185 – Teacher Talk: Retreat at Piano Manor

You’re listening to episode 185 of the Piano Pantry Podcast. I’m Amy Chaplin, a piano teacher from Indiana who loves sharing practical and sustainable rhythms for your teacher life.

Today you’ll get to hear about a professional development event that I find to be incredibly practical both because of its unique format as well as the different types of topics that are covered. It’s an event put on my my friend Joy Morin. I’ll let her tell you more about it here in a minute.

First, I want let you know I’ve extended the early bird discount for my Organize Your Life Digital Retreat I host in my home each summer in Indiana. This will be the 7th event I’ve hosted over the past 5 years.

Like the retreat you’ll hear about today, it’s also incredibly unique in that there is literally no other event out there like it where we address the digital workspace part of our professional lives and not just our teaching.

Together we’ll address everyday work areas like email, photos & videos, devices, file management, and more. If you’re tired of digging through digital clutter and are ready to start your school year feeling more in control of your computer, files, and more, this retreat is right where you need to be. Register by July 1 to get $40 off or by July 15 for $20 off. Visit PianoPantry.com/retreat for details and to submit your interest.

OK, now on to today’s episode. Last week I catered this event as I always do in Michigan and thought it would be fun to hear directly from the attendees on their experiences just like I’ve done here on the podcast with teacher talk episodes with attendees at my own retreat.

Joy will first share a little about the event itself and then you’ll hear little snippets from 8 of the 17 attendees. They were given a few prompts they could just from so you’ll hear some different thoughts from each. I started by voicing the prompts but decided after the first one to just have them answer on their own which is why they first one includes my voice.

Enjoy!

So Joy, just go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience.

Joy: Hi, I’m Joy Morin. I’m a piano teacher in the Ann Arbor, Michigan area, and a blogger at colorinmypiano.com, and a friend of Amy’s.

Amy: And what is this event that we’re at?

Joy: This is Retreat at Piano Manor. This is a three-day event that I’ve held six times now. This is the sixth time. It’s an event for a small group of teachers, roughly 15, give or take, teachers to come together and, enjoy conversation and learning together and relaxing together, and it’s just been really fun as an event. I, I just like to organize things, and I love to talk about teaching, and so it’s been a fun thing to organize with fellow teachers.

Amy: What inspired you to start this event?

Joy: I started it in 2017. Uh, my husband and I at the time were renting a really big, old farmhouse, and the house was much bigger than what we needed, but, it was very affordable for us and it works great for running my studio. But I just, you know, was looking around at this big house, and there were six bedrooms, four big bedrooms upstairs and two smaller bedrooms downstairs, and I thought, “We- I need to, like, fill this house with, you know, teachers or people.

We need to do something with this house while we’re here.” And so it inspired me to hold an event for teachers. And so that, I came up with that name of Retreat at Piano Manor, and just, you know, put, put out a announcement, I guess, about the event on my blog and just kinda hoped for the best that there’d be teachers interested in the idea.

And there were, so we had a nice group of teachers that year, and I asked Amy to be my caterer, and she did a fabulous job. I’m so grateful for her to, for covering the food aspect of the events, so I can focus on the programming part, and, um, you know, hosting an event for teachers

Amy: What are some of the themes that you’ve done, and how do you go about choosing a theme?

Joy: The first year, the theme that I chose was on piano methods. And I, had been collecting old piano methods for quite some time, and had them organized on my shelf chronologically from the oldest ones I could find all the way to the current methods of today, and, had just always enjoyed, you know, l- looking at the books and trying to learn from the sequencing and the pedagogy embedded in those method books.

And so that was just sort of my, my interest and my fascination at the time and, and still is but that was the initial theme that I decided was that we would get together and we would pour through all of these books, old and new, and just sort of look for trends and things that changed over time with these different method books and, you know, just enjoy that together.

Each year I have changed the theme just to keep things interesting and, and, and that helps a lot of teachers to come back, you know, in, um, subsequent events. Um, so a couple of the other themes I’ve done, I think the next year was, uh, teaching piano technique, specifically looking at beginner students just to give it kind of a focus ’cause that can be a really big topic, too.

