Episode Summary
Amy chats with attendees from the 4th Piano Pantry Retreat – Florence Phillips, Laurie Bender, Shelley Pritt, and Laurel Carroll – from her home in Northeast Indiana.
Items Mentioned in this Episode
Transcript
Amy: Today, you’ll get to hear my chat with four teachers who attended the second session of the Piano Pantry Retreat this month. Florence Phillips, Lori Bender, Shelley Pritt, and Laurel Carroll. Each of these ladies worked really hard over the course of the two-and-a-half-day retreat to get their digital workspace in order.
We shared lots of cheers of relief when systems that were not working for them finally made their way into a more sustainable and manageable place. Let me just let you hear from one of the attendees directly. Luanne said this in her final review. Amy’s workshop is a must for anyone who uses a computer and phone.
She’s so organized, clear, and kind in her hands-on presentations. She’s very skilled, and if she didn’t know the answer, she immediately Googled it and helped us put it into action. We also had the privilege of participating in one of her podcasts as a group, so that was fun as an added bonus. Amy and her husband are consummate hosts, making you feel welcome in their beautiful home.
Everything was so well prepared and thought out. If ever there was a level two, I would certainly return. Visit pianopantry.com/retreat for more details and to join the email list to be notified when dates open up next year.
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 for and managing your studio while balancing life and home.
Welcome to the Piano Pantry podcast. For the first time, I have four ladies here in my home. For the Piano Pantry Retreat in Bluffton, Indiana. We’re sitting in my studio recording, and they’re all a little bit nervous. It’s their first time on a podcast. But I thought I would just like to have everybody go around and share your name, where you’re from, how you’ve gotten into your studio teaching, and just what your situation looks like today.
Florence: Okay, I’m Florence Phillips. I’m from Westchester, Pennsylvania. I grew up taking lessons from the same local MT& A teacher from the time I was four until 18, and then I ended up going on to get my, both my bachelor’s and my master’s in piano pedagogy. I ventured out onto my own with my own studio in 2020, and now, in 2023, I own and operate a multi-teacher music studio here in my hometown.
Laurie: I’m Lori Bender, and I grew up on a farm in Iowa and went to Wheaton College, I moved to Miami, where I taught first through fourth grade for 11 years, and I taught piano on this side because of a mother asked me to teach her daughter piano lessons one day after hearing me singing with my class and playing with them at the end of the day.
Amy: That happens a lot, doesn’t it? Yeah. Where someone asks you to teach piano, and then all of a sudden you’re into it.
Laurie: So what happened was I, there was a piano in my classroom, and at the end of the day while we were waiting for the parents to pick up the kids, I would just play on the piano, and they would sing along, and she just happened to ask me to teach her daughter piano, and that’s how it all began. And so then I missed the Midwest and my family, so I moved back to the Midwest to Chicago and continued teaching first grade and piano. Then, I retired from classroom teaching in 2012 and started my own piano and tutoring business.
Shelley: And I’m Shelley. I teach piano in Newark, Delaware. I grew up in a musical home where my dad was a band and choir director, and my mom was a pianist. I began teaching my senior year of high school with my piano teacher’s encouragement and help. I went on to receive a bachelor’s in pedagogy and a master’s in performance.
I have had various studio styles, sizes, and locations over the years, depending on my family stages, homeschooling, and a lot of other things. Right now, I have a diverse studio, with the majority of my students being of Asian, Indian, and African American descent.
Laurel: I’m Laurel Carroll. I grew up in Utah. I had a fabulous piano teacher. Teacher, education, music education then I went to college in California, and I graduated there, I got married I’ve basically taught for over 30 years now, in California, then my husband’s job moved us to Idaho, then I was in, now I’m in Maryland. Taught in several different situations quite unique, quite different I’d say. I teach in my home in a small town in Frederick County, Maryland. I have students from age five to age 74. I love teaching all ages, all levels, and all styles. It’s been enjoyable for over 30 years, and I hope to keep going.
Amy: Great. So one of my favorite questions is to ask everybody just to give us a little peek into what your routine is. So you can be specific or you can be general. You can tell us about a different variety of day routines, or if you have some consistency, you could just share what that looks like in your own life.
Florence: So every day looks a little bit different for me, and I do that pretty purposefully, and I enjoy it that way. For my studio and teaching wise, I have what I call long days. So that’s where I get to my studio anywhere between 9 or 10 a. m. and then I teach pretty much until 8, 8. 30, all day long. I’ll have a few breaks throughout. Obviously, I will take a break for lunch, and then we’ll have some little ones later. So that’s my long days and I normally have two long days a week, separated by a not long day. The other three days are shorter. So they’re either the afternoon, after school, or evening hours, so I get to start later. Or I do have, towards the end of the week, I just do some morning times. I like my Fridays; they’re pretty much 9 to 12, and then I feel like I get a head start on the weekend.
Laurie: I teach about 5 days a week, usually Monday through Thursday and Saturdays. 3 of those days I teach from about 2 until 7 or 8. On Saturdays, it can vary from three to nine hours sometimes. Two mornings a week, I also tutor a group of homeschooled students, whom I call my one-room schoolhouse. And so that’s a lot of fun, too.
