Episode Summary
Amy chats with teacher Valerie Merrell on their shared experience returning to grad school later in life.
Items Mentioned
A Halloween-Themed Listening Activity
Transcript
Amy: Welcome to episode number 40 of the Piano Pantry podcast and the eighth teacher talk episode. If you’re new around here, while this podcast is primarily a solo podcast, every five episodes I have a low key rejuvenating chat with teachers just like you. This week I’m chatting with Valerie Merrill, a friend and colleague from my state.
Valerie and I met while attending the 2019 MTNA conference in Spokane, Washington. See, it’s true that attending conferences is a great way to make music teacher friends. For more on that topic, jump back and listen in on one of the top episodes of this podcast so far, number 13, How to Make Music Teacher Friends.
Valerie and I have similar stories in that we both returned to school to work on our master’s degrees later in life. I thought a bit of a peek into our experiences would be a fun conversation to share, especially for those who are pondering a return, but are perhaps hesitant to do enjoy.
Welcome to the Piano Pantry Podcast, where together we live life as independent music teachers. I’m your host, Amy Chaplin. In this space, we talk about all things. Teacher life related from organizing our studios to getting dinner on the table and all that comes between you’ll get loads of easily actionable tips on organizing and managing your studio while balancing life and home.
Welcome to The Piano Pantry Podcast, Valerie. I’m really excited to have you here with me today to chat about going back to college as an adult. Thank you. I’m happy to be here. Why don’t you go ahead and tell everybody a little bit about yourself, your background, like your education, how you got into piano teaching and where you are today.
Valerie: Sure. So, I did a bachelor’s degree in piano performance and pedagogy. And I really loved it, but I was very focused on the performance component at the time. I graduated and. Surprise. No performance opportunities magically appear. And I ended up getting married, and we moved to Tucson, Arizona, for my husband’s PhD work.
And while there, I had some children and really had no thoughts about what I was going to do with it. Some people knew I had a piano background and asked me to teach their children while doing the pedagogy undergrad component of pedagogy. I really didn’t, it was more of something that I did because it was required.
It was definitely not my focus, definitely not my interest. So when people asked me to teach, I thought, sure, that is fine, and so I did that. And then we moved to Atlanta. Georgia for my husband’s postdoctoral fellowship work, and we were there five years, and after being there for a few months, I was antsy to start teaching again.
I realized how much I had enjoyed it, and at that point, I started jumping into teacher groups MTNA and started watching webinars and joining Facebook groups for piano teachers. I really enjoyed expanding my repertoire and my teaching skill set. And then we moved for a job. We moved to Alabama.
And again, after a few months, I really was antsy about getting teaching again. And I have realized like that is just, I absolutely love this. I love doing this. So once we were in Atlanta I had jumped into looking at lots of different options for teacher development or professional development.
I started looking at master’s programs. I’ve always loved education and learning. And so I had looked at options, and there weren’t any really great ones there that were specifically pedagogy. Most of the ones that had a pedagogy component were performance and pedagogy. And while I do love performing, it’s just not my focus anymore.
I don’t want to invest vast amounts of time memorizing that amount of music. And I think many of us can understand that. Yes. Yes. And so I Had always kept an eye wherever we went at the options for universities that would provide an option of piano pedagogy in their master’s program. And so when I ended up in Indiana, I found two universities that had a piano pedagogy program, so that was very thrilling because in most states, they might have one. And to have access to a couple of options was fantastic.
Amy: I think it’s interesting because. My path was similar, and I think a lot of teachers are, too, in that it wasn’t like I went to school and said, Oh, I want to be a piano teacher. It just evolves little by little. It’s one of those things you just, I think, slowly discover that you love just from experiences. And like you said, people just saying, Hey, you can play the piano where you teach my kids piano. Even my own education was similar where. I actually had an undergraduate undergrad degree in choral education, and the funny thing is, the piano was my major instrument, even though choral ed was my degree, which I just it never made sense why they let me do that.
But even I was just never really interested in the piano pedagogy side of things. One of my high school teachers actually wanted me to pursue pedagogy in undergrad because her School had an undergrad minor program. I just really wasn’t interested. So I think it’s interesting to see how we come into that.
Why don’t you share with everybody what school you’re attending and maybe some of the different types of classes that are involved in getting a piano pedagogy degree?
