Recital Management . . . for over 80 students!

.....from Sally's Studio
 
I hold 4 different recitals each year to keep them each to a manageable length.  The first (for the advanced students) is on a Friday evening.  Much to my distress, I have found that many people don’t appreciate the more serious pieces and what it takes to get them learned.  Often I have heard that the songs were too long and boring.   I have learned that if I identified the evening recital as being one with serious music and that it would potentially be a longer event, I had an audience that was appreciative of the higher level music.  The other three recitals are on Saturday.  The Saturday recitals are shorter and a little less formal; although all students are still expected to dress up and follow common performance practices.  The students and parents are always honored to “graduate” to the Friday night recital.

Theme and decorating and program, oh my!
Every year we try to find a recital theme.  My students enjoy decorating the recital venue and designing the programs.  Some years I have held a program cover design contest.  Anyone who wanted to submit a design had to do so a month before the recital.   Sometimes I chose the winner and sometimes have had a panel of judges do the choosing - to avoid any feelings of favoritism among my students.  They enjoyed competing for the honor of seeing their artwork on the cover.  Since the programs are often in black and white, I have at times let the students color them while they waited for their lessons.  It gave them some ownership of the programs.

Even though we generally have a theme, not all students play pieces that are connected to it.  The advanced recital rarely is associated with the current theme, but the other students love to choose music that matches the theme-of-the-year.   At times they even dress to match the theme or the feel of their song. 

Ensemble - yes!
Each student plays a solo and then performs with an ensemble.  Since my studio is in a public school I have access to them throughout the day, making ensemble work readily available.   I understand the limitations of teachers who work out of their homes, but I highly recommend trying to find a way to get ensembles to work.   It is worth the effort since much of piano playing is a solitary event.  My students really enjoy working on duets, trios, and quartets.   When we put our advanced or intermediate students together on pieces like Perpetual Commotion by Kevin Olson, they have tons of fun!

Stay Tuned!
More is coming on my recitals and themes.  I would love to have input from any of you who would also like to share your recital successes!

written by Sally Ritchie

Looking Back

With a few months of teaching experience under my belt, I think it’s time to do a little reflecting on my experiences so far. Not only have I been teaching piano lessons, I am also in charge of the musical education of a group of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students with wide ranging musical backgrounds. Teaching them has forced me to think about not only what I teach my students, but also HOW I teach them. As I learned from my undergraduate education classes, the instructional methods matter just as much as the lesson content. In my individual piano lessons, I can rely on method books to provide a reliable order for presenting material to beginning students. (I find myself appreciating more and more the piano teachers who design these method books.) However, even here, I end up making adjustments, and I am just working with one student at a time. When teaching in the classroom I also have a curriculum to work with, but it does not allow for differences in content knowledge and ability. So, what have I learned so far? Here are a few words of wisdom from the ever-growing knowledge base of Emma Veers, piano teacher:

Less is more, both in the classroom and in the piano studio. It is better to address one main point from a variety of angles than to try to address several points in one lesson. I still struggle with this when trying to work on a piece of music with a piano student, I want to fix all of the problems I see at once, but I often end up overwhelming the student. Not a good thing!
Too slow is better than too fast. While neither is great, it is better for a student to be confident and bored than totally lost. It is good to give students plenty of opportunity to practice a new concept, especially the idea of reading music. This works for individuals and group classes.
When working with a group class, introduce concepts in engaging ways. This way the students who already know the concepts will still enjoy the class, and they might even learn something new.
I am the teacher, and as such, I need to have confidence in my knowledge and my teaching abilities. If a student comes up to me and says, “I saw a boy playing piano on TV and he didn’t hold his hands the way you want me too,” this should NOT cause me to doubt my own methods. (True story, by the way.)

Slowly but surely, I am learning from my mistakes and gaining confidence in my abilities as a teacher. Just today I had a student come to her lesson full of enthusiasm because my practice technique of breaking the piece into small, two-measure pieces actually worked! It’s times like these that make me realize just how much I enjoy teaching . Stay tuned for more thoughts from this enthusiastic teacher over the next several months!

Not What, WHO

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” As all college graduates should know, networking is the key to success in today’s job market. This is especially true for piano teachers trying to build a studio, because parents usually want someone they can trust teaching their children.   Although I don’t have many students yet, here are a few ways I have begun making contacts in the Denver area.

In college, I became a student member of Music Teacher’s National Association (MTNA). When I graduated and moved to Denver, I transferred my membership from a collegiate membership to an active membership in the Denver area. Little did I realize how beneficial this would be! A few weeks later, the president of the local MTNA chapter called me and welcomed me to the group. I attended the first meeting of the year, where I met several fellow music teachers. Many of them have offered to pass along my name as their own personal piano studios fill up.

In addition to networking with fellow music teachers, it makes sense to go where the students are….school! I have left my name and contact information with several of the local school music teachers.

Finally, my biggest connections have come through my church. Never underestimate the power of volunteering when making connections. At the beginning of the school year, I began volunteering my services as the music teacher to the 4th-8th grade students at Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran School. Two weeks later….ta-da! I was asked to take on five new piano students from the school.

The key to successful networking is to never give up; always be on the lookout for new contacts, especially in the world of music teaching. If you have any more networking suggestions for me; please let me know!