And then there was a year we also did creativity and improvisation, so we looked at a wide variety of resources available out there for us as teachers to use with our students.

Amy: What was the theme this year, and what were some of your goals for the teachers that attended?

Joy: This year, the theme, I called it “By Our Own Ears: Hearing What We Teach, “and my goal with this theme was t- for us to really work on our own, ear training, if you will, or I’ll use the word audiation, our own musical minds.

What can we hear? Can we hear the music that we tend to teach or play and understand that music? What’s the, the, the, uh, level of comprehension we have with that music? And, so this event, my, my vision for it was that we would have this, like, luxurious opportunity to work on our own ears and work on our own musicianship together.

So that’s what I tried to think about as I designed everything about the schedule and the activities that we would do together is that we could really just focus on our own musicianship and our own ears and our own, inner musician.

Amy: How has running this event over the past nine years been fulfilling for you personally and professionally?

Joy: Oh, it’s very fulfilling. I’ve, I love to organize things. I love to get together with other teachers and just talk and connect and learn from each other and ask questions and, you know, share our, both our problems as well as our successes together. And it’s just so much fun to, to have this privilege of organizing something, having this vision for something, and have other teachers be on board and wanna share that same sort of experience together.

Amy: So tell us, when is gonna be the next retreat, and do you have any ideas on what the theme is, or do you like to keep it secret and then reveal it?

Joy: I think often I don’t quite know what the next theme is going to be yet until it gets closer. And so I would tend to be a little more secretive perhaps and keep it a surprise.

But, I do feel confident enough in what I think the next theme will likely be, so I don’t mind sharing. And of course, it, I might change my mind, so I will always, you know use that caveat. But I’m thinking for the next retreat, I’m, I’m likely going to take a year and then do it two years from now, just with other summer things that I wanna be able to do.

And I have two young kids right now, and summertime – fills up really quickly. But so two years from now in 2028, I’m thinking that our theme will be focused on reading and writing music. And my idea here is to approach that from the perspective of audiation, Gordon’s music learning theory, much like we did for this year’s retreat.

But looking at that lens of, you know, when we have that foundation of experiencing music, you know, as sound and, bringing the syllables and labels to that, our, you know, and increasing our understanding, being able to use music kind of spontaneously and think in it just like we do with language, and then the reading and writing piece.

So that’s sort of the, the way that I’d like to approach that so that we are working on our notational audiation, as Gordon liked to call it.

Amy: Well, thanks so much for sharing about this event with us, Joy. It’s been a delight to do the event with you these past nine years, and I look forward to many more.

Joy: Thanks so much, Amy. Thanks for the idea to do this, and, uh, as always, for being my faithful caterer for these events.

Angie: My name is Angie Lim. I’m from Davis, California, and this is my first time attending the piano teacher retreat. There are so many favorite things, but if I have to name one of the most, is the singing and the dancing movement with the rhythm.

Amy: And how has it felt having your own musicianship challenged?

Angie: I would say being inspired more than being challenged. It’s just wonderful. It’s almost like this is part of me that being waking up to, that is something so important and so close to my heart. I love it.

Amy: And what’s one thing that took you by surprise the most?

Angie: Is I thought I was not gonna teach any more young beginners, because there’s no way to make them sit down at a piano for 30 minutes. But after this piano retreat, through learning this music learning theory, I see a light and a possibility, and even kinda excited that I think I am willing to accept young beginners again.

My name is Mary Simmons, and I am from

Mary: Lansing, Michigan. This is my third time coming to one of Joy’s retreats. I always like the whole thing, especially Amy’s food. I had heard of Gordon. I think the first time I learned about him was at the first retreat that I came to, that Joy had, and the new resource is that there are other people who have taken his work and taken it further.

And so I’ve learned about, uh, Mary Ellen Pinzino, and, I’m really excited about, uh, digging more deeply into her work and finding out how I can utilize it in my own piano teaching.

Susan: My name is Susan Crosser. I am from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and this is my first time attending this retreat. The favorite part has been the exciting stimulation of being with all these other wonderful musicians who are also searching for new things or the best way to do what they are already doing well.

