VMT 005 – Taking Action Against Music Teacher Overwhelm.mp3

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: Vibrant vibrant music teaching proven in practical depth strategies and ideas from music reaches

: Into the vibrant music teaching podcast. I’m Nicola Cantan and you’re listening to Episode Five all about music teachers overwhelm is. How it happens and how to avoid it.

Well hello there lovely teachers. Is your head swimming with all the possibilities and the things that you couldn’t be doing with your teaching. Do you never feel good enough. Well I’m here to help. I know how overwhelmed teachers can get and how easy it is to feel like you’re just not enough. You’re not trying enough new ideas you’re not being creative enough. You’re not doing this you’re not doing that. Teachers get so overwhelmed especially I think private music teachers because they’re in their own little bubble and within their little bubble they’re on their phone or on their computer scrolling through blogs and Facebook and Pinterest and seeing all of these ideas. And I know I’m part of the problem right. Colourful Keys has been going for four or five years now. So there’s a lot of stuff on there. My blog is full with tons of ideas and tons of other blogs are out there as well doing the same thing. And your Pinterest and. Not to mention the ideas that you could be taking from music classroom teachers or anyone else so there’s a lot right. And it’s really easy to get wrapped up in all of that stuff.

Then you could be doing and not do anything and feel bad about it.

Within our little bubbles we end up comparing ourselves to others and it’s fine to want to do better. It’s fine to want to improve. There’s nothing wrong with that but pure comparison against other teachers get us nowhere. It only makes us feel inadequate. I know I felt like that but you can’t do everything and those teachers aren’t doing everything either. So I want to give you four ways to avoid this horrible overwhelm and hopefully make you feel more confident as a teacher. No one is to keep organised. Now I know what you’re thinking right. Maybe one of the ways that you’re feeling overwhelmed right now is trying to organise everything so me telling you to keep organised is not helpful. But trust me organisation is everything. And as a former extremely messy person. Most people don’t believe when they now look at my studio trust me. It is so worth putting these systems in place. The thing about great organisational systems is that when said there you don’t have to think about them. They should be automatic. It should just be that at the end of the day your stuff goes away in the bins or into your colour coded cabinet or whatever system you come up with. If that happens each and every time automatically that’s where you get to think about other things and you can use that extra time that syou say that you would have been fluffing around trying to find all this stuff that you need for better things like maybe trying new ideas or like going to the beach right.

So how do you sort these things out. You need good systems where do they come from. Well they come one at a time. So all you need to do is pick one thing that is not working right now. It could be the way you organise your lesson plans that we talked about last week. It could be the way you keep notes on new students. The emails from parents that just end up in a big pile in your inbox or the games in your studio or the printables in your computer folders whatever it is. Pick the one that sucking up the most time and causing you the most stress right now and find a good solution. With all of these things you’ll end up trying out a lot of solutions until you find the one that’s right for you. And there’s nothing wrong with that but you do have to stick to them for a little while to see if they’re working to come up with something feasible for the problem and put it in place and then give it your best shot for a few months. If it’s still not working then rethink it again then it goes back on that need to sort out a system for list what having systems in place basically what it means is you don’t have to make decisions about that stuff every time you look at the thing resource a book or whatever it is and decide what you should do with it.

You’re using up your thinking power your energy your attention and you don’t have any to spare most likely. So don’t let yourself waste time and decision making power. On things that you could just have an automatic system for ever. It it’s this it does that, if it’s this it does that. Especially if you’ve been teaching for a while. You know the stuff that ends up on your floor you know the things that end up in your inbox or your text messages or whatever. Speaking of e-mails and text messages if you’re getting them from all over the place at all times of the day then that might be a system you sort out too maybe you narrow it down and tell parents they have to e-mail you or call you only maybe you don’t want any calls and you switch off your ringer during the day whatever days it needs to be a system that works for you and you need to give it a good try and improving it periodically so mark off. One thing this week that you’re going to fix and mark off time to research the system and implement it now make sure that this time is blocked off and that you have to make a decision by the end of it. You could spend five years exploring ways to categorise folders. Okay but it’s not going to get you anywhere because your folders are still going to be uncategorised. So give yourself an hour a half hour or whatever it is set it aside make a cup of coffee and then explore some options and implemented within that time right.

That’s it that’s all the time you have and it has to happen to make sure you leave enough time to actually put it into place and make yourself make a decision about what you’re going to try out. Ok so that’s how you can keep organised right. That’s one way to avoid overwhelm. The next way is to implement some kind of screen respite in your week. And again I’m a big part of the problem here. I have a blog and websites and I’m on Facebook. I’m doing all these things that keep you on screens if you’re paying attention. Right? But I make it a point to spend time away from screens because spending all of your time looking at a screen or all of your time jumping between looking at a screen and looking at the outside world is not healthy. You know, many parents will put restrictions on their kids screen time. And I think we need to do that to ourselves too because screens website apps they’re designed to keep you staring at them. I’m sorry to say that is what they want. So they are powerful and if you don’t put things in place to take yourself away from them you can spend all your time looking at them and if you spend all your time looking at them it’s not good for you because oh it’s bad for your eyes for one thing but it’s also bad because it’s such a fast moving pace and it’s not something our bodies were particularly designed to deal with which is partially what makes it so addictive.

