Episode Summary
Rebekah Maxner is a Canadian composer, piano teacher and blogger with an international following. Her piano solos are published by the Royal Conservatory, RCM, London College, LCM, and listed in the NFMC.
Visit: https://rebekah.maxner.ca
Items Mentioned
Understanding Piano Parents: What Minor League Baseball Taught Me
Heath-proof your piano studio: Doctor-recommended steps
RCM Piano 2022 Celebration Series, 6th Edition [Syllabus Printables]
Three foods from Nova Scotia:
Transcript
Amy: Welcome to episode number 45 of the Piano Pantry podcast. 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. Today, I’m happy to share my conversation with Canadian composer, piano teacher, and fellow blogger, Rebekah Maxner.
I’ve been following Rebekah’s blog for a few years now and am continually inspired by her thoughtful content. Her piano solos are published by the Royal Conservatory, RCM, London College, LCM, and are in the NFMC. Here’s Rebekah.
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. Rebekah, I just cannot tell you how excited I am to have you. I actually told you when you first got on, when I heard the ding of the zoom, camera that you were entering the room, I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m so thrilled to be here talking to you too. So why don’t you start by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself professionally. I know you’ve got a lot of little things going on, like I do, besides just piano teaching, so we would love to hear about it.
Rebekah: My name is Rebekah Maxner. I’m a Canadian. I live in Nova Scotia, which is on the east coast. So, I live across the water from New York, so people can imagine where I am. I live in a small town called Hansport with my husband and we have three children for the ages of 14 to 22. And I’ve been teaching piano since I did the math for 27 years. I teach primarily beginner to intermediate students, but if one of my students continues to take lessons. I’ve gone up to the levels nine and 10 RCM with my students, but that doesn’t happen as often.
The majority of my studio is very comfortably intermediate and below. And I also blog. I have the piano at play blog and I started off my first year blogging. More often. And now I’m just so busy with so many things. I’m really trying to get one blog post a month. And I also compose. And so I have a piano e-sheet club, which is a subscription club. On the first day of every month, my subscription members get that brand new e-sheet, never been published before music that is from beginner to intermediate level. And it’s like a surprise every month. So I have my fingers in lots of little paint pots.
Amy: Now, how long have you been blogging too? I feel like I only discovered you online, maybe within the last couple of years, and I don’t honestly even remember how I first came across you, but I just want to say your blog is, right at this moment, one of my favorite blogs to follow. Like you just, I’m inspired by you so often.
Rebekah: Oh, thank you so much. I love writing. So, I started my Piano at Play blog in January 2019, and I’ve always wanted to blog. I’ve always had blogger heroes on my radar, and I’ve always been following these other amazing and informative piano teachers. And finally, I was just like, you know what? I have to do this. I have to do it.
Before that, in 2012, I had a Titanic piano blog where I researched music on the Titanic and the musicians because it’s a topic that’s just interesting to me. And that It ignited my love of writing. I’m not just a composer; I love writing. And so that’s what, and when I closed that blog down because it was a very specific topic, then I had the hook. I was hooked, and by 2019, I was like, I have to do this. So you discovered me pretty closely after I started.
Amy: I just have to say that I really appreciate your blog, especially that it is well written and articulate, and it just makes for a very pleasant reading experience. Plus, you just write a lot of just wonderful thought-provoking articles with lots of just really cool ideas. So I was wondering if maybe you could just spend a minute highlighting some of the blog posts that you find resonate the most with your readers.
Rebekah: I can mention different blog posts for different reasons. The one blog post that got the most hits in a single day was understanding piano parents, what I learned what baseball taught me about being a piano teacher, what being a baseball mom. It’s all about compassion towards the piano parent who has never played the piano and doesn’t know anything about piano lessons. And rather than thinking, Oh, why do I have to explain this simple thing to that piano parent, really putting yourself in their shoes. And as a baseball mom, I knew nothing about the game. I knew nothing about the different levels of the league and how the game played, and what the rules were. And so I didn’t understand the practices or anything. Like I didn’t understand anything. For the first time, when I was sitting on that bleacher bench, watching my kid play baseball, I understood how well-meaning piano parents feel about bringing their child to piano lessons. They don’t understand what piano practice is like. They don’t read music. And so this blog post, what being a baseball mom taught me about piano parents, got more than a thousand hits. And that’s with the stats. I’m not really collecting all the data because of filters and everything. That was how many I knew in one day. That post really resonated with me, and I got so many comments on Facebook.