I feel like the most a challenging thing about my musicianship has been new things that I know are true and natural and logical, but I just haven’t applied them specifically to my teaching. And I am so excited about figuring out how I can do this and make what I’m doing right now and love be even better.

And I thank Joy for being here, and also Amy for her wonderful food.

Barb: I’m Barb Collins, and I’m from Port Huron, Michigan. And this is the first time I’ve been to the retreat. They always sound really intriguing, and I’m glad to try it. I think so far the best part was seeing actual kids doing these exercises that we had done, ’cause I’ve been wondering, you know how do kids react to this.

And so that was very, very good. I’m a workshop junkie, and a lot of times at workshops you hear the same things over and over and over again, and you go, “Oh yeah, I remember hearing that. I should be doing that.” But this is so new and has so many cool implications that, I think, you know, looking at the…

I’ve always been interested in learning theory and how people learn, so I think there are some things even an old dog can use in my teaching.

Diana: Hi, I’m Diana Tritipoe from Signal Mountain, Tennessee, just outside Chattanooga. This is my second time attending Joy’s Retreat, and my favorite thing has been just connecting with other teachers, seeing people that I met in the past, and then meeting new people.

One resource I’m excited to, uh, check out more about is Mary Ellen Pinzino’s, approach to reading, and also her tonal syllables.

Stephanie: My name is Stephanie Thompson, and my piano studio is in Romeo, Michigan. This is my sixth retreat, I think it is. I’ve been to every single retreat so far, and I wouldn’t miss it.

My favorite thing so far is in the evening we have a bunch of social time, and we all sat around the table by the pool. And I think it was Angie, she suggested, “We’re all music teachers. We should play a music game.” And she said, “We should all go around and improvise on the Gordon syllables and experiment with different meters.”

So they’d pick a meter, and everybody went around the circle and did an improvisation with their voice. And it was very cool just to see everybody’s different styles and their approach to it. And it was also fun just to improvise a little musical doodle. One resource that I’m excited to try – every retreat Joy has a great list of books, and my book list gets longer and longer every year that I come here.

And she did a giveaway, and I got the book Lose Your Mind.

Tracy: and I’m very excited to read that. Hi, my name is Tracy Flanders. I’m from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’ve been to this retreat two other times, and my favorite thing so far really has been the conversations with other piano teachers. I think piano teachers are, live kind of isolated lives, and it’s just been great to have a community over this weekend and the conversations.

Something new I’d like to try – I was introduced this weekend to the work of Mary Ellen Pinzino, and her take on music learning theory is really, opened up some new things for me, and, and it seems very creative and interesting, so I’m looking [00:15:00] forward to do some, doing some work with her work.

Emily: My name is Emily Suszko, and I am from Oxford, Michigan. I have attended all of Joy’s retreats except for one year that I had to miss for a family vacation. My favorite thing thus far has been hanging out with other teachers and getting a chance to just talk in the in-betweens and enjoy Amy’s food. I’ve enjoyed having my musicianship challenged because I think it makes me a better teacher and a better, musician, and I enjoyed, uh, making music with other people.

Emily Suszko, who you just heard from, has actually been a guest on the Piano Pantry Podcast before. Emily and I have known each other for years. She attended my digital organization retreat in 2022 and was part of the recap episode for that retreat – episode #30. Joy has also joined me on 4 episodes over the past 5 years of the podcast.

I’ll link to those episodes as well as several items mentioned today including Mary Ellen Pinzino’s tonal syllable system and the retreat website where you can join Joy’s waitlist for the 2028 retreat. Visit PianoPantry.com/podcast/episode185 for those show notes or find the direct link in the show notes area of your podcast app.

Many thanks to Joy, Angie, Mary, Susan, Barb, Diana, Stephanie, Tracey, and Emily for taking the time to share with you about their experience attending Retreat at Piano Manor.

Don’t forget it’s not too late to join my upcoming retreat Organize Your Digital Life which I will be hosting at my home in Indiana August 12-15. I’ve extended the early bird discount so you can get $40 off if you register by July 1 or $20 off if you register by July 15. Visit pianopantry.com/retreat for details and to submit your interest form.

Thanks for being here this week guys and we’ll talk to you later!