Right. But you need to take yourself out and slow yourself down every so often to find a time when you can put your phone in a drawer. Don’t you put in your pocket put it away. You know when I go for a box I go for walks up the mountains each week with my husband and when I do that I leave my phone in the car now it’s not an expensive phones and no one is going to rob it from my car. And so it doesn’t matter. But it makes a big difference. Just don’t take it don’t take it. Whenever I go for a walk I just leave my phone at home and if I’m listening to something and then it goes completely silent or even on airplane mode. So people can’t even, you know I can’t even receive the messages because I know it’s too tempting. It’s much easier to make that decision in advance to find a time when you can have at least an hour where you don’t put your phone or maybe your weekend if you turn them off all weekend whatever suits you but find a way to get away from your screens for a little while. Because I promise it’s probably part of the overwhelm you’re feeling speaking of my Sunday walks. Another important part of avoiding overwhelm or burn out as a music teacher.

Is doing things that you love and getting distracted. What I mean by that is stuff that is nothing to do with your job. So yes playing piano for your own pleasure singing a beautiful song that you haven’t sung since a recital is great but it’s still kind of related to your job. And I don’t think it counts quite as much what I’d really like to encourage you to do is to do something completely out of, outside of teaching and music. Something completely separate it could be going for walks in the mountains like me it could be learning to kayak. It could be learning completely different instrument maybe at a push reading a great novel writing a great novel do something that is nothing to do with your profession. And I promise you this is where the best ideas come from actually problems that you’re having in your business or with a particular student or a struggle you have they’ll be sorted out much better in the back of your brain than in the front. Worrying about it and whirring around with it that’s part of it. But once you’ve done that bit you’ve tried to think of a solution. You need to let it go and do something completely distracting. That’s where the real results will come from with that problem that you’re experiencing or the decision you’re trying to make so find a way that you love something that you love to do that isn’t music that isn’t teaching and go do it.

Make the time to do it whatever it is. My last of the four ways to avoid overwhelm and burn out is to do one thing at a time. You may have heard this advice before you may have heard of a bunch of times but we all forget it from time to time. You need to do one thing at a time. Multitasking doesn’t work. It is not possible and doing one thing at a time will get you much more results than doing nothing. I’m not just referring to multitasking in the moment. I’m referring to trying new things in a more general sense. Do one thing at a time. If you have a whole Pinterest board of ideas that you want to trade in your teaching. You still haven’t pick one today. Try it with a student. Try it with another student and then come back when you’re ready for more. Because collecting ideas doesn’t do anything. Ideas are great they’re wonderful but action is better. So do one thing this week or this month or this quarter or this year narrow it down so that it’s actually doable and you really take action on something. The ideas are not going anywhere. We all have this feeling of FOMA right. Fear of Missing Out when it comes to blogs and all of these things. It feels like if we don’t grab it now if we don’t take it now it’s going to go away. But it’s not try to switch your mind to an idea of abundance because there really is an abundance of ideas.

There’s so much stuff and you don’t need to try it all today. You need to try one thing that’s important to you and your students this week so that you can move forward. You know I mention this to a lot of new vibrant music teaching members when they join the site. The temptation is to go to the library and try to print everything and laminate it all and have it all stored in a library. And while they’re welcome to do that all members are welcome to print as much as they like. It doesn’t achieve the best results the best results are actually achieved when members go in pick one game to try and don’t actually come back until they’ve tried it they’ll try it out with a student they’ll see some success and they’ll come back and then maybe when they come back they dive into some training or watch a teaching video to see more about that game or a pick another game and try that. It’s all about taking action because nothing happens if you don’t and when you take action you feel better about those ideas that you’re seeing because you know you’re doing something and what you’re doing is valuable and valid and the other ideas they’ll be there if you want them. So I have three questions that you can ask yourself to finish off today and this is if you’re looking at an idea and you’re wondering should I prioritise this.

Should I make this part of my To Do list shall I put it in the calendar. Should I print it out. Should I grab it. And that is is this worth my time energy and money. Can I do this in a way that is faster easier or cheaper. Will this really improve things for me or make my student educational experience better. So if it is not really worth your time energy or money then don’t do it. You can do it in a way that is faster easier or cheaper. Don’t do it this way. And if you don’t see it making a big difference in your studio then just move on. Scroll on by as we like to say and come back again later if you feel like you really need it. Chances are if something seems like a good idea and you’re not quite sure then if you just leave it it will resurface it’ll come back to you if it was really important. It’s like what people say about when you forget something right. You forget what you were going to say and they say my mom always says this. Oh if it’s important to you you’ll think of it I don’t know how true that is but I think it’s true of teaching ideas. If it’s important that you try it you will get an opportunity to try it. So don’t stress about it if it doesn’t seem like the most important thing to do right now.

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this podcast it is to do one thing that is the most important message. Do one thing at a time.

Emphasis on do do that one thing then try the next thing that honestly is help you make change in your studio and improve as a teacher. You can find the shownotes for today’s episode add vibrantmusicteaching.com/5 that’s the number 5 and if transfer student are one of the things that has you stressed out and overwhelmed. I totally get it. And there’s a lot of stuff coming up in the next few weeks that will be useful to you. There’s actually a new training that’s already been released in the VMT site so members can access that now under videos and then courses all about how I deal with transfer students and what I do in the first few lessons and going forward to get them after the best possible start in my studio. There’s a webinar available to everyone under 7 so you can sign up for that now and get more information about it. Add vibrantmusicteaching.com/transfer so hop on over there and sign up for it it’s going to be a great presentation and discussion about transfer students and what we can do to make their journey in your studio more successful. And next week on the podcast is about transfer students as well. I’m going to talk to you about how I deal with transfer students and what I have found has worked over the years. I’ll catch you then. Bye for now.

You can become a vibrant music teaching member today at VMT.ninja. Where you can access the full courses including the recent transfers student and tiny finger takeoff and practice pro course that were released previously. You can access the full library of games and creative activities and ideas as well as regular trainings and live calls with me. Find out more and become a member at VMT dot ninja today.

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