Episode Summary
Anna Haugen began teaching piano lessons at the early age of 16 and has continued teaching for the past 28 years. Anna is married and has four children. She lives in St Paul, MN. This year, Anna took a sabbatical from teaching to travel the United States with her husband and two younger daughters for six months. They have visited over 20 states. Anna has loved the travel experience but is looking forward to returning home to resume teaching in May after six months of living out of a suitcase.
Find Anna on Instagram @midlifecreativetravels
Items Mentioned
Episode 035 – Teacher Talk with Anna Fagan (RV Piano Teacher)
Transcript
Amy: Hey there, teachers. I’m Amy Chaplin, the host of this podcast, where we chat a lot about living the life of an independent music teacher. Today, you’ll hear from Anna Haugen, a piano teacher on a special life adventure. Anna has a blog called Midlife Creative that I’ve been following for a while. When I saw her begin sharing her family’s unique plans, I knew I wanted to get her on the podcast.
In this episode, Anna shares some background on their trip, her favorite destinations, and how she handled her studio in this time. Even more importantly though, I think you’ll be inspired hearing her story of how the intentional time away has helped create space for clarity in her life and business.
Anna Haugen began teaching piano lessons at the early age of 16 and has continued teaching for the past 28 years. Anna is married and has four children. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. This year, Anna took a sabbatical from teaching to travel the United States with her husband and two younger daughters.
For six months, they’ve visited over 20 states. Anna has loved the travel experience, but is looking forward to returning home, to resume teaching in May after six months of living out of a suitcase. You can follow Anna on Instagram at midlife creative travels, or on her blog, midlife creative.org.
Thank you so much for coming on the Piano Pantry podcast. Anna. I’m really excited to share your story with our listeners today. Why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself? Where you’re from, how you came to teaching, and also what your studio has looked like in the past and what it looks like now.
Anna: I’m from st. Paul, Minnesota. I started teaching way back in high school when I was 16, and then I continued to teach through college. And then after college, I needed my own space, so I was looking for a place to rent. My husband and I were doing laundry at the laundromat, and we saw a for rent sign on the door, and my husband said, Do you think that could be a good studio space? And I laughed. But we were in a really small town, and there just were not a lot of rental spaces available. So I ended up renting that laundry mat space for a while. And that is definitely the most interesting place that I’ve taught.
And then after that period of teaching in that small town, I moved to the big city and I taught for a studio called All 12 Notes, and I really enjoyed teaching alongside other teachers in that studio space. It was a lot of fun, but then that studio ended up having to close, and so from that point on, I started traveling to students houses because all of those students lived in the same neighborhood. So it was really easy for me to go from house to house and to teach all of those students in just a number of hours.
Amy: About how many students have you had doing this travel teaching?
Anna: I started at a very small age, as most of us do. I started with two students. And then word spread, because when you are in a person’s house, oftentimes a neighbor will come by and say, Oh, you’re a piano teacher. Could you come to my house too? And pretty soon, you have a waiting list of people that want to take lessons. Currentl,y I have about 30 students. I have had up to 45 at the highest, and that was a bit too much. But my sweet spot is around 30 students.
Amy: Your studio doesn’t quite look the same right now. Tell us a little bit about why that is.
Anna: I’m currently on a six-month road trip with my husband and our two daughters, who are ages 8 and 12. We took them out of school to homeschool. I told my students about six months before we left that I would be leaving and gave them an opportunity to look for other local teachers. I gave them a list of possible teachers that they could have while I was away.
And then we headed out on this road trip. We have been gone since November. It’s currently The end of February, and we will be traveling until May 1st. at that time, I will resume teaching and go back to St. Paul. And I think that quite a few of my students, if not all of them, will continue at that point.
Amy: I think a lot of teachers are jealous of you right now, getting to travel the U. S. for six months. It’s a really pretty amazing adventure, which is exactly why I wanted to have you on this podcast. First of all, I guess I want to ask, how did your family decide how to embark on an adventure like this? Were you inspired? Did you see other people doing something? Because this is a pretty extreme situation that you don’t see people doing very often.