Um, the blog post that I wrote that has the most hits of all time is Health Proof Your Piano Studio. And this came out during the Pan Pandemic, and I wrote it with my sister, who’s a medical doctor. I went to her house the last day before the lockdown, and I thought this is my last day to see my sister for I knew it was going to be a while and I had the basically the post written and she fact-checked it for me and gave me the medical terminology, and I wrote it. I was staying up until midnight every night during that first week of the lockdown of the first week that like NBA shut down. I really wanted to help piano teachers make really good informed decisions to keep themselves and their students safe, and I just worked so hard, and it paid off. That blog post reached so many thousands of teachers.
This year’s most popular post is about the Royal Conservatory of Music, where I wrote about the Redleaf Piano Works Collective, which I’m part of, all the music that we’ve written that has been selected by the Royal Conservatory for their publications and their syllabus, that can be played on exams. That post has really resonated with people because their new syllabus is out this year. And
Amy: That’s amazing. Congratulations.
Rebekah: Thank you.
Amy: That’s super exciting. Yeah, and if anybody follows the Piano Pantry’s Friday Fines post series that I do, Rebekah has made it onto my series quite a bit. I think she’s on there like every other post or something like that. Something great from Rebekah Maxner.
Rebekah: I, it’s always a thrill. It’s always a thrill when you choose me for your Friday Fines.
Amy: You were talking about sports and learning from baseball. And I just think that is so true. We often just forget about what we know, like we just assume everybody knows, and it’s hard to get away from what you know and realize that others don’t know that and that we have to train and transfer that knowledge to others. And I, you’re exactly right. It’s very easy to feel frustrated, but all we have to do is place ourselves in our client’s shoes and I’ve been using the word humanity recently in my last couple of podcast episodes, put the humanity back into it, put the person back into it and approach it from the person’s heart, like appreciating them and understanding them, what they’re coming from instead of just being frustrated.
Rebekah: Yes. That’s something that I’ve been working on in myself for over the past number of years is developing a fine-tuned, finer-tuned empathy. Just empathy for others, and I think that word is getting a lot of play right now, but it’s so important.
Amy: Give us a little picture of the day in the life of Rebekah. What does it look like? Maybe one day or just your general routine?
Rebekah: The first thing I do every day, if I remember, if I’m firing on all cylinders, is I check my menu. Because I have a four-week menu in my house.
Amy: Wow, that’s impressive.
Rebekah: Yeah. I also make sure that I have the ingredients ready to go for supper. So if I haven’t pulled out my meat from the freezer the night before, which sometimes I do, I make sure it’s out that morning. I make sure I have all the ingredients for my recipe. If I need to go to the store for anything, I know that I need to, and I work that. Schedule into my day. And so supper is the first thing I think about.
And then I usually get sucked in on my computer cause I have a lot on the go, and I have a lot of fun, interesting emails from people like you, like great, interesting people. And I just love connecting with people and answering their emails and organizing the events of the next few weeks that, yeah, need to be booked for and need to know what date it is and make sure my agenda is all written right so that, so that I don’t miss anything.
Amy: So logistics in the morning, right? Email and yes, looking ahead.
Rebekah: Now, if I’m home alone, which is one of my favorite kinds of days to have when all my lovely people go off in their directions. I will compose. It’s my favorite time to compose when I’m home alone and I can just, I don’t worry if anyone’s heard that bad sound I just made. Cause I, I composed through improvising. I have no fear. I just try, sounds, and get through that. So that is a possibility that I love to do in the morning.
Then, I plan my piano teaching day. So what I will do is I have all these little gift bags that I have my student’s materials in. So, each student has their own colored pencils and erasers. And so I get the student’s bags out that I teach that day, and I have them all lined up. I get out their teaching books like I have all the books that my students learn from, so I make sure they’re all open to the right pages with sticky notes and stuff, and I just get my mind wrapped around, okay, this is what we did last time, because I look and I remember what we did, and then I think this is where we might go today.
