Planning & Research: A Look into a Music Teacher’s Day

The students in public school have this week off. It also happens to be Group Class Week at the Studio (group class in lieu of a lesson), A.K.A. “catch-up” week for me. I have spent most of my time working on the advertising campaign for Calgary ARMTA’s newsletter and finalizing my 2006/07 Studio Registration Package (studio calendar, policies, registration form, letter to students, policy agreement). Some policy changes have been made, which may or may not go over well. It has all been for the sake of improving business operations. Less time on troubleshooting or putting out fires equals more time and energy to put into being a better teacher.

Having a well-defined standard set of studio policies and practices is essential to the survival of any business. Everyone – the students, parents and teachers – will be operating within the same set of rules and regulations. Each year, teachers improve upon their policies and practices (or at least, they should).

I am also writing an online Studio Handbook, which contains everything from lesson protocol to practice tips, and from teaching philosophies to how parents can support their child’s music studies. Working on the policies and the handbook is energizing. After all, it’s a chance to do some reflection on what’s important, on what I want to accomplish and look at areas that can be improved upon.

I took a break from it this morning to go shopping. My theory students will soon be working on practice tests, so I needed the latest set to go over myself. I also found some funky music class resources for the upcoming group classes: Music Listening Bingo by Cheryl Lavender. I hope the students enjoy them.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find everyone on my shopping list today. Try as I might, I couldn’t find piano music for an AC/DC song that I’ve been asked to play as a wedding recessional song. The wedding isn’t until August, so I have time to research it a bit more.

© 2006 by Musespeak™, Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

On Meetings & Creative Practicing Ideas

We had our Annual General Meeting for Calgary ARMTA yesterday morning. It’s official: I am the Second Vice President for the 2006/07 Executive. Barring any unforeseen life changing circumstance, I will become the President in two years. But for now, it simply means that I get to add a few more projects onto my plate, such as the Honours Recital, which showcases students who performed superbly on their music exams and implementing some of the new membership benefits and programs we plan to offer. After I complete my advertising drive for our branch’s newsletter, my next order of business will be to find and train my successor. I’ll still be involved with maintaining our branch’s website.

Kudos to Barbara Robertson, our Past President, who did her best to keep the rest of us on track (somedays that was a challenge!). Beth Olver, this year’s President, brings a lot of board member experience and progressive ideas. I’m looking forward to the upcoming year.

We also had a guest speaker prior to the AGM. Calgary piano teacher/clinician/pianist Colleen Athparia presented a talk on creative ways to practice – to keep things fresh. Some ideas were new, while others were a good reminder of what has worked in the past and should be tried again.

In the spirit of “keeping things fresh”, I deliberately changed the order to today’s lessons. I’ve fallen into the habit of starting with technical exercises, followed by repertoire, then theory and aural/sight reading/rhythm exercises. Some students started with theory and ear training today, while others were asked to play arpeggios instead of scales first. One student took great delight in playing Oh Canada backwards. Another got a kick out of crossing her hands and then playing Aloha Oe, while another thought it strange that I asked her to play the f# melodic minor scale as slowly as she possibly could (I wanted her to listen to the sound decay of each note). All in all, it made for an interesting afternoon and evening. I wonder how I can shake up the rest of the week?

© 2006, Musespeak™, Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Friday Fun Link #15 & A List to Make Your Head Spin

My head’s starting to spin again. This week, I’ve been organizing next week’s Piano Group Class (a behind the scenes tour of the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium), preparing for Monday’s Calgary ARMTA Executive meeting (Barb, I’ll get my reports done before Saturday!), reminding and coaching students and their parents to register for their piano/theory exams and the APTA Music Festival, creating contracts with milestones for the exam students, parents and I to commit to, restraining myself from screaming at students who don’t practice (and trying not to look bored when they stumble through a piece they’ve had for far too long), fielding calls from parents looking for a piano teacher, fielding calls from brides looking for wedding music and trying very hard to keep up with lesson planning, practicing and paperwork.