Anna: My husband is a big thinker. And he’s an idea guy. So we were on a road trip, and we were just driving along, just him and I, and he said, what if we went on a really long trip? What if we took a trip across the country? We’ve always lived in Minnesota. We’ve never left Minnesota for winter. What would it be like to see what it might be like to live in some of these warmer climates? And, of course, that was very appealing to me.
But then when I started to think about the details of what all it would involve, I just got cold feet, and I was like, I don’t think this is a good idea. And it took about six months for me to finally say yes. But the whole time, I just knew that this was something that I really wanted to do. And I couldn’t let all of these unknowns prevent me from taking this leap. And from that time forward, it just feels like the pieces have fallen into place.
We met this other family who had done a similar trip. They have three kids, and they have traveled the country for nine months. And they had, they didn’t have an RV. So that’s the question that I get asked a lot is do you have an RV? And we just have our van. This other family just had their van too. And when I met them, I said, how in the world can you travel for nine months without an RV? Isn’t that expensive? And they said, no, we just thought about people that we knew all over the place, and we contacted them and said, could we stay with you for two weeks? At each place. And so hearing their story just gave me confidence that this was something that was possible.
Amy: Yeah, so I had followed your blog for a while already, and then I saw that you had been doing this, so I’ve been following you. And I love that it’s just a way that you can just experience life in another way, it doesn’t have to be permanent. It’s just a short-term adventure. And, like you said, you get to know what it feels like to live in Arizona. Which is I think where you’re at right now, correct?
Anna: Yeah. Yeah.
Amy: There is a big difference in temperature from Minnesota, right?
Anna: Definitely. They have two feet of snow back home.
Amy: So, how have your students reacted? What was their response when you told them that you were going to take off for six months? Did you tell them that this was indefinite and that you didn’t know for sure what was going to happen if you were going to return, like your intention was maybe to return, but I don’t know. How did that work?
Anna: My husband would have said he would not want to return, but I always had the intention of returning because both of our families are in Minnesota, and our kids love it there. And I have all my students who I would find it very hard to part with. And so I was very clear in letting them know that I would be coming back. And I think a couple of them didn’t believe me, to this day, I have this one mom and every time I email to check it, she said, are you sure? Are you sure you’re coming back?
Amy: Yeah, are you sure you’re going to go on this big adventure and want to come home afterward?
Anna: But for the most part, I was surprised at how excited they were for me. A lot of them just acted like this was the coolest thing that they’d ever heard of.
Amy: Yeah.
Anna: So that really helped because I knew that I wasn’t letting them down and that they were excited about this adventure, probably just as much as I was, if not more. I would say about half of them found other teachers. And as I’ve been contacting them for the last couple of weeks, it sounds like a couple of them are going to stay with those new teachers. But the majority will be coming back.
Amy: And that’s something you knew going into it, though, that was a possibility.
Anna: Exactly. And I’m the type of person that doesn’t take that personally. I’ve actually even handed students off that I feel like I’m not the best fit for.
Amy: Oh yeah, me too.
Anna: And so it’s really fun to see a couple of these students, especially a couple of my boy’s students, they found a male teacher, and they really connect with a male teacher differently. Whatever works, and I just want the best for all my students.
Amy: Now, are you doing any teaching at all at this time? Are you doing any online students at all?
Anna: I have not had any online lessons. I’m intentionally taking a pretty solid break just because I think a lot of the purpose for this trip is to have time to reflect on my own personal life and work on my marriage and work on my family. And think about what the future might look like in the next 10 years.
I have had a few conversations over email with my students and a couple of texts. I had one mom send me videos of her kids playing the piano, which I appreciated. The surprising thing that has happened on this trip is I’ve had the opportunity to meet a couple of piano teachers who live in different states.