Guest Blogger, Emma Veers

Musings of a Beginner

Our guest blogger is Emma Veers.  She graduated from Wisconsin Lutheran College, Milwaukee, WI, in May with a Bachelor of Science degree in Educational Studies and minors in piano pedagogy and mathematics. Following graduation, she moved to Golden, CO, with plans to pursue a Master’s degree in Piano Pedagogy. In the meantime, Emma has taken on the challenge of setting up a piano studio from scratch in an area where she has few connections. Readers in the greater Denver area, feel free to help her out!


Although I’ve taken piano lessons continuously for the past fifteen years, I never realized the amount of work my teachers put into my lessons until I attempted to take on the noble teaching profession myself. Even my piano pedagogy classes in college did not fully prepare me for setting up my own studio and taking on paying students. Here are a few examples where experience proved to be the best guide.

In my first piano pedagogy class, my professor required that we put together a potential “studio policy.” However, writing down rules that I thought I might want to include in my future policy differed greatly from actually putting a policy into practice. Before putting a policy into practice, the teacher needs to have a means of enforcing this policy. (Teaching reminds me of parenting in this respect; don’t make promises or threats if you have no means of following through!) For example, when it comes to paying for lessons, I state in my policy that payment is due at the beginning of the month for the entire month. However, if a parent says “oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to bring my checkbook this week, can I pay you next week?” I have to trust that this parent will pay me eventually unless I have a solution in place, such as a late payment fee.

 Then there is the task of selecting method books to use. Unfortunately, this decision is complicated by the fact that many, many method books exist, each with slight differences that tend to trip up the unsuspecting rookie teacher. I learned this the hard way when I tried Hal Leonard’s new series “American Popular Piano” last year with a beginning eighth grade student. As I glanced through the series, I thought its hands on approach and use of popular sounding music would be perfect for motivating my student. Unfortunately, this series would have been easier to use as a supplementary series than a standalone series, and this made my lesson planning difficult. Oops!

Speaking of lesson planning, do experienced teachers actually write “lesson plans” for each of their students before each lesson? When I took piano lessons, it always seemed that my teachers would just open up to the next page in my lesson book and teach from that. However, now I need to write notes to myself before I teach each lesson, or I find myself blanking on what to say next.


These are just a few of the “surprises” I have encountered so far in my first year of teaching. Stay tuned for more as the year unfolds :)

Charter School

I have the opportunity to set up the music lab for a new charter school and am really excited about doing the research that will be required.  Since I am on the governance board for the new charter school, I'll have some control over what is included.   I would love input from anyone who has experience with this situation.

I have several contacts but one can never have too many suggestions.   It will be a wonderful opportunity to give a great experience to students who don't do well in the traditional classroom environment.

Sally Ritchie

Scoring

Points were given for each activity in our camp.  We had thought of using music money but my problem with that is that I did not want them equating their progress with money.  

We decided to use pony beads.   We gave them out throughout the camp........we actually didn't have any method for that other than the fact that everyone would get beads for each activity.  The winning team would get the most but each team got beads for trying.   The students really got into choosing their beads and stringing them on the necklaces that they wore during camp.   At the end, we gave ribbons to the top three bead-earners, but each camper got some small prizes.

Just a note here: next year I would have them leave their bead necklaces at the camp instead of taking them home to bring back the next day.  As I should have expected, two of the kids forgot their beads for the last day.  We did eventually get them back to use for next year.

And that brings me to a summary of camp.  Both Bradd and I were extremely pleased with the camp.  The students really were excited about it and we have had several requests to do it again next year.  Our administration was very supportive and would like it to be a regular part of the summer program  offered at school.  We have ideas for other camps and since now we will have their help to get the information to our students, we should have an even better turn out for next year.  It was probably best that we had this year with a smaller group (we had 24 campers) so we could see how it worked.  We will be doing a camp wrap up together to file our materials and thoughts as to what worked best and what didn't work as well as we would have liked.  We did many things that I haven't mentioned in the blog but anyone who would like to know more can contact us.

Sally Ritchie

Note Names

Our introduction to note names began with the grand staff and an expanded explanation as to why some of the campers use only one clef for their instruments.  Note naming exercises were done as a group before moving on to any of the note name games.

Stinky Sock Revisited
Revising the Stinky Sock game involved changing the slips of paper to include words made by using the letters A through G.  The camper that was left holding the sock when the music stopped had to choose a paper and spell that word on the staff using notes (more details on this game in the previous post).

Note Name Relay Race
NoteWordy Level 3 (Whirligig, LLP game) card decks were perfect for playing a note name relay race.  Each team for this game consisted of two campers.

• The first player on the team looked at the first word on a prepared "word list."
• He or she then chose the "note" cards from the NoteWordy Level 3 card deck which would spell the first word.
• With "note" cards in hand, he or she ran to the other side of the room.
• Once there, the "note" cards were used to spell the "word list" word for the teammate.  
• The second player had to write down the word that the cards spelled.  
• Play continued with the second player choosing a word from a prepared "word list."
• When "time" was called the team that had the most correct words won! 

We let the players choose the clef that they would be using for band lessons..........unless they were piano players in which case, they used the entire grand staff.  It was very gratifying to see how much they improved with note identification in just three days!


Campers could take home note naming worksheets for extra points.  I had made some note name sheets on which each measure spelled a word.  To keep some campers from just guessing at the words rather than actually figuring out all note names, some of the words were spelled backwards.


Sally Ritchie