I never have hard and fast lesson plans because I find it can change on a dime if your student hasn’t practiced or has had a busy week or hasn’t been feeling well and haven’t had, they haven’t had as much practice. I try to have a general trajectory in mind of what we might do today. And then I make sure my studio is clean.
Amy: You are totally speaking my language, Rebekah. All of you prepping food in the morning and then getting your studio tidy.
Rebekah: Yes, yeah, because it looks more professional. And if you have a vacuumed floor, then they won’t notice the floor. If your floor looks all cruddy, then you’re like, I’m in somebody’s house and they haven’t cleaned it. That’s like a different vibe to your studio, whether it’s clean or not. Yeah. And then I’ll teach piano lessons. This year is the first year that I don’t have afternoon students at all. Nobody wanted afternoons. So I teach evenings. That’s never happened to me before.
Amy: So evenings are like five o’clock or later. Yes. Okay.
Rebekah: Yeah, I have a very small studio at this point. I only have between 12 and 15 students in any given year.
Amy: Okay, that was my next question, so that helps.
Rebekah: Yeah. , because I do so much. I earn part of my income from composing, and that gives me probably about a third of my income.
Amy: Okay, that’s wonderful.
Rebekah: Yeah, it is really nice that my name is out there, and that and the feedback I get is very positive; I get lots of videos of children playing my music. Yeah. It’s very gratifying work. After I teach piano lessons, quite often, that’s my favorite time of the evening.
And sometimes I will compose then too, right before bed. It settles my mind down. And your composing state the parts of your brain that you use to compose are very similar to the parts of the brain that, that dream. And so when you get ready for bed, it’s a very nice time to compose because it Gets your mind ready for sleep.
Amy: Fascinating. Wow. And also maybe after coming out of teaching you’re in that mindset too of being around your students and..
Rebekah: Plus, deadlines are very motivating. So I have this e-sheet that I have to put out on the first day of every month. Yes.
Amy: It’s good accountability, right?
Rebekah: It is great accountability. It is great. It’s one of my favorite projects ever.
Amy: Now, what’s one thing that helps you stay organized in your studio business? Maybe it’s a tool that you use or part of your routine or something like that. You mentioned a few things just about staying tidy and neat and clean, but do you have any other particular suggestions for teachers?
Rebekah: The thing that I would have to say for the entire length of my career that has helped me be organized is just simply Microsoft Excel. All of my math, all of my calculations in Excel. I worked for a construction company as I was putting myself through university, and I learned how to do payroll, and I learned how to do all of their wholesale markups, and we did it all in Excel. And that’s how I keep track of my tuition. That’s how I keep track of my materials fees and how much I’ve spent on each student and; I have all these formulas of how much they’ve paid, how much I’ve spent, and it all comes into this one column of how much more I can spend on them.
Amy: Excel has amazing, if you really know how to use Excel it’s incredible what it can do. But then, on the flip side, I think there are some teachers probably out there going, oh good, it’s just Excel. Oh, I can actually be organized and still use Excel, does it have to be a brand new app or something like that?
Rebekah: That’s right. That’s right. And I’ve heard of so many other apps that are available now, like MyMusicStaff and Tonara, I think, and they do these things, and I’m like, I’m curious, but then I’m like, I’m so fast at Excel. I really don’t need it; I don’t feel like I need any time-saving apps right now. I feel like I have that under control.
Amy: Yeah, and I think that’s a good point, basically, that teachers should just do what is comfortable for them and what works well don’t; you don’t have to feel pressure to do the latest and greatest if you have something that’s working, then do it. What’s your favorite thing about being a piano teacher?
Rebekah: This is my favorite question. My favorite thing about being a piano teacher is the flashes of creativity that happen in the middle of a piano lesson where there’s a child in front of me, and they might need a little extra help understanding something, or I might notice that they learn a little differently or that. They might need that extra little bit of a different kind of game or a different kind of explanation to understand what we’re doing right now. And with that child right in front of me, I have to dig deep into my imagination and think, what does this child need for me right now? What teacher do I have to be for this particular child right now? And I come up with a new game, or I come up with a new one. Teaching a concept or an analogy that will help them, and it happens right in the middle of the lesson, and that is so invigorating and exciting when that happens.