Amy: Oh fun! Yes, I have seen pictures of you having lunch with Anna Fagan. Do you remember? The RV t-shirt that was on, I think it was episode 40, maybe, or 35? Yeah,
Anna: that was really fun. I’m going to have lunch with Amy Elmore, another piano teacher that I’ve met online at Keys to Praise on Instagram.
Another really cool thing that has happened. This is not with a current student, but when we were in Florida, we were kayaking. And I heard someone say my name and I turned around and all of a sudden I see a former student of mine who is now in college. I started teaching him when he was five, and he was one of my favorite students.
He took lessons almost all the way to high school. And he and his family were on vacation, and they just happened to be at the same state park. Oh, my goodness. What a surprise to see a former student.
Amy: That is crazy. What an unusual coincidence. Now, do your daughters play piano? And if so have they been able to incorporate their playing into your current situation? Or what does that look like for them?
Anna: Yeah, I actually have four children. My two older kids are in college,e and they have not taken lessons. I tried when they were young and it was just a struggle. And then I have the two younger kids that are on the trip with me. One is 12, and one is eight, and the eight-year-old has an interest in playing. So I have tried to have some lessons with her just in the past couple of years, and she has participated in recitals, but we haven’t done lessons on the trip just because we haven’t had a piano. Which has probably been the hardest the thing that I’ve missed the most. Not having a piano because, as teachers, we take for granted that we always have an instrument that we can just go sit down and play. We’ve probably always had that, right? Yeah. But to not have that, and to be weeks and weeks without sitting at the piano, it’s been hard.
Amy: So if there’s any piano teachers out there that are interested in doing something similar to what you and your family are doing, do you have any advice on how to proceed or anything maybe you would do differently next time?
Anna: I think that I would encourage teachers to take a little pause in their teaching and think about an intentional season of rest. It does not have to be six months. It could be one month. I know that for me, I have had seasons of burnout. The first one that comes to mind was when one of my kids was born, and I had a newborn, and I was trying to juggle 30 students and teaching five days a week.
And it was just a lot, and one thing I learned in that season was that I needed a day off. A huge game changer for me has been taking Fridays off, and those Fridays off have been what have led me to travel because I’ve had that little time to think, to journal, and to dream a little bit. And when you’re just going all the time, you don’t have time to think about what you want because you’re just so busy.
And so even if teachers could just think about taking just a little bit of time off. I know two weeks is awesome. And most of us get that at Christmas. And some of us take a month off in the summertime. But there’s something about getting out of your house. And getting into a new environment where you step away from a lot of the responsibilities. That you have and just take some time to breathe and to think about who you are, because I think a lot of times we just run around following other people’s advice and other people’s example, and we don’t think about who we want to be as teachers. And a trip like this is just great for reflecting on some of those big questions.
Amy: That is such amazingly wise advice, Anna. I love that. I agree. And it is hard to do six months at a time, but if teachers can just find those little gaps like you said, just where we can have some time to just free our minds a little bit because you’re just so used to your constant go.
I’m the same way. Fridays have become an off-limits for me for teaching anymore. And with my husband, he works from home now. So that’s also opened doors for us to have a long weekend if we needed, away somewhere, even just three days. And that has been huge, just having that flexibility.
And another thing you mentioned taking a couple of weeks at Christmas, but I have started taking a couple of weeks at spring break in March because I’ve learned a lot of times there are conferences that go on, and I might take off the week to go to an MTNA conference, but that’s not while it’s rejuvenating to be with other teachers. It’s also not really a break because you’re still technically working. So I’ve learned that the two-week break is It’s very much needed after the winter months. And so that’s been something that I’ve been doing in my studio.
So, has this break inspired you to make any particular changes in your studio with the downtime and the reflection? Is there anything that you’re going to maybe let go of and introduce new and fresh when you return?
Anna: Yes. I have lots of things that I want to change when I get back. And hopefully, that is not just in my mind but will actually happen. One of the ways that I’m going to ensure that I make these changes is I have decided to hire a business coach.
And it’s something that I have never done before. I’ve been teaching for many years, but I’ve realized that I have a lot more to learn. Having someone help me give me deadlines and push me to do some of these things that I’ve always wanted to do is going to be really helpful.