Valerie: Sure. So, I am attending Butler University, which is a private university, and I have absolutely thoroughly enjoyed my time there. The classes have, you have a base core of pedagogy classes that cover quite a variety of topics, and your piano lessons and studio class. And then there is a variety of options that you have. You need to take a music history and a theory, but within those, there are some pretty cool options. I think because they expect that as an undergrad, you would have covered the overview of music history, and you get to pick a fairly specialized music history topic.
One of the things I’ve actually really enjoyed about it is that about the program, even the classes that I thought, okay, I need to do for the degree. I absolutely loved it. So that’s been fun to realize how much I’ve enjoyed the material as well as the professors. But for the music history, I did a Mozart opera class. And I have a little opera background, right? But hardly anyone else in the class did. And the teacher just really brought it alive – really fantastic.
I did an advanced keyboard harmony, which is super fun. Quite a variety of skills at piano lit. I took an ensemble class, in which you can like to accompany people or be in a chamber group or some type of small trio or quartet that you put together. But my true love is piano duets and ensembles. And so I did that – an absolute blast.
And they have also a practicum that you do for at least one semester, which was also fantastic. It was working one-on-one with Karen Thixton, who happens to be MTNA’s national president. And it’s just an absolute wealth of information. She weekly had me record My lessons with three students and then so we would formulate lesson plans, and then we would I would teach them, and then I would watch the videos and evaluate, and it was eye-opening. Yeah.
That’s a lot of just a mass amount of development in that, and one other class that I really appreciated that they require for all graduate students is a research in music. It’s like a writing class, and the professor did a fantastic job of gearing that towards things that, excuse me, musicians would do because, as musicians, we often don’t have one job, but we do a variety of things to bring in income. He geared the skills towards that, so he had us write up or rush up our resume and CV. We did long and short program notes like you would find at a symphony in the program. Sometimes, at those types of events, they have a pre-programmed talk, and so we did those. We did grant proposals. We wrote research papers and bibliographies and just a lot of skills that you might use for a variety of things as a musician. That was incredibly helpful as well.
Amy: And I had similar experiences, and I think the cool thing about us is that Valerie mentioned at the very beginning that in Indiana, there were a couple of schools that have pedagogy degrees. And one was Butler and then what you’re attending and then the other was Ball State, which is the one that I went to for my master’s degree.
And it was basically the same type of experience. Now, mine, my degree was piano pedagogy and performance, which again, as you mentioned at the beginning, you didn’t want the performance portion, and I was like, Oh man, I’m jealous. I would have taken that option if I could have. But I understand why performance is a part of it.
But yeah, the same types of classes so like getting observed like teaching. I remember having music theory classes, and I got to take a specialty theory class on Schenkerian analysis, which I found to be fascinating. Yeah. Yeah, that was really cool. And then, like you said, you could choose specialty classes for music history.
So I did like music in war class, and that was also super fascinating. What else? Pedagogy classes, such as elementary pedagogy and intermediate pedagogy, and the thing I loved about those is just really looking at music and talking about, okay, what are the difficulty level things that you’re seeing here? And, how do they fit into that, the different levels of leveling in piano music?
So you gave us a little bit of a rundown on The years, leading up to you coming to your master’s degree now, exactly how many years was that? Can you give us a window, a timeframe, and also what was that end moment that went okay, I need to be, going back to get my master’s degree, this is the. The good important next step.
Valerie: Yeah, I’m calculating right now. I think that it was 17 years after I graduated. Yeah.
Amy: Wow. Wow.
Valerie: Yeah, it took some time and, I don’t know, bravery. As I mentioned, I really have always loved the idea of getting more education. To some degree, I thought, I can take classes or webinars or standalone things, but as music teachers, where we don’t have a lot of opportunities to show our progression, this is one, right? This is something that I can say, okay, this is a cumulative project I have done, this is a degree I have done this thing. I crave that. Not everybody really wants to be happy to progress, but I wanted the progression plus that. Yeah.
So that was one of my decision factors for jumping back in. I have four children, and they were all back in school or in school. And so I thought I was going to do it. Like it’s my turn. I put my husband through how many years of education. It was time for me, but it was not really for the purpose of expanding my career opportunities. I hope that it may open some doors, but I’m not specifically looking for something that requires a master’s degree. Some people have said, what are you going to do with this degree? And largely, it is for my own enrichment and enjoyment.
