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Episode Summary
In this episode, Amy chats with Gretchen Steffen, a stay-at-home mom who teaches 15 students two nights a week.
Gretchen shares her journey through her first three years of piano teaching. She has some great advice for anyone who is interested in getting started teaching but perhaps feeling inadequate in their own skills or unsure of whether it’s the right move.
Items Mentioned
Support the podcast on Patreon
Intro to Piano Pedagogy Course for High Schoolers with Christina Whitlock
Teacher Turboboost 2024 (Cincinnati, OH)
Related Content
Episode 074 – What I’m Rethinking
Episode 101 – ReThink, ReAdjust, and ReNew
Episode 116 – The Case for Your No Makeup Policy
Episode 117 – Embracing Micro and Macro Adjustments in Your Studio
Transcript
Amy: If you’re a newer piano teacher or are someone who’s looking to get started but maybe feeling unsure of yourself, today’s episode is for you. I’m Amy Chaplin, host of this podcast, and today in episode number 120, you’ll hear from a teacher who has just three years under her belt. It recently crossed my mind that most of the people we hear from in industry are those who have been teaching for years and years, if not decades.
I myself have been teaching piano for around 25 years total. While I am, of course, not negating that, I thought it would be fun for us to hear directly from a newer teacher to see what their journey has been like. I won’t share too many details right now, as you’ll hear our story in the conversation, but this guest is near and dear to my heart.
Gretchen Steffan is a stay-at-home mom who has been teaching piano for three years in Bluffton, Indiana. She teaches 15 students aged 6 to 14, two nights a week. If you enjoy this podcast and would like to help support the work going on here, Visit pianopantry.com/Patreon to become a patron.
Welcome to the podcast, Gretchen. I’m so excited to have you here today. We’re actually sitting in my home studio because Gretchen and I are from the same town. And we’ll share a little bit in a second about how we actually know each other. But first of all, why don’t you take a second to introduce yourself to the Listers? Where you teach, what your studio looks like, and so forth.
Gretchen: Thank you for having me, Amy. I’m very excited to be here today. And it’s great to reconnect with you and chat for a while. My name is Gretchen Steffan, and I teach piano lessons from home and in Bluffton, Indiana. I’ve been a piano teacher for about three years, and I teach from home two nights a week and two afternoons and evenings a week. I have 15 students, so as a stay-at-home mom, I find that to be a good outlet for me.
Amy: And you do all 30-minute lessons, is that correct?
Gretchen: Correct, yes. 30 minutes.
Amy: Okay, great. So Gretchen and I have known each other for about six years, right?
Gretchen: Yes, 2018.
Amy: So Gretchen is a former student of mine. She took piano lessons for quite a few years before coming to me as a young adult. So you would have been were you 18 when you came to me?
Gretchen: was yes,
Amy: Okay, and she already played, like, at the intermediate to late intermediate level, we’ll just put it that way, and spent four years and lessons with me, and then We just got talking about teaching, and she decided to start teaching piano lessons So fun like knowing each other and knowing that we’ve worked together and now here she is a colleague in piano teacher world. Why don’t you share a little bit about how you got into teaching?
Gretchen: Sure. Yeah. So I owe it all to you, to be honest, because You were the first, or you asked me if I would be interested in teaching because there’s a lot of need for piano teachers in our area. I felt uncomfortable with that for a little while, but I did think about it.
And just with your encouragement and guidance, decided, and you had referred me a few of your students from your wait list. My first students came from Amy, and that gave me the boost of motivation to get started with piano teaching. I knew that you enjoyed working with kids because hadn’t you considered teaching preschool or something like that?
Yeah, I did when I got married and started having my kids. I was taking elementary education classes, and I was almost through that, but it was just too much to be a stay-at-home mom, and I just decided that’s not what I wanted to do with my life for right now. So, I definitely have a heart for teaching, and I love children.
Amy: So you started your studio in 2021, is that right?
Gretchen: Yes, I started in the fall of 2000. 21. So this fall, it’ll be three years.
Amy: Okay. Yeah. And had piano teaching ever crossed your mind whatsoever before I even brought it up to you? Or was that a totally new revelation?
Gretchen: Yeah, it had. I, another piano teacher in the area who is my friend, had asked me before if I would be interested in teaching because she was considering quitting, and she just thought I’d be a good candidate. But I never really took it seriously before Amy mentioned it to me.
Amy: Have you ever taken any classes on how to be a piano teacher? Any pedagogy lessons or anything like that? What’s your experience been?
Gretchen: Yes. So, right when Amy was encouraging me to start teaching lessons, and I was nervous about it, she recommended a class that her friend, Christina Whitlock, taught on piano pedagogy for young teachers. And so I did that. It was just a short class, but with Amy’s encouragement and with that class, I feel like that equipped me more to start teaching and have an idea of like really where to go, just how to get started.
