VMT Ep 58 – Why do you teach [Studio Business Cleanse Day 2].mp3 | Convert audio-to-text with Sonix

Vibrant vibrant vibrant music teaching proven and practical tips strategies than ideas for music teachers.

You’re listening to episode 58 of the vibrant music teaching podcast. I’m Nicola Canton and this is day two of our studio business challenge.

Stay there and welcome back to the studio business challenge. I’m delighted to have you join me again. And if you’re just catching up with us here it’s only day two. Plenty of time to get going. You can get the full details of the challenge and how it works at vibrant music teaching dot.com/cleanse. And if you sign up there you’ll also get access to the workbook. So it’s well worth doing that. The podcasts are available free obviously. And if you’re subscribed in June’s or up a podcast or wherever else you will automatically get those. So you may think you don’t need to sign up but you do need to sign up to get the workbook and you will get extra information in those emails and links to the podcast just in case you missed them. So go to vibrant music teaching dot.com slash cleanse to get your workbook and to sign up for the daily e-mails. There are three more days after today left and we’re blasting through these different challenges many tasks for you to do each day and things to consider so that you can get ready for a new year or a new term of teaching. It’s really important to sit back and take stock every so often. All of our businesses and all of our teaching and how it’s all going so that’s what this process aims to help you do. Yesterday we looked at who you’re teaching as our first starting point to this cleanse journey.

We took an in-depth look at the student currently have and your ideal students so that you can better target your marketing and better plan your studio and make better decisions for your business to fit your ideal clients your ideal students and their parents. So that was yesterday. Go back and listen to it if you haven’t already. And today we’re going to look at why you’re teaching so why are you teaching. I want you to think beyond the surface level here. Don’t tell me you’re teaching because you love kids or because you love music. We all have those reasons and I’m sure they’re true. I’m not denying that but those aren’t primary motivators for you as a teacher. But I want you to go beyond that. And the question I want you to ask yourself first is what gives you the most energy what fires you up. Now if you’re a member of the vibrant music studio teachers group on Facebook you might be familiar with the fact that we do a success story Saturday. Every Saturday we’ve been doing this for several years now and I continue to love it and I know many members of the group do too because it’s a chance every week to just know what went well what was great this week was it just that you got through the week at all that’s OK. Or was it something really cool a student did or did you have something big on in your studio like an event.

Or maybe you managed to stay a whole week away from teaching right. So we celebrate those successes every Saturday in the vibrant music studio teachers group on Facebook and if you are a member and you’ve participated in you know you’ve done that tradition before. One of the things I want you to do for this part of our challenge is to go to the group and search to see if you can find some of the successes you’ve shared because the things that get you fired up and whether you’ve shared them there or not you’ll know the things that give you energy that excite you in your teaching. Those specific things are important to take stock of because they should be a big part of your motivation for teaching. And when you can articulate that when you can say point to something and say This is why I teach this is why this is valuable for me. It can make a huge difference again to your planning and how you structure your business and all of the other things depending on what the reasons are. So that’s the first question I want you to consider is what gives you energy and let’s go a bit deeper than that let’s consider which students give you energy. Is it the younger students. Is it the older students. Is it the ones that come from this particular school where they all learn violin in their class. Could be anything but which students give you energy and which types of teaching give you energy.

This is almost more important when you finish working on advanced repertoire with a student. Is that when you feel completely energized by that lesson and ready to dance about and celebrate your teaching. Or is it when you improvise with a student. Or is it when you teach a piece by rote. Is it when you teach groups of students together. Is it when you teach your students about chords. Is it when you play games together. What gets you excited about teaching. What are the things that when you get to the end of the lesson you feel energized and excited to go into the next lesson rather than. a bit drained right. Because we all have those things that do drain us and those are going to exist. But it’s important to note what are the things that excite you and why are you teaching. What are the most important parts of your teaching. Also think about which times of year your most energized. Now this may be a thing you can change or maybe a thing you can’t change but knowing the seasons of your year will help you to manage your energy as well. So if you know that your lowest energy time of year is the month before your recital then you can plan for that you can allow extra time in your week perhaps to take care of yourself to go for a walk to get away from everything.