Shelley: My studio is for my home, and I have a fairly standard schedule each day, which I very much enjoy. My Mondays and my mornings are busy with food prep, walking my dog, working in my flower and berry beds, and weekly Bible study. Typically, I do admin work after lunch, and then I begin teaching around 1. 30 or 2 until 7. 30. And if I’m not able to lesson plan, At the lesson, I do it right after, at the end of my day, so I don’t forget.
Laurel: I have a couple of major volunteer positions. I have one with the Music Teachers Association, the Maryland Music Teachers Association, and one at church. I have to juggle a bunch of different things. But for teaching, it’s nice. I have adult students. I have a set of adult students in the morning. And then, generally, One day a week I do that, and then generally it’s, I teach from 1 to 6, 630, I’ve got a few homeschool students from, so I just teach Monday to Thursday, and I have to have Friday off to try and catch up with, juggle everything else.
Amy: A little mental break. So, I wanted to just ask each of you one specific question now related to what your own teaching situation looks like. We’ll start with Florence. You recently, within the last year, went from being a solo independent piano teacher into owning your own multi teacher studio. So what made you make the switch?
Florence: There were several factors. I feel like one big springboard was I invested and hired a professional to build a website and do SEO and search engine optimization for that website for me. That really brought in a lot of inquiries. I had been building up word of mouth, but as soon as I did that and worked through that and my website was ranking at the top page of Google, that’s when I started getting in so many inquiries to where I build up quite a list, quite a waiting list. As I started seeing those inquiries come in and that momentum grow, I began thinking about How far I wanted to go with that. Do I want to stay just being an independent piano teacher? Or do I want to try to hire other teachers? And I weighed the pros and cons and the overhead costs and all the differences there are so many logistics that go into that, so last year, I started with just dipping my toe in the water with I hired a pianist friend and gave her a night of students at my studio I took my waiting list, and I plugged them in. I said, Hey, I have another teacher joining me. Would you like to start now? The majority did. So, from there, it snowballed. After I did that, then I got that ambition and I decided to keep going. So now I do have multiple teachers, a second instrument, with some voice teachers starting up and potential other instruments, and still a steady stream of inquiries. In short, it was a really incredible SEO by a talented professional, and then my own just decision to go for it.
Amy: It’s maybe, I don’t want to say backward, but like a lot of people might just make the decision I’m going to own a multi-teacher studio, and then you have to go find the students. Where you found the students first, and then you went into, okay, now I can offer, I have people to give to those teachers. That was a good way of going about it.
Laurie, you mentioned that you do tutoring as well as piano lessons, so I was just curious: how does your tutoring work inform your piano teaching and vice versa?
Laurie: I feel like my background as an elementary teacher and academic tutor has helped me identify different learning styles in my students, whether they be visual, auditory, kinesthetic, or reading and writing. And then I’m able to really focus on using that approach when I’m introducing new concepts.
I have some students who are, it’s almost like they have photographic memories, and they don’t even need notes or fingering written in, and I just know they’ll look at the piece and they’ll be able to play it. And then I have other kids who are very auditory learners. They can listen to a piece two or three times and play it perfectly almost right away. So it’s just helpful to know and bring that. My background as a teacher with learning styles into teaching piano. A lot of crossover.
Amy: That’s great. Shelly, I really enjoyed hearing about your diverse studio. And I guess the same question. How has the diversity of your studio informed your teaching and your outlook?
Shelley: I’ve had to become more precise and clear in my communication with parents which is always a good thing. Yes. But particularly so that we can all be on the same page and move forward together. More importantly, I’ve loved learning about their culture and their cultures and being curious about how they want to express it.
I’ve become more aware of different approaches to holidays, both American holidays and holidays from other countries, and cultural differences. Not all of them, but some of my students want to explore their musical heritage, so it’s been really interesting to try to find music for that. Yeah. We’ve had to be creative.
Amy: So, Laurel, you’ve studied and incorporated music learning theory principles into your studio. Why and how has this become an important part of your teaching philosophy?
Laurel: So I was taught in a traditional method. I still remember my John Thompson teaching fingers to play. And I, so I learned music, reading music from the beginning, and I was taught, I taught piano the way I was taught for many years.
Amy: Many of us do.
Laurel: Yes, exactly. It just made perfect sense. At one point, I had a student who had such incredible trouble that she couldn’t even hear if she was playing the piece correctly. She just, even if it was just a common piece. And I had heard this term called audiation. I don’t know where I heard it.
I just heard it, and I just had Google, so I Googled it. It opened up this whole new world, which is basically the work of Edwin Gordon, Dr. Edwin Gordon, and so the reason it’s changed is because it made sense to me. He says that the most natural way for all of us to learn music is through our ears and that, um, that as we do that, what I found is that as children play, With their ears, they’re not limited to a certain spot on the piano.
