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Episode 216: Cheers to Thinking BIG (Picture)

Well, hello there, my music teacher friends!  Welcome to the Beyond Measure Podcast, with me, Christina Whitlock.

I’m a firm believer that spending time with other music teachers is an important part of finding satisfaction in our work.  And yet – our overscheduled lives make it SO HARD to coordinate calendars to do so. That’s why I’m here, serving as your Anytime Piano Teacher Friend.

This show is THE PLACE for teachers who want to think about the very HUMAN elements of what we do. I hope you finish today’s episode feeling a little more connected, a little more seen, and a little more inspired to go do your own good work in your community.

So, friend, let’s get on with the show!

I’m going to get right to the point today: As teachers, it’s WAY too easy to fall into the trap of teaching lesson after lesson… week after week…. just following the status quo of our overscheduled lives.

It’s like getting swept up in a current of busy calendars and unexpected emotions and parent expectations and student dilemmas and…. well, you know. You live it. And so do it.

The problem is, we can’t get swept up in the current. WE are in charge of this operation we are running.  We have to stop and take stock from time to time on where we are guiding our students (and our businesses).

Here’s a story for you: Several years ago, I served a term as State President for the Indiana Music Teachers Association. It truly WAS an honor, a privilege, and a whole heaping ton of work. I have to say: getting involved on my state MTA’s board of directors was one of the most influential decisions of my teacher life.  I’ve been on that board since 2006, and the teachers I’ve worked alongside in various capacities are one of the main reasons I believe so strongly in the importance of connecting with your colleagues. You know… pretty much the entire point of this show. 😊

At one point during my state presidency, I was putting together the agenda for an upcoming board meeting and I realized it was strangely empty. This is quite unusual; our agendas are typically PACKED with time-sensitive matters.

I try to be very mindful of respecting people’s time – especially when working with a group of volunteers.  I don’t ever want to be guilty of wasting someone’s time.

As I looked at this agenda, I realized nothing stood out as especially pressing. I began to worry about whether or not we should still hold the meeting at all. After all, I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time.

Well, our IMTA is STACKED with wisdom.  Seriously. There are brilliant people on that board, so I decided to phone-a-friend on this dilemma. I reached out to Karen Thickstun, who is a wealth of guidance in so many areas. She writes a column for the AMT journal, and she has also served as the national president of MTNA.

I asked Karen if she thought I should just cancel the board meeting altogether because I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. Her response to me was invaluable, and it’s the focus of what I want to share with you today.

When I asked Karen if I should just cancel the board meeting since there was very little on the agenda, her answer was a resounding NO. I mean, she was very nice about it, but she helped me see this was a golden opportunity for the board to work on casting our vision for the future.

She explained that, when every board meeting is packed to the gills with action items, it leaves no time for brainstorming over where our organization is heading or what we hope to accomplish.  There’s no time for dreaming or what I like to call Crazy Talk.

Sure, we’d had a Strategic Planning Committee a few years prior who had formed a vision for the future, but Karen helped me understand this was a rare opportunity to me to step off the hamster wheel of Robert’s Rules of Order and actually LEAD the organization somewhere. It was my chance to do more than send emails and lead discussions from an agenda. That meeting was an opportunity for me to be a REAL leader and help shape our organization’s vision and strengthen our relationships as a board.

Karen’s reply to me is one of those things that didn’t strike me as much in the moment… but I find myself going back to her sentiments ALL THE TIME.

And I’m bringing this to you today – not because I want to help you become President of your state MTA – though, if you feel so led, please do – but because this is a takeaway we ALL need to hear as studio music teachers.

Let’s talk about our lessons:  It’s easy to let the lesson experience become a week-to-week encounter. We plan the pieces our students should play for the following week. We choose their technical skills to work on. Maybe we assign a theory page or a listening assignment.  The whole lesson is focused on getting prepared for the next lesson. And on and on the cycle goes.

And who can blame us? Our lesson time FLIES by. There’s never enough time to do all the stuff we want to do, right?

But I’m here to tell you, friends: If today’s lesson is not thinking any further ahead than next week’s lesson? You’re missing an opportunity to be a leader. To help cast a vision for your students’ growth.

We’re pretty good at doing this when there’s a performance deadline on the calendar.  If you’ve heard me talk about preparing students for performance, you’ll know I’m a BIG believer in setting a clear timeline for expectations leading up to performance. I think we all know how important it is to work AHEAD for performances on our studio calendars.

But what about non-performative events? Do you spend time thinking about where you want each student to go over the next 6 weeks, or even 6 months?  Do you set clearly-defined goals for your students outside of performance?

I’ve done a lot of research into sports psychology and its many applications to music study and this is an area we are often lacking in. My students who swim? At the end of their season, they are given clear goals for the times their coach is expecting them to swim NEXT SEASON. There is no, “see you next year and we’ll see what happens!”… they have a vision that is set and they spend the off season continuing to train for that same goal.

It’s important to note: the goals and the visions we cast for our students are never set in stone. Life happens. Plans go off-course. You know me: I’m all about teaching the student who shows up. If they’re exhausted because they were up half the night studying for their AP Lang final, so be it. My plan might go right out the window.

…but longer term? You’d better believe I have benchmarks I want each student to meet. Those vary from student to student, but I spend REAL time every 3 months or so mapping out our next “big picture” steps.

I suppose I’m talking about this today because summer often affords us a more relaxed pace to set some of these goals for our students.

I think I’ve made it clear around here that my goal is always to help a student experience a new concept before they see it in their method book or repertoire.  So – for instance – by the time my students SEE triads in their music, they’ve already been playing them as part of their warm-ups or improv or theory, or whatever.  I have a WHOLE process of introducing the staff to my students LONG before they encounter staff notation in their practice assignments. Rhythms?  Oh yeah. You’d better believe my students are experiencing those concepts before they see them in print.