Amy: And I think your point was great. This actually ties to a question I was going to ask towards the end. I don’t know if you’ve had people ask you, but I’ve had people ask me before. Was it worth it? Was it worth going back to get your master’s degree rather than just learning as you went or doing little, as you said, little bits here and there online or whatever? And I think it is, even if it’s not working towards a doctoral degree or getting like a university teaching job, it’s like that next step in that.
level of achievement for yourself as a professional to say, yes, like I have this skill. I have this knowledge. And while some of these things you might be able to eventually acquire as a whole, there’s a lot of these things I would have never learned about Shinkirian analysis or, it’s very focused and you grow quickly in a short amount of time. So yes, I think absolutely it is worth it.
Valerie: I 100 percent agree. Absolutely. I think that based on one’s personality, it can be even more beneficial to be in this type of program. For example, I work best by deadlines and often by deadlines set intrinsically, sorry, extrinsically. I said that backward. By accountability to a program, to a class, to a teacher. And so, while I’m quite confident I would have done some of these things. Yeah, I certainly would not have done them in the time frame that I did.
Amy: Oh, absolutely. I’m impressed that you came back after 17 years, though, because I mean, mine was six years, and I thought that was hard.
Valerie: Yeah, there were a number of factors that just seemed like a barrier. So the age thing, like walking in as somebody who I felt was going to be about 20 years older than people, like I worried about that, the brushing up on the study skills or the note taking or whatever, just making sure that I was like, able to do the coursework and kind of regain those skills.
But I think there have been a couple of things that have eased that transition. There have been a large number, not the majority, but there have been a fair number of non-traditional graduate students in the music program that I’ve come across. And that has been great to see. I also have not Had a problem like forming friendships with the traditional graduate students straight from their undergrad, but I think, remembering how much I used to cheer people on when I realized that they had gone back for a graduate degree or even an undergraduate degree at age 50 or 60, made me think, okay it’s a good thing, right?
Amy: Yeah, it is. And the whole, just what you mentioned, the whole being able to take notes again and learn how to, learn, that was a huge thing for me too. I was actually surprised about that portion, like, when I went back how much I forgot, like, how do I. How do I keep myself organized? And as an organized person, that was a struggle. Now, I went back in 2009. And so I didn’t have things back then, Evernote. I feel like if I was doing it today, I would be so much, it would be so much easier because I would have some of these digital tools. But back in 2009, I did not have those things. And it was hard. I was still doing binders and paper. And like I told you earlier, like I was, I think it was six years after I went back, even though my undergrad was. The piano was my major instrument.
I feel like because I wasn’t a performance major in my undergrad that made it harder because I had to go back and do the performance side of things and you have to audition. I assume you had to audition as well. So I actually had to take the first semester like I got started in the degree without technically being accepted into the degree right away. So, my teacher worked with me for the first semester to put together a program to audition with. Once I was formally accepted, that was definitely a scary first hurdle, but it was fine. And you can’t get your piano fingers back, basically. Four hours of practice a day I had to spend, but. Yes.
Valerie: Yeah. That was a concern with me as well, like really getting things back up to par, right?
Amy: And because I had the performance aspect, I think, I had to practice those four hours a day. Now I’m just curious with you since you don’t have that performance aspect like you don’t have to do a recital, is that correct?
Valerie: Not a solo recital. I participate in the studio recitals, and I do the juries at the end of the semester, so yeah, the practice requirement is about three, two to three hours per day.
Amy: Okay, now we should probably clarify. I don’t think you mentioned earlier that you have the option of this degree program as just pedagogy, but they’re changing that now, right?
Valerie: So they have a performance degree, a master’s degree, and a piano pedagogy degree. I don’t know if they’re changing the title to be piano pedagogy and performance, but as part of the piano pedagogy degree, they are switching it. So they’re, they have this performance component, and they’ve had it, but they are increasing the amount of performance requirements. I gotcha. They’re just adding.
Amy: Just so if anybody decides they want to go to Butler, they don’t go into it thinking, Ooh, I can do this now without the performance requirements. Yes. So, it’s not the case so much anymore. Yeah. Yeah.
Valerie: Exactly. So I will add one other thing about, we’ve talked about some of the hurdles about going back as I’ll say a more mature student, right?
Amy: Yeah, I like that.