They can play the whole piano, and they have so much fun with it. It, they can develop their technique without having to try and focus on the notes and the reading, and the piano. So they just become much more fluent, much more musical. When you ask about how it’s a tricky process to take the theory into practical teaching, but basically just work on singing.
Singing is the beginning of our musicianship, so we actually Get up and do singing, we do moving, we do rhythm work, and so there’s still major challenges; every student is different, but I do find that students from the very beginning are, I’ve had some students I’ve just taught for a few months and this one boy, his rhythm was just he wasn’t able to keep a beat and now he’s just keeping a beat and it’s just amazing what a difference it makes.
Amy: Keeping the sound at the forefront of how you approach things from the very start.
Laurel: Yes.
Amy: So we’re here together because you are attending the Piano Pantry Retreat. What is it about the retreat that has been the most beneficial to you that you’re going to walk away with?
Florence: There are a couple of things here also. I think one of the first things, like from the very first day, was that I have a better understanding of each of my devices. I brought an iPhone, an iPad, and a laptop, so I know what I’m going to use each of those devices for, as opposed to a chaotic, I use this, but now I’m going to use my iPad, and then I go back. I know what apps I use and what I use each of them for. Also, a broader knowledge of apps that are really helpful and organizational tools. I really liked the bottom line of one of our sessions and it said, you have more control than you think.
Amy: Absolutely.
Florence: I’m leaving with much more control over my digital fingerprint and workspace.
Amy: Yeah, I love it. Laurie?
Laurie: I came to the retreat needing a new computer. But I don’t like my computer. I don’t like to check my emails. I rarely check them as it is. So I ha I brought a new MacBook Air, I brought a new iPad. I even brought my old MacBook and my iPhone, and I am thrilled to now, after having spent the last two days deciding which one I wanted to keep and what I felt the most comfortable working on. That I’m going to keep my iPad and do everything on that since it can pretty much do everything my computer could do For what I do on a computer.
Amy: I’m just more a more functional device. Yeah, it works well for you
Laurie: I’m just relieved to have that decision made. Yes
Amy: Great, Shelly.
Shelley: I agree with Florence. It really clarified how I should use each of my devices, and that was a big relief. I was feeling a lot of stress about missing different bloggers’ latest releases, and I felt like I needed to subscribe to everything and be on all their social media, and it was just it was a lot of clutter. I discovered Feedly and that is really going to help me better manage my time utilize my email better and help me I use social media for other things than just all of this stuff coming at me. That was a real inspiration. Great. Yeah.
Amy: Laurel?
Laurel: I would just say I feel it’s been life-changing in the respect that I feel like I’ve learned the things that were not working and the How to get them to work. I haven’t solved all my problems, but I know what my problems are and I had, I have, I actually have a few different email accounts, but it was causing a lot of issues and had a lot of different things, photos, different places, all these different things and Amy’s just been amazing to fix my problems.
Amy: I’m trying to figure out how to condense things a little bit. Yes. Close accounts and know that we don’t have to have three Gmail accounts.
Laurel: Yes, exactly. It’s just it’s just great. Because I like to be efficient, and it’s been so frustrating to feel so inefficient. And so I feel like I have a lot of tools for Learning how to be more efficient with my digital stuff.
Amy: Who won the award for the largest number of emails? Was it Laurel? Who was
Laurel: it? Oh, something around a hundred and fifty thousand. A hundred and fifty thousand emails. That was just one of my Gmail accounts.
Amy: Jennifer, from the last retreat, you’re good. I thought she had the most at 42,000.
Laurel: It’s crazy.
Amy: Awesome. Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today, ladies. And for spending time with me here in my home in Indiana, and I hope that moving forward, you will be able to walk a little bit lighter and go into your next season of teaching and life with a workspace that works for you and not against it.
The end.
Today’s tiny tip is to try using widgets on your iPhone or iPad. A widget will show you current information from your favorite apps at a glance, whether that be the weather app, your calendar, battery levels, or the last playlist you used on Spotify. Rather than just displaying an app icon, it’s more visual and information-driven.
There are two locations where you can use them, either on your home screen or in the widgets area, when you keep swiping to the right. You can access and add them by putting your device in edit mode, pressing and holding down an app to make them dance and wiggle, Then looking up in the left-hand corner of your iPhone and clicking on the plus symbol.
You’ll be able to see the variety of apps that have widgets available, but not all of them do. Be careful, though; some of these widgets can take up a lot of space on the precious real estate of your home screen. Before we go today, would you take a second to rate and review the podcast? It’s so easy. All you have to do is go back to the podcast screen, where you can see all the episodes of this podcast, and scroll down to the bottom.
There, you’ll find the area where you can easily rate and review the podcast. Thank you so much to Abigail, who said this, and I quote: Amy has so much to offer the independent teacher community. She’s a great model for continuously learning and innovating for the betterment of our and our student’s lives.
The podcast is such an accessible nugget of practical ideas each week. Thanks to Abigail and everyone else who has paused to share with me in this way. Next week, America celebrates Independence Day on Tuesday, the day this podcast usually drops, so I’ll be taking next week off. I’ll see you in two weeks.
Enjoy your holidays, everyone.
