August 2021 marks 10 years of my full-time piano studio (Studio 88), located in Bluffton, Indiana, 10 years of full-time piano teaching, and more than 20 years of teaching in general!
In a four-part series this month, we’re going to talk about marking time by acknowledging, reflecting on, and celebrating special teaching anniversaries/milestones.
In today’s post, I’ll share how I used social media to celebrate special moments and students of the past.
In the next post, you’ll hear from a teacher friend who really impacted me with her incredibly thoughtful ideas on this very topic (including a special commission) – you won’t want to miss it!
In the third post, I’ll share seven ways my teaching and studio have evolved over the past decade and encourage you to find new ways to continue evolving your own teaching and studios.
In the final and shortest post, I’ll reveal how I’m starting a new decade in my studio with new branding. That is, a new logo!
A Social Media Celebration
Last August, realizing that year #10 was coming up, I decided to spend time looking through a decade of studio photos.
Inspired by the #throwbackthurdays trend, I decided to pick out 52 of my favorite memories and scheduled an entire year-long series on social media.
If you’re interested in the technical details, I first uploaded them into Canva and used a template to give the images a slightly different shape to distinguish the series images from current posts.
Then, I used a social media scheduling tool called Buffer to schedule them out for the entire year ahead of time!
It was so much fun seeing these pop up throughout the year. What a great reminder they were of the work that is often forgotten, the moments that are special and yet fleeting.
Not only that but it was kind of nice that this ended up happening in the year of Covid. Since I no longer had group classes fun and special “photo-worthy” moments were just a little harder to come by. It was nice to have this series to keep my studio social media account engaged. (Plus, I was a little burned out with posting anyway so it was nice to sit back and let the series speak for itself. 🙂 )
I had no other plans of celebrating this teaching milestone but when I realized the last post in the series finished the last week of July, I felt like I wanted a little something in the actual “anniversary month”.
Where Are They Now?
So, I decided to contact a small handful of former students on Instagram (because that’s where many of our students live 🙂 ), and feature them in a month-long series called “Where are they now?”.
Here’s my message in case you want to use it – otherwise, jump ahead!
Hey! I hope this message finds you well. It’s so cool seeing where life has taken you in these past year even if just through social media! 🙂
The reason I am contacting you is I am coming up on the 10 year anniversary of Studio 88 being open in Bluffton (August 2021). To celebrate, one thing I would like to do is highlight a small handful of students that are “long gone” in a social media series called “Where are they now”.
I was wondering if you would be willing to be a part of this. Please know there is no pressure to do so. Just politely decline!🙂
Here’s what I’m thinking just to give you some more specifics to help you your decision:
1. A photo (or more if you like) of you making music in the setting you do most in your life. It would be great if it was piano but it wouldn’t have to be. If you would like to include a video of you performing an original song (it would be a link) that would be nice but not necessary.
2. A brief 35-50 word bio highlighting what you are doing these days and featuring in particular how music is part of your life.
3. What years you took lessons from me (I can help with this.)
4. One memory you have from piano lessons. (Preferably stated in 1-2 sentences max). It could be ANYTHING. Something you learned, something you took away, how piano impacted your life, whatever. Totally open.
I would ask for this all to be sent to me no later than July 19 so I can compile and schedule it to publish on social media in August.
Thank you so much for considering being a part!
So far, two posts have gone live. Follow me on Instagram to see the rest of this series!
Stay tuned for the next post in this series – “Teaching Anniversaries: An Important but Hard Celebration“ by Janelle Bracken.
Janelle has some insightful thoughts for us and will also share about a cool commission she did!
Have you found ways to celebrate your own teaching anniversaries on social media? If so, share how in the comments!
Hi Amy!
This post came at a perfect time because this year is my studio’s 10 year anniversary! I love the idea of “Where Are They Now” and throwbacks to the past 10 years. Can’t wait to read the other three in this series.
Ah, wonderful! Happy 10th teaching anniversary!