Amy: It’s not cookie cutter, right that you like I remember my grad school teacher. Now she was talking about, I think, more along the lines of more advanced teaching a little bit, but she used to make the analogy of being a doctor that you have to dig in and figure out. What’s going on? And then, like, how do we need to remedy this? And it’s the same even with younger students. How do I meet this student, and where are they? And how do I invigorate the student and make their lesson experience work for them?
Rebekah: Exactly. It’s almost diagnostic. Your little brain is working scientifically, but then you have to translate that into what a child will connect to and make it fun and make it into something that will really resonate with them.
Amy: So if you could look our listeners directly in the eye and just tell them your one very best piece of advice, what would it be?
Rebekah: I’ve been pondering this because the thoughts that have been going through my mind lately, even before we decided to have this chat, have been centered on searching for, I think oftentimes as teachers were looking for the right answers.
What is, how do you solve this hand position? How do you solve it? We’re looking for the answers. But I think beyond looking for the right answers and then having an answer that you cling to; it’s more important to look for the right questions. Are you asking the right questions about your own teaching?
And I believe that if you’re asking the right questions, the right answers will find themselves as you’re teaching. And when you find an answer, keep asking the questions because just because you’ve found an answer that works right now doesn’t mean that is the thing that is going to work forever. Like the answers keep changing.
I keep developing how I teach. I want to learn new ways of teaching my students. And I have a feeling that there’s more than one way to swing a bat. When I watch baseball on professional baseball with my husband. You see some guys up there and they’re wiggling it around, you see some guys and they swing it really fast.
I don’t know. Every baseball player seems to have a unique way of swinging the bat. So the question I’ve been asking lately is if professional players can all have very different ways of swinging a bat, but they can also hit the ball, then why, as piano teachers, do we try to teach every single piano student the same uniform handshake, for example?
Amy: Absolutely. Yep.
Rebekah: Is there one way that really works for everybody?
Amy: I think it’s also like thinking about things is not just how do we best teach this, but how does the student best learn this? How do we engage the student? And be a facilitator, not a teacher, thinking of ourselves as coaches and helping the students to discover things on their own and to come to their own conclusions and not just teaching them a concept and making them learn in a certain way. Like, how can we facilitate their learning and discovery?
Rebekah: That’s exactly what I’m talking about.
Amy: My final question in this piano teacher life realm has to do with food and I’m really excited to hear this. So, in Canada or Nova Scotia specifically, first of all, I meant to tell you this earlier, but I have been dying to go to Nova Scotia so someday when it actually makes my bucket list.
Rebekah: You have to look me up. You have to let me know so that you can come by.
Amy: I’ve always wanted to go to Prince Edward Island too. It’s that’s just so the whole Anne of Green Gables,
Rebekah: we’re only four hours away from PEI here.
Amy: Oh my goodness, what a dream. So, does Canada or Nova Scotia have any particular foods or unique meals that it’s known for? The only thing that I’ve ever had that I can think of is poutine, which is like French fries, basically with the gravy on it, right? Is that correct?
Rebekah: Gravy and cheese curds, yes.
Amy: Cheese curds, that’s right. Yeah.
Rebekah: Yes. My husband and I went up to Quebec City because that’s where poutine started. So we went up there this summer and had poutines where they were from, and they were very good. But yes, Nova Scotia has some very unique dishes. And the ones that I wanted to talk to you about are actually really traditional, and I didn’t realize this. My mom just always made a hodgepodge, which is literally a hodgepodge of veggies. You just throw in stuff.
You make it in the summer, when the vegetables are really small and still just growing so hodgepodge potatoes are the smallest little potatoes. And you basically cull your garden. So you throw them in the pot first. And then come the little baby carrots. The reason you make a hodgepodge is that you’re thinning your carrot patch so the other ones will grow bigger.
So you take the little ones, and you throw them in. You don’t even chop them. There’s just a full-size baby carrot. Put it in. And then the next thing that goes in are string beans. And you just snap them in two. And then the peas go in last. And it’s all done. Cooked in cream and butter.
Amy: Ooh, that’s never a bad thing.