All this while dealing with a dog with a bad case of sniffles (but really wants his walkies), a short story contest deadline looming, passing along sad news to my fellow U of L music alum (and then trying to track down contact info for classmates who are MIA), re-recording a student whose recital performance was full of static, looking for Iaido clothing that fits petite women, designing a photo waiver for the Iaido Club, practicing Iaido, getting used to life without a car (retired to Car Heaven), setting up networking lunches, dealing with a weird company about digestive enzymes that caused a nasty reaction and what else? Housecleaning. Whoa. I am out of breath just reading that. Now that is called a run-on sentence. I certainly need a Friday Fun Link to lighten the mood. This week’s link is CyberParodies. I’m listening to “Carbs” (a parody on “Cars”). Pretty wacky, just like my list.

And that’s that. Back to paperwork, practicing and practicing. Have a good weekend everyone!

© 2006, Musespeak™, Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Not exactly a week off

It’s Group Class Week, which has altered the studio schedule. In lieu of regular piano lessons, the students attend a group class this week. I tried something different this year by spreading the four group classes over three days. I used to run them on a Friday/Saturday of one weekend. I found that I spent the whole week conserving energy for those two days and needed (but couldn’t have) another week to recover. Thankfully, my brother is available to help out with the beginner classes tomorrow and I have hired two of my older students as teaching assistants to give them some experience.  

There are a few bugs to work out since a new system and it’s the first group class for the year, but the first one last night went all right. My intermediate students performed for each other, improvised and figured out what do in a 10-minute practice session if that’s all the time they have (see my earlier entry on this for more info).

With the studio running at full capacity, I’m constantly thinking of ways to make the group class schedule work more effectively. I’m already thinking about how to structure it next year, believe it or not.

It hasn’t been a week off, as my heading implies. I am still teaching theory lessons this week and doing “make-up” lessons. There was the Alberta Registered Music Teachers’ Association (ARMTA Calgary) meeting on Monday. Maestro helped me with the filing and bookkeeping. Now it’s off to do some administrative work (receipts to couples whose weddings I played at, finding a venue for the winter and spring student recitals, preparing for the lessons and group classes today)

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Midnight Musings

Being an entrepreneur means that you never completely stop working. It’s past midnight and I am trading e-mails with the president of the local branch of the Alberta Registered Music Teachers’ Association, while I am working on tonight’s blog entry. We have a general members’ meeting on Monday, which we are preparing for. The executive is trying to implement some changes to improve how we operate and what we offer to members, students and the general public. But change is hard and, well anyone who works with people knows that sometimes personalities clash. It’s a challenge for volunteer board to meet the needs of everyone. Quite simply, it’s impossible to satisfy everyone. I have two main gripes: people who complain but don’t take action and people who don't do their share of the workload. It’s always the same volunteers doing all the work. We could use a little more help.

Enough ranting. I didn’t mean to rant but with “freefall” writing, you just type/write what pops out of your head without thinking.

Speaking of writing, I recently started a creative writing class at the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society. After years of doing corporate and technical writing, it is a refreshing change to write “fun stuff”. Strange how childhood memories flood the pages of my notebook, like my juice cup from kindergarten with letters, numbers and animals on it or the cat that scratched my arm when I tried to feed it weeds. I have even started writing haiku (it’s addictive).

On another note, some students and I are performing Sunday afternoon at a local nursing home. It was something I did when I was growing up. The residents appreciate the visit and the entertainment. It is also a great way to hone the students’ performance savvy.

Picture yourself at the piano, playing away, when a resident spills coffee all over the floor, another decides to belt out a different arrangement of your song, while another babbles incoherently - loudly. If you can maintain composure through that, then performing before a stern faced examiner or at a family reunion should be a little easier.

That’s enough musing for tonight. I still need to figure out what I am performing at the recital. Maybe the song titles will jump out at me in a dream.

© Musespeak, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. All rights reserved.