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Episode 225: Cheers to Summer Conversation Reflections

Well hello, my studio teacher friends!  Christina Whitlock here: your host and self-appointed anytime piano teacher friend. It’s a bittersweet day here at Beyond Measure. First, I’m newly home from the 2025 NCKP conference and *sigh* you guys… it was incredible. I’m sad it’s over, so happy to have been a part of it, and now have a full energy tank ready to take on Fall 2025. Of course, I’m happy to be reunited with my family… but I’m missing my teacher friends like crazy. That’s life, right?  All the feelings at once.

ALSO: Today marks the end of this year’s Summertime Conversation Series. I’ve spent the last two months featuring conversations with some of my favorite teachers. I love doing that in the summer months – it’s a nice change of pace – but I also get antsy to be back in your ears solo. So that’s what we’re back to today!

Each of this year’s conversations left me with nuggets of wisdom I’ve been thinking about ALL SUMMER LONG. So much so, I found myself wanting to share MY OWN takeaways from these conversations with you today.

Buckle up, my friends!  This is going to be a good one. You are listening to Episode 225 of the Beyond Measure Podcast:

My first conversation this summer was no. 219 with the fabulous Leila Viss. Most of us know Leila as the queen of re-purposing household objects for piano lessons. We also know she’s great at using technology with a purpose in the lesson, and, of course, many of us have followed her gut-wrenching roller coaster after her son’s diving accident several years ago.

Leila shared a quote in our episode; something passed down from her church choir director, and we traced it back to Dr. John Dickson at LSU. It was this: We work in an art form that constantly demands perfection, while simultaneously denying its existence. Well said, Dr. Dickson. It’s the ultimate do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do, right?  Our WORDS constantly remind our students they don’t have to be perfect. We just want them to bring their best efforts. Perfection in music doesn’t exist, right?  We’re human beings, not robots. There’s always more to do. We say countless iterations of these ideas every week of our working lives.

…but those are just our words. And I’m here to tell you: piano teachers might talk a big game about not demanding perfection from our students… but since very few of us look in the mirror and speak those words TO OURSELVES, our actions often contradict our words. Our students see us demand perfection from ourselves. They are perceptive little buggers, those students of ours!  They can read the frustrations we feel with ourselves and our own shortcomings from a million miles away. And THAT, friends, is a problem.

If we stand any shot of helping our students embrace their humanity and its limitations, we have to start by accepting ours.

Again, this contradiction of expecting perfection while also denying its existence has been bouncing around my brain for weeks. Because it’s top of mind, I couldn’t help but see it on display EVERYWHERE at the NCKP conference this past week. Give a group of piano teachers a silly ice-breaker activity and watch the perfectionism spike. It just cracks me up. One moment we’re all like, “I just want my students to love playing music” and the next, we’re sweating bullets over a directive to draw four squiggles on a piece of paper and turn them into birds… as though there’s one right or wrong way to do that.  Sigh.  (that reference was for those who attended the NCKP Summit for Innovation on Wednesday. If you know, you know).

Moving on to episode 220, Jason Sifford and I talked about all kinds of things related to the music publishing industry. Jason is like me; he likes to think big thoughts… and there are a few things that Jason said that have rattled around my brain incessantly all summer but here’s a gem that you might not have heard.  You may be aware, there are bonus conversations with all six summer guests inside my SuperFriends community on Patreon. You can get access to those conversations for $3 or $6. And in Jason’s Bonus Conversation, he says this (and I quote):  “There is an activity humans do called music. They have always done it. They always will. At this particular moment in time, we are the ones charged with helping people be a part of it and participate in it in meaningful ways. That is the best we can hope to do with it; not anything super grand, but simply to help the people in front of us be participants in a meaningful way.”

Did you catch this little caveat he snuck in there?  He said AT THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT we are the ones tasked with helping people participate meaningfully in musical activities. You probably know my obsession with legacy in this work, friends.  We are all links in this chain. Our teachers learned from their teachers, who learned from their teachers, and on and on it goes.  Each teacher leaves their mark and sends ripples through future generations of music students.  This means AT THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT, it’s our turn. What mark are we leaving? What positive direction are we nudging music study in?

I think sometimes we get focused on how we feel limited by circumstances in the changing times, but the truth is, meaningful musical experiences might take on many different forms as society changes, and we’re wise to know our REAL role. I don’t think anyone is going to look to phase out piano teachers any time soon. I actually believe our jobs are going to become even more valuable because of how rare it is becoming to have 1-1 attention from another human being for an extended amount of time. BUT: that idea of helping students participate in music in meaningful ways? Yeah, that might need to grow and evolve as well.