This means I dedicate a small portion of every lesson to developing FUTURE skills. That is not something my materials can do for me; *I* have to make those plans myself. And that takes intention.

It’s not the easy way, but I assure you; it makes for a better learning experience.

Here’s the secret, friends:  If this concept of goal-setting is new to you, PLEASE don’t make it too hard. This is an area in which I HIGHLY recommend starting small. Don’t try to tackle your whole studio at once.  Choose one or two students – maybe one student who feels easy to plan for, and one who is more challenging. Think about their summer lessons. What do you think they should accomplish these next few months?

Maybe you want them to be able to harmonize 6 different tunes using the primary chords? Maybe you want them to be able to play the Group 1 scales in eighths at 120 beats per minute?  Maybe it’s repertoire… maybe it’s rhythm drills… maybe it’s completing a practice streak of X number of days.  You get to choose what matters. This is your ship… so lead it in the best direction.

As I talk about this, I can’t help but flashback to my Junior year of high school. I remember sitting in Psychology class – with a teacher I loved – listening to him go on and on about how his class was preparing us for college.  I distinctly remember getting bothered by his comments because I realized I’d been given that line for my whole life.  2^nd grade was preparing us for 3^rd grade.  Middle school was preparing us for High School. High school was preparing us for College, which prepares us for the workforce, right?

Well, sometimes. The problem I began to chew on, in that moment as a Junior in high school, was how shallow the reasoning was behind this endless string of preparations.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize piano lessons can have the same faulty rationale.  This lesson is getting you ready for the next lesson.  Do well on this exam so you’ll be ready for the next exam. This performance will help you do better on the next performance.

ALL of these things can be true. I’m a big fan of using smaller performances to help prepare for bigger ones.

And yet – this experience I have with students every week?  It’s so much more than those landmark performances. Learning this instrument goes beyond evaluations and public performances.

There is SO much work we do at our instruments that needs to be for ourselves and our own benefit. It’s NOT just about pleasing an evaluator or wowing an audience. There is so much more here. And if we’re not careful about setting big-picture goals along the way, we’re going to miss opportunities.

And – newsflash – it’s not just us. Our students are going to be missing something, too. A lot of somethings, in many cases.

One of the best parts of setting goals for your students – assuming you’ve taken the time to communicate the goal to them – is it gives them something to celebrate. To take pride in.  Accomplishing a goal is a built-in barometer for satisfaction.  Some students are happy learning piece after piece in a single book. But to help them realize they can do things with their book AND without it? Or to give them a challenge that they can clearly see they’ve met?  THAT is how we keep our students’ attention, friends. THAT is how we keep them coming back for more.

So yes, let’s be careful NOT to fall into the temptation of teaching lesson-to-lesson with no vision for the future.

While we’re at it, let me remind you that this same concept applies to your business, and to your existence as an Artist and Creative in this world.

We all know: the days are long but the years are short. It is SO important to take time to evaluate what kind of business you want to be running, and what kind of teacher you want to be.

If you just exist lesson to lesson and week after week, you are missing out on important ways to grow as a teacher, musician, and person.

I’ve been sharing advice on the internet on this topic for 4.5 years now. This is why I’m such an advocate for self-reflection. I’ll share some related episodes in today’s shownotes, but AT THE VERY LEAST: this is why I’m a fan of making periodic lists of what’s working and what’s not.  I share my lists with you occasionally here on the podcast, and that’s fun and all… but it’s FAR more important for you to be writing your own lists.

Taking stock of what gives you energy – and what is draining it – is an important first-step in casting a big-picture vision of the Teacher Life you want to be leading.

So, friends, I hope you’ll let this advice work on you a bit this week. As you find yourself planning for next fall and tweaking policies and tuition and curricula… I hope you’ll take a few minutes to think about the BIGGER picture.  How do you want to feel in your work?  What do you want to accomplish this year? What is the biggest value you have to offer your students? How can you capitalize on that thing?

Big picture planning, my friends. It’s SO easy to miss, but SO important.

This is your friendly reminder that I have a resource designed to help you explore the big-picture elements of music teaching. It’s called the Studio Foundations Course, and it provides you with guided opportunities to figure out how YOU want to show up in this profession, and how you can make sure ALL parties involved in your lesson experience are satisfied. That’s YOU, your students, and their families. We want ALL sides of that triangle to be happy, don’t we?

This week – starting on May 19, 2025 – I am offering a special series of LIVE online sessions where I walk through these principles in real time. If you struggle to make time to work through online courses, this is your chance to have me hold your hand the entire way. 😊 These LIVE sessions are open for anyone who purchases the Studio Foundations Course, so if you’re ready to start working beyond lesson-to-lesson and build YOUR best Teacher Life, head on over to ChristinaWhitlock.com/foundations to get started.

Okay! Let’s toast our way out of here today:

Studio Music Teacher Friends from all around the world, today we make the promise to ourselves that we will not settle for the status-quo. We raise our glasses to the Big Picture; to our ability to create a work environment that feels true to ourselves and makes us excited by the prospect of what’s to come. Here’s to thinking beyond the day-to-day operations, my friends.  Hear, hear.

That’s all I have for you today, my friends!  Links to related episodes, the Studio Foundations Course, and more can be found in today’s shownotes at ChristinaWhitlock.com/episode216. PS: There may be a discount code in there, too, if you HURRY!

Onward and upward toward becoming the visionary leader you’re called to be, my friends!  I’ll see some of you LIVE later this week for our Foundations Course sessions!