Valerie: One benefit that I have found is that as an undergraduate student, and again, this could be very personality-based, but I had a lot of imposter syndrome. I was terrified somebody would find out I didn’t know anything. And so I put my head down and tried to hide that I did not know things. Now, I feel like I have the confidence to go in and be like, I do not know this. I would really like to know this. So specifically like Baroque ornamentation. I know what ornamentation is, but I have never experimented with it or been able to do it in an improvisatory way.
And so, like this, I would really like to explore this as opposed to being nervous. Oh, people will think I’m a fraud because I don’t know this. And I have just seen through a number of years how that actually shows confidence. To say, I actually don’t know this thing. Can you help me with this? Feel like that has been an incredible benefit to doing the program now. And I think that it has worked well in approaching the professors early on and being like, Hey, I actually don’t have a lot of background in this, but I’m absolutely willing to, jump in. So, just a heads up, if I ask some questions, you might not expect or something.
Amy: I want to learn and grow, and that’s even something that’s even true. Like with our own teaching, I was just listening to a podcast this morning, and it was talking about I can’t remember. I feel like it was, I feel like it was Nicola Canton’s podcast. It was talking about like working with teen students and how. As teachers, we need to be okay with saying, Hey, I don’t know the answer to that question. And just being very open. And I, yeah, it’s true with lots of things in life, but yeah, I understand that imposter syndrome feeling, but it’s good knowing that you can open up and be like, it’s okay to not know.
Valerie: Yeah, I think that’s conveying the value of being interested in pursuing information as opposed to trying to not let anybody know you don’t know that piece of information.
Amy: So, what are some things that clicked for you? Did you have any big aha moments in any of your classes or any of the things that you’re learning?
Valerie: There have been some smaller moments. So, my piano lessons have been with Dr. Kate Boyd, and they’ve been absolutely fantastic. I have thoroughly enjoyed this. S,o there have been some moments there that pop out in my memory right now. Things like, I had played a little bit of Beethoven before, and my undergraduate professor had told me to do something at the end of the phrase or to connect something or fill in the blank, right? He had told me to do something. And so now, as we’re doing it, she’ll be like, well, in Beethoven.
In general, we do these things, and it applies to this, or, in Baroque music, it’s different, and; this is the general rule, and instead of feeling like I learned a piece, I am learning more of what should apply to big picture principles not just specific. And it’s like with our students, we want to teach them the skills so they can apply them to things. And I think my undergraduate professor was also fantastic. I think I was just not listening or ready or, as we focus on that piece. And so I didn’t extrapolate it. So that has been very fantastic.
Amy: I have to pitch in real quick here and say this is episode number 40. And in episode 39, if anybody wants to jump back into that, Dr. Kate Boyd is actually hosting that podcast episode. And her topic that she’s sharing with us here on the Piano Pantry Podcast is about prepping students for college auditions. So if you want to get a taste of Valerie’s teacher, you can hear her in the previous episode of this podcast.
Valerie: That’s a great plug. She also has a YouTube series that she’s doing with some great content there as well under the Piano Prof.
Amy: Excellent. So you were mentioning piano literature or just like learning big picture things about ornamentation, different things like that. That was one of those aha moments for me, I think. I took a piano lit class, and the teacher at Ball State, the piano literature teacher, is amazing. But it is the hardest class I have taken in my life.
There was so much recommended reading on the list. I’m like, it’s not even possible. If this was the only class that I was taking that I could even read, but I feel like it wasn’t until then that I really had the aha moment of understanding how piano literature and styles fit into the time.
And I just feel like I got a little taste of that in your undergrad, and you get it, but it just continued to click more and more. And I guess it wasn’t so much about different periods. It was a little bit, but it was even more about the specific piano composers. And again, part of that’s because in undergrad I didn’t have piano pedagogy, it was just music history in general.
But it was really cool really getting to understand specifics about certain composers and styles, not just about broad, historical periods. And I think one of the other big aha things for me in my master’s degree was learning to play with artistry, like those little nuances and things that you can go to take it the extra mile. And I remember my teacher always saying things like, people are going to listen to you play and say, wow, she’s good. But when they hear you play, like with artistry, they’re going to go, wow. There’s just something about the way that she plays. It’s just that they don’t even know how to describe it because it goes that extra mile without even, maybe even knowing what’s happening. That was just one of those things that I always look back on with fondness and just, thankfulness, I guess you could say. That I got to learn and experience,
Valerie: Yeah, I think that is a real tribute to certain types of teachers, right? Yes. That they can really cultivate that in us. With my practice, this again might go back to the idea of my undergraduate studies: I just put my head down, worked hard, and got through. It was basically a five year program that I did in four years. And I think I practiced in that way, too. I put my head down, I got the stuff done. And then, I really would learn the piece and then try to add some artistry into it.