Some of you know I’ve been up to my eyeballs in research about the Science of Play this summer and it has truly rocked my world. Play – in its truest form, ACTUAL PLAY – is becoming one of the most valuable commodities we can offer. It’s increasingly rare and difficult to come by. But we all know the traditional piano experience is not necessarily offering PLAY. I’ve been working hard to re-define what play looks like in the piano lesson, and why society has it all wrong. If you’re interested in hearing more on that, hang around to the end of the show and I’ll tell you more.  Or, you can check out the link in today’s shownotes.

So, anyway, thanks Jason Sifford for the reminder that our work is to help people participate in music in meaningful ways. I have repeated that phrase over and over to myself many times these past few weeks, especially since, OH, that should be MY goal as a musician, too.  To participate in music in meaningful ways.

Okay, I’m moving from big thoughts to something uber-practical, are you ready?  In episode 221 Florence Phillips and I talked about her 16-week project teaching piano to adults in a maximum security prison. I still get goosebumps thinking about this one.

Even though Florence’s experience tugged on my heartstrings in all sorts of ways, I really want to reiterate something we should ALL be implementing. Florence was given 8 weeks to work with different groups, which was supposed to culminate in a recital performance. We all know 8 weeks to recital time is a tall order, but Florence made it work. This really got me thinking about how we underestimate the power of the time we have with our students.

As a piano teacher, it’s so easy to only think as far as next week, or next month. What if you started this school year with a specific focus or goal for the next 8 weeks?  The number of weeks is not important, but think about it.  8 weeks to learn all Major and Minor pentascales. 8 weeks to sightread through an entire supplemental book. 8 weeks to be able to identify intervals by ear. 8 weeks to composing an original piece. 8 weeks to finishing a personalized arrangement of Happy Birthday.  8 weeks to playing the blues scale in all 12 keys. Whatever! The possibilities are endless, but what if you dreamed up a goal for 8 weeks and ran with it?  It’s not that this would be the ONLY THING you would do for those weeks.  I certainly hope not. But I promise you we can accomplish more that way than we will just taking things week by week by week.

Teachers always ask me how to fit it all in: the ear training, the improv, the chord study, the technique, the sightreading, the rhythm drills… and the truth is, we can’t do it ALL. But I think the best solution lies in these small bursts of focus on a specific concept.

If Florence Phillips can get a group of incarcerated adults to play Lean on Me in 8 weeks, what can you do in that same amount of time?

Phew! Okay; I’ll be honest… that’s already a lot to think about so I think I’ll leave it there and we’ll pick up my takeaways from the final three guests next time.

I really do hope I’ve inspired you to consider what message your ACTIONS are conveying about perfectionism, regardless of what you are saying with your words.

I hope we remember not to take our work so seriously that we strip away the ACTUAL GOAL of helping students participate in music in meaningful ways.

AND

I challenge you to start your fall semester will an 8-week goal of some sort. This is low-stakes. No one will show up at your door and take away your piano teacher license if you fail to meet the 8-week goal. And yet, I would almost bet money you will end up further ahead in the grand scheme of things than if you didn’t set a goal at all.

We spend a lot of accumulated hours with our students, and we can accomplish a LOT in that time.

I want to remind you this is your LAST chance to grab my newest resource for its presale price of $29. On Friday, August 1^st, I’m hosting a live watch party for my latest recorded video: The Paradox of Play: Taking Fun Seriously.  I am tackling the age-old question of how to do THIS VERY IMPORTANT WORK without making it feel HEAVY.  Here’s the crux of the whole thing: Society has convinced us that WORK is the opposite of PLAY, and therefore, we feel like we’re fighting a losing battle. BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE!  Work and Play *can* co-exist, and, actually, they do so quite naturally and quite beautifully when you know how to do it.  I can’t help but believe THIS RESEARCH – grounded in science! – is the key to the future of piano study.  Again, you can score this material for $29, but only through Friday, August 1^st, and then the price will go up.

As always, anything you purchase from me goes right back into supporting the making of this podcast, so your $29 actually scores you a double victory. Head to ChristinaWhitlock.com/paradox or find the link to purchase in today’s shownotes.

OKAY, friends!  Let’s toast our way out of here:

Studio teacher friends from all around the world: Let’s raise our glasses together today as we celebrate the increasingly-important role we play in society today. Real relationships… focused attention… PLAY… these are all things that are more and more rare in our students’ lives, yet they are also fundamental needs of the human condition. May we go forward knowing the value we provide, never questioning our worth or our impact. Cheers to you, my teacher friends!  Hear, hear.

That’s it for this week, friends!  Next week, we’ll tackle my obsessive thoughts from conversations with Janna Williamson, Elizabeth Davis-Everhart, and Diane Hidy. They’re good ones, too! In the meantime, onward and upward towards everything life has in store.