Rebekah: No, it’s really good. And salt and pepper. So it’s such a simple recipe, and it is actually a really old recipe. I was just looking this up this morning so that I could sound intelligent as I talked about it. It’s an Acadian recipe from the Acadians. So they were here in the 16 and 1700s before the expulsion when they were taken down to the United States and dropped off in the various colonies down there before the independent, the War of Independence. And that’s where Cajun culture comes from in Louisiana. They come from the Nova Scotian Acadians. So, this dish is still here today. People still make it. If you look it up online, it’s a great, simple, delicious summer recipe.
Okay. I want to get on to garlic fingers. Garlic fingers are so good. They’re, it’s, so you make it on a pizza crust, and you butter the pizza crust warm. So the pizza, you warm it, you butter it. So the butter melts, you salt i,t and you put garlic on it. And then you put white cheese on it. And it’s so good. And I never knew that. I only realized this summer that they are from Nova Scotia. I just thought everyone ate garlic fingers. You order your pizza and your garlic fingers on the side.
And the next thing I wanted to talk about is a donair. So donairs are you put them in a wrap, it’s spiced meat sliced up really thin with raw onions so they’re nice and crunchy and tomatoes and then there’s a sweet white sauce that goes on top and this is what Greek immigrants started making in the 1980s in Halifax and then they switched the recipe around for the ingredients we have here in Nova Scotia.
Amy: Yeah, so this is what I would call gyro. So is it made with lamb’s meat? Like a traditional gyro?
Rebekah: No, it doesn’t have lamb’s meat. It’s like prepared spiced meat, and it turns out a rotisserie, and then they slice.
Amy: Yeah. Which is how gyro meat is as well. So I, but I’ve never heard the term donair. So I wonder, is it just a different word for gyro?
Rebekah: I don’t, because I’ve never, I don’t think I’ve ever had that.
Amy: I think it may be the same thing, but it’s just like a different term. But that is one of my favorite foods ever.
Rebekah: Oh, when you come to Nova Scotia, you will have to have a Donair and then tell me.
Amy: Now, so we can get to the personal side of things before we wrap up here. Do you have any hobbies or special interests outside of piano teaching?
Rebekah: I do. I love to stay active as much as I can, so I love biking. I ride my bicycle every nice day I can. We just had our last ride, I think the last ride of the season, because we had winter coming up two days ago. So we went
Amy: I was going to say, isn’t it always winter in Nova Scotia?
Rebekah: No, we have probably nine months of biking a year. Yeah, it’s really nice that the climate is getting warmer and warmer. We’re able to bike in March and we’re also able to bike in November. And so I would cycle maybe between 12 and 25 kilometers. For each time and it’s wow, we live on a really beautiful countryside farm. It’s just because I’m going to make sure you come now. I am for sure.
Amy: I’m going to come and visit.
Rebekah: You definitely have to. In the winter months, I do yoga, but I haven’t gotten into my yoga. Yeah. Yeah. But that’s coming up this week.
Amy: Is there anything in particular, Rebekah, that we have not covered today that you would really like to share with our listeners?
Rebekah: I think that for your own student’s sake, it’s far more valuable, and there’s far more value in you listening to everybody else’s voice, but then really deciding what your own voices as yourself as a teacher, rather than depending on someone else’s ideas completely. Meet your own students’ needs by weighing all the information that’s coming in and sorting it ou,t and then finding the right.
Amy: Making it your own.
Rebekah: Making it your own. That’s right. So, my blog, the reason I write my blog is simply to add to that discussion that’s out there. I hope that my ideas can inspire teachers to come up with what their students actually need.
Amy: Yeah, that’s great advice. Thank you so much for being with us today, Rebekah. It has been an absolute delight and an honor to chat with you.
Rebekah: It has been fantastic to hear your voice and to chat with you as well.
Amy: Thanks for showing up today to meet with Rebekah. Whether you follow her blog, subscribe to her monthly music program, or use her music with your students. I know you will be blessed. Just a reminder that you can find links to anything you heard us discuss today in the show notes. Be sure and hit the subscribe button so new episodes will download every Tuesday morning automatically for you.
If you’re online, follow me on Facebook at Piano Pantry or on Instagram at Amy Chaplin Piano. As we near the end of the year, we’re coming up on the final five episodes of 2022, and we’ll hit number 50. Can you believe we’re already 50 episodes in? I can’t. Thanks for showing up here each week, and I’ll look forward to hanging out again next week.