One of the things that I’m hoping to add to my studio is a pre-piano class for preschoolers. That’s something I’ve never done before. And I also want to add group performance classes along with the individual lessons. It’s been a challenge going house to house because I haven’t had my own space, but I’ve realized that’s not an excuse. And that my students need that time with other kids. So I’m going, I’m bound and determined to find a space to have group classes. And I’m hoping to do them maybe every eight weeks.
Amy: Let’s hear a little bit more about your actual trip. And I’m curious what some of your favorite places that you visited are.
Anna: I’m an ocean girl. So anytime I can be close to the ocean. I am in love. I love Florida, and we stayed in Naples for a bit, and they have the most incredible sunsets. You can go out on the sandy beach and see the sunset almost every evening. I thought about how when I’m teaching piano, I really don’t get to see any sunsets. Because that’s our time to teach, right? Right through the dinner hour, right through the sunset. That has been a joy.
I also love mountains. We are currently in Tucson, Arizona. And we are surrounded by mountains. That has been a fun experience for our kids because they had never seen a mountain before we went on this trip.
One of my favorite places that we visited was Carlsbad Caverns National Park. It’s in New Mexico, and it’s this huge cave that you walk down into, and it’s just a magnificent cathedral like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
We also visited a national park called White Sands in New Mexico, and it’s really hard to describe but the whole park is this Beautiful white sand that almost looks like snow in the picture that it looks like we’re in the middle of a field of snow, but it’s all sand and they give you these sleds that you can slide down the sand dunes. So the kids really enjoyed that a lot.
Amy: That sounds fabulous.
Anna: At the time of our recording, we are just about to head out to California, a state that I’ve never been to. And I’m really looking forward to driving up the Pacific Coast Highway.
Amy: I think I have some new vacation spots to add to my list now.
Is there anything else that you would like to share with our teachers today before we close out our time together, Anna?
Anna: I think I just want to reiterate what I said before about the importance of self care. And teachers, you give so much to your students. You are some of the most generous and giving people that I’ve ever met, and I just hope that you can give that same care to yourself.
And so if you’re feeling tired or you’re feeling discouraged, I would love it if you just take a day off and find a way to just do something that you love. If you love hiking, go outside and take a walk. If you love going out to eat, find your favorite restaurant. If you love playing your instrument, play your instrument. I just think it’s so important for us to take care of ourselves as teachers and encourage each other to do that.
Amy: That’s wonderful advice.
Where can listeners find you, Anna, if they want to continue following your travels?
Anna: I have a blog where I’ve been writing about the trip and posting photos. And the address for the blog is midlifecreative.org.
Amy: And we’ll post a link to that in the show notes.
Thank you so much for being on today. It’s been really fun hearing about this adventure and your studio life and I just appreciate all of the encouragement that you’ve given to teachers today.
Anna: Thank you so much.
Amy: I think Anne is on to something. When you’re an independent music teacher and small business owner, it’s easy to just work, work, work because we’re the only ones making it happen. Believe me, I know. My husband and I both grew up in families with small businesses. It can be hard to give yourself time away to gain mental clarity and renewal.
That’s one of the reasons I created the Piano Pantry Retreat, a special pampered getaway for my piano teacher friends. Treat yourself to this three-day retreat where you, along with a very small handful of other teachers, gather together to clean up our digital workspaces in a relaxed environment.
Here’s what Nicole Douglas, one of the attendees had to say. Amy is the ultimate host. Her lovely home is situated perfectly between beautiful farmlands and a small town. We even got to see deer while on the porch. The weather was perfect for enjoying the outdoors too. It was truly a getaway to help relieve stress.
and get on top of running our studios. We had intense work sessions and then breaks to take walks or read a book or drink tea on the porch. And then we had amazing meals in Amy’s top of the line kitchen, definitely planning to come back again. If you’re interested in this retreat, you can get more information at pianopantry.
com forward slash retreat. See you next week.