Amy: Yeah. One of the reasons I was excited to have Gretchen on is that I was telling her earlier a lot of times on podcasts and things like this: We have experienced teachers, and not very often do we hear from very brand new teachers. And I’m sure plenty of brand-new teachers are out there listening. What would you give as a point of advice? What were some things that were most helpful to you in getting started?
Gretchen: Yeah. So one of the big overwhelming things for me was just what curriculum do you even use? So they both recommended one, and I started doing a little research on them and asking questions, but that was really helpful. I think my impression was like that maybe for the young students like you had to really. Come up with your own order and figure out how to teach them, but really, the books themselves, the curriculums, lay out the order, so it’s a lot less pressure. Sure, you can switch things up, the order of things if you want to, but you don’t have to.
There is a good order. And I don’t think I maybe realized that until I started looking at the curriculums that they recommended. It wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as I initially expected.
Amy: I think that’s great advice. So, like the method books, they are there for a reason, and definitely have a step-by-step process. While seasoned teachers get to the point where you can go outside of that, as a new teacher, it’s a good structure to learn what are some of the pedagogical progressions, yeah, so you were feeling the pressure that maybe you had to figure out everything and then you realized, wait, I don’t have to just figure it all out. I can follow this as a guide.
Gretchen: Yes, for sure.
Amy: In what ways do you see yourself continuing to grow as a teacher?
Gretchen: Yeah. Yeah. So much has changed. When I started teaching almost three years ago. I feel like everything’s laid out differently. I have a lot more organization in how I have all my student’s books organized, how I have my books organized, and how, even just on the business side of things, I send out invoices, and I before didn’t. And so just a lot more organization, I have started looking into other curriculums or teaching methods. And I’m getting to the point where I can see what book out of the ones that I use A student might benefit from, and I teach a lot more theory.
I had an older transfer student and he was asking me more questions about theory than I was tending to teach to my younger students. So he encouraged me To start just teaching that more to even just to my younger students and definitely to him. So I feel like I have a more well-rounded education now, but I’m sure I have miles and miles to go as well.
Amy: That’s exciting to see, though in. As you said, it is important to be able to look at different method books out there and see how this one might be good for the student. That’s a huge point of progress. So yeah, that’s super exciting. What was the hardest part of getting started teaching?
Gretchen: For me, I think I just felt very underqualified because I’ve never gone to college for it, for piano teaching, or just for music in general. And I did not feel like that good of a player. And so I just would not have talked myself up to a good enough player to be able to teach. But that’s so silly because I knew the beginner stuff. And yeah, with Amy’s motivation, or just encouragement, and if she knew exactly how good I was playing because she was my teacher, so if she thought I was good enough to teach the beginning lessons, then I could trust that. And that gave me the motivation to overcome that mental. block
Amy: and I think you don’t ever, you can’t know whether something’s going to be good or right for you if you don’t try, so yes, you’re getting out there, like you said, overcoming that kind of fear of, am I good enough? Can I do this? You took that step forward, and here it’s been a wonderful thing for you.
Gretchen: Yes. Yeah. Going back to, I was…I had always wanted to be an elementary education major and become an elementary teacher…but I’ve also prioritized being a stay-at-home mom, so that’s not fitting into my life right now. This is just like the perfect balance, and maybe I was never meant to be an elementary school teacher, but a piano teacher, and I just, it’s just a perfect fit for my life right now.
Amy: You mentioned it being a perfect fit as a stay-at-home mom, so how has teaching impacted your day-to-day life?
Gretchen: Yes, so I do have several friends in my life who are also stay-at-home moms, and they just always want to do something with me or tell me that they get bored at home, and I can’t relate. For me, the two afternoons and evenings away from my children are just like a perfect balance, and I still feel like I’m with them most of the time. I’m still a stay-at-home mom, but the teaching energizes me, and I’m a very social person. So it’s not being social with adults, but I am being social with adult kids that are a lot older than my toddlers, and it just really gives me the energy to keep going home with my kids and the day-to-day monotonous tasks.
Amy: Was there anything that surprised you about teaching?
Gretchen: Yeah. So, I already mentioned it. It did surprise me that you can just in a way, follow the method book. And just, I, of course, know that different kids have different personalities and things, but it is really interesting how different kids learn and take to piano.
And what’s easy for one is so hard for another. And even just starting a brand new one–beginner in second or first grade is so different from a brand new beginner in fifth grade. It’s so interesting that you have to teach different ages differently, even if they’re beginners, or it is just fun. It’s definitely not teaching the same things over and over; even though you are, you teach them in different ways. So it keeps it interesting.
Amy: At the beginning of your studio, I remember coming over to your house and sitting down and helping you write out your policies. As a brand new teacher who we knew was just getting started and was maybe going to only teach one day a week at that time, some of the policies that we came up with weren’t exactly what I was doing, but it was what felt right for you at the time. So I’m curious how your studio has evolved over the past three years of your teaching.; you’ve already spoken a little bit about your teaching, I think, but also your policies and like the format of how you run your studio.