As opposed to, this semester, like, I am just learning some of the stuff, really getting, comfortable with some of the material I haven’t started memorizing yet, but I am, I don’t wanna say milking it right, but I’m really just, even as I’m in this early stage of some of these pieces, I’m enjoying creating something beautiful with that, and I think that some of the specific strategies Dr. Boyd has worked on me with have really helped me to see how to do that.
Amy: I don’t know if you’ve ever heard anybody say this, but I’ve heard people describe different degree levels as your undergrad is Like learning the profession, just learning about music in general and developing a deeper understanding of music.
Your master’s degree is about like becoming more of an artist or crafting your art a little bit more. I may not be saying this exactly the way that it goes, but, and then, you’re like, your doctoral degree is about giving back to your profession. And I love that progression of how, like, thinking about, okay, undergrad is learning the profession.
The master’s degree is refining the profession and then the doctoral degree is giving back to the profession. It’s really cool. It’s tied to what you were just saying, which is very interesting. I like that.
As we wrap up this episode, do you have any extra words of wisdom or points of advice for anyone who might be considering returning to school later in life?
Valerie: I think I would recommend that they check out different programs because so many programs have slight variations, and so you can find one that really fits your interests more so than others, considering especially in music, the faculty that you would be working with is a great thing to do. They were all happy to visit with me beforehand and do a sample lesson so I could get a feel for their style and things like that. So, exploring those.
And I think weighing what you can do in a degree program versus outside of a degree program is beneficial. For example, like working with specialists, you can pay them for lessons outside of a university degree, but I think that it is within the degree. You have access to more experts, and you often are networked with other people, so in working with one professor, they have occasionally hooked me into other people at other universities, which has also been very beneficial.
And so I think just looking at not just the benefits of the degree program, but your interaction with the people and the benefits of the university in general. There are also benefits outside of a music program but associated with the university.
A variety of things. I think that they’re very welcoming to non-traditional graduate students now. They’re used to that. Especially after having COVID and going online. A lot of them have the capability of not needing you to come every day to the university. That has made it a little bit more of a friendly experience. I think there are just a large number of benefits of doing it. I cannot say enough about it myself. And they let me stretch the program out, so I’m doing it for two years and three to accommodate. My work and family and all the things that I have going on. And they wouldn’t have blinked, denied it being stretched out even more. And so they were very accommodating.
Amy: That is all really great advice. Thank you very much for joining me today, Valerie, and I hope that if you are listening and you are considering going back to grad school, you will just jump right in and get it done because it’s a wonderful experience.
Valerie: Yes. It was enjoyable visiting with you.
Amy: Thanks again to Valerie for taking the time to be with us today and for sharing her experiences returning to grad school as a mature adult. Be sure and hit the subscribe button so new episodes will download every Tuesday morning automatically for you. If you’re online, you can follow me on Facebook at Piano Pantry or on Instagram at Amy Chaplin Piano.
It’s that time of year, Halloween is under three weeks away. If you’re still in search for some fun activities for your studio, check out my spooky classical music listening series available on pianopantry.com. It’s a free series of 13 fun videos such as Bach’s Toccata in Fugue and Dream of the Witch’s Sabbath by Berlioz.
That you can use in any way that you like. An optional accompanying studio-licensed listening guide is available for purchase that can be used as part of group classes, as an off-bench lab time, or as an at-home assignment. Here’s what one teacher had to say. My students have really enjoyed listening to the Halloween Lab videos.
They were really wowed by the glass harp and the Harry Potter theme piece. It was 7-year-old boy watching the Harry Potter theme yesterday. He normally gets fidgety watching a video, but he absolutely loved it. Thank you for choosing a video with a male pianist, too. I’m hoping he’s inspired for years to come.
Sincerely, Cheryl Lee Stringfield. Check out this resource through the link in the show notes. See you next week!
