dog after dinner, or going for a hike once each weekend between Halloween and Thanksgiving.
Whatever that may be for you, find a way to get fresh air.
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I hope you enjoyed this fall bucket list. If so, will you let your friends know? Share this episode with someone or jump in to your podcast app and give it a quick rating and review. Leaving a rating and review lets the podcast apps know that people are enjoying this show and will show more people.
Before we go – here’s a quick recap of our fall bucket list:
1. Do one seasonal activity for your students
2. Touch base individually with studio families
3. Enjoy at least one seasonal food
4. Add in a seasonal drink
5. Make a social connection
6. Do something musical for yourself
7. Read a cozy themed book
8. Do something outside
Next time you hear from me will be a teacher talk episode – who is it? It’s a surprise as always, so stay tuned!