Gretchen: Yeah, right at the beginning, you encouraged me to be a lot more strict than I probably would have been in my policy space. Then I definitely would have been. So I am grateful for that. And I also didn’t know the families I was teaching students for, which was helpful. So I could just be slightly more strict than had I known the families. So, I originally had a written policy, and I had them all sign it.
As I’ve been teaching longer, I have started to teach more students go to my own church, and I know them outside of piano teaching. I know the families that I’ve been teaching from the beginning and I just don’t feel like a signed document is enough necessary for how I run my studio at the time.
So when I get a new student, I send like a texting a list of information over text instead of a formal email document that I have them sign. It includes the same information I had included in my email document that I had them sign, but I don’t do anything formal like signing.
And I, a couple of my policies I’m getting a little bit, I’m just changing as things go. So, making a few, I’m more open to rescheduling one or two lessons, as long as they’re not taking advantage. But if a kid is sick or tells me about a vacation in advance, I would reschedule that lesson for a different time that week. Just being a stay-at-home mom, I am pretty flexible. But before, I wouldn’t do that at all. It has changed somewhat.
Amy: Bringing in a lot of people that you had relationships with affected a little bit how you approached your policies you didn’t feel comfortable being overly formal about it with them. Have you come across any issues with that process? Or has that worked well for you so far?
Gretchen: I have had one or two of the families I teach question why I wasn’t giving them a refund. And I have had to stand up for that. And it is harder because I’m a very, much of a people pleaser, and I’m like, oh, it’s fine. But I think having those original strict policies where I would not offer refunds for last-minute cancellations with students’ families that I did not know personally has helped me be a little bit stronger in saying no to that. So…
Amy: One phrase I’ve always used is that the policies are there to protect us. They don’t have to be like completely. You know, black and white for you. Like I use that as a starting point to protect myself, and if I feel like then I need to give a little grace, then I consider each individual situation. But having a little bit stronger policy to start with can definitely cover you and give you that protection you need. Because you’re still running a business too, and your time is valuable,
Gretchen: yeah, so I still have the strict policies to begin with. I just feel like I’ve started offering grace in certain areas to certain, in certain situations.
Amy: Would you do anything differently if you had to start all over again?
Gretchen: That’s a great question because so much of what I do now is not the same. But a lot of that has just come from experience, but one big thing that I did differently at the beginning is I went through books a lot slower, and I wanted each student to master each piece perfectly. And now, I’m like, there’s two students that were probably bored out of their minds. We could have gone much faster, especially through the beginning material.
They can learn how to keep the beat 100 percent properly as they’re practicing other songs, not that song. That’s the one very big thing I wish I would have done differently, but as for overall organization and even just sending out invoices, I probably could have done that, but I didn’t have very many students, so it was way easier to keep track of without that. So those are things that I’ve learned just as I’ve got more students. So that’s not, wouldn’t directly apply to the beginning.
Amy: I think the biggest life lesson in all this, though, is that things don’t always have to be the same. Like you started one way, and then it changed a little bit the next year, and then it changed a little bit the next year. And we just have to be continuously rethinking whether what we’re doing is working for us and our students and like reassess. And I think that it’s exciting for you to discover that students don’t have to master every single piece in a method book. You can use the progression, but I skipped stuff all the time, and I was the same way.
In the early days, I thought that I had to have them do every single piece, and it had to be absolutely perfectly polished. And now I get them to the point where they’re playing it fairly confidently, and we are incorporating elements. But if there’s something there that’s not absolutely perfect, I don’t worry about it.
Yeah. It’s better to see what the students need and where they’re at. And jump them ahead if they need to. And the kids like that, too, I think. Although I have had some that are like, I have to learn every piece. I’m like, no, you don’t.
Gretchen: That is funny. Yeah.
Amy: Is there anything we haven’t talked about today that you think would be helpful to any other new teachers out there?
Gretchen: Yeah. I would just say, don’t be worried about your own incompetencies; just give it a try. It’s not that hard to follow a method book. And if you end up hating it, you can stop. But if you end up loving it, great. There was a young girl in our church who was like, Oh, I want to start teaching lessons. It sounds so fun, but I’m busy. And I was just really encouraging her to get out and try it. She didn’t because of what she chose to do instead. But it just, I would just encourage anyone that’s thinking about it to give it a try.
Amy: That’s great advice, Gretchen. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It’s been so fun doing this with you.
Gretchen: Yeah, it has. Thank you for inviting me.
Amy: Thanks to all my friends on Patreon, including Lisa D. for funding this podcast and cheering on this content. For 4 or 7 a month, you can also become a patron. Visit PianoPantry.com/Patreon for more details.
Finally, I just wanted to let everyone know that if you’re still making summer plans, consider attending the Music Teacher Turbo Boost in July, hosted by Nicola Canton of Colorful Keys and Vibrant Music Teaching I’m excited to be one of the featured guest speakers and can’t wait to gather with you all in Cincinnati. Get that link, as well as everything mentioned today, at PianoPantry.com/podast/episode120.
I’ve also included links in the show notes to some related content that might be helpful to newer teachers especially to check out. Have a great day!