Maybe you can tell your partner or your roommate listen we’re coming up to this time. I know I’m not going to be as pleasant as usual or I know I’m not going to be able to do as much housework I will get tons of it done afterwards but take the pressure off yourself right. Or maybe arrange your recitals when you feel totally energized and super excited and your downtime is when there’s nothing particularly going on. So maybe you need to put more events into your year to keep that momentum going and keep you excited about stuff. It’ll be different for everyone so I want you to ask yourself those few questions to take stock of when you’re most energized and why you’re excited to teach what is it that drives you to teach. Specifically what do you love about teaching. What keeps you going. Then I want you to think about your student and where they’re going because that’s a big part of why we teach right. I mean we’re teaching. We want our students to get somewhere we want them to get something out of it. So the next part of your workbook your clan’s workbook which again you can get at vibrantmusicteaching.com/cleanse. Is about where your student will be in three years and I want you to start this from the perspective of your ideal student that you set up yesterday. So go back and fill that in if you haven’t already.

And take it from there. So my student my ideal student I described to you was four and a half years old. Right. So after three years they’re only seven and a half. So I have to take that into consideration. If your ideal beginner is 11 or is already advanced that’ll be completely different for you. Take it from there and think about where they should be in three years after they start with you. What should they be able to do. What skills do you want them to have. What do you want them to be doing with their music. Do you want them to be putting it into action in some way. Do you want them to have joined a band. Do you want them to have played in public spaces and be playing for parties. Do you want them to be able to play from lead sheets. Do you want them to be able to improvise what you want them to have awareness of and what do you want them to be able to do. Like I say this could be very different for you my ideal student is only four and a half when they start so at almost age eight. I’m not going to have them playing from lead sheets. I’m playing a ton of chords and doing all of these things because they’re not 8 yet right. Their hands band isn’t even at that stage could be completely different for you. But take a moment to write that down today as you do the challenge and then think about 10 year similar questions.

But ten years out what should they be able to do after 10 years. Someone who isn’t working in music teaching or maybe some of you who haven’t been doing this as long may think 10 years sounds like a crazy amount of time but if you really think about your own music education ten years isn’t actually that long after ten years of study. You should’ve been able to play pretty well right but it doesn’t take you all the way up to a certain level that someone outside of music might expect you’re not necessarily going to be playing sonatas after ten years you might but you might not have a think about where your student will be after ten years and then most importantly and slightly epically. What do you want for them for their music in their lifetime. Do you want them to be performing. Do you want them to take this as a career. That’s OK. Do you want them to be part of a band or be a worship pianist. That’s a completely different set of skills you’re going to be teaching them right. Or do you want them like me to be a hobbyist. I’m not against my students studying music of course but my real goal and where I see most of my students my ideal students going is that they have this as part of their life that maybe they go and work in finance or law or something serious and to relieve their stress.

At the end of the week they play piano for themselves or they have such good reading skills that they go and participate in a choir and don’t need to do the homework to read through things but they can read it at sight or maybe they use it to hang out with friends who also play music instruments right. So my ideal student really is heading towards music being an important. But aside. Part of their life right. It’s not their core reason for being but it’s a fantastic hobby and a great escape and stress reliever for the rest of their life that they play it for fun because they love it because they have the skills to be able to do that. But the rest of their life. What do you want for your students. Maybe it’s similar maybe it’s different. Write it into your workbook and if you haven’t got that workbook go ahead and grab it because you’re going to need it for the three remaining days. It’s at vibrantmusicteaching.com/cleanse can happen over now to grab it and listen back to the previous podcast episode yesterday and tune in tomorrow and two more days after that for our final three days of the studio business cleanse so I can help you level up your teaching and your business. For a new year. I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Bye for now.

A quick reminder to VMT members that you can access to the full studio business reboot course which will help you look at your business your policies your payments all of that goodness and get ready for a new year of teaching in that way you can access that inside the video library right now. And if you’re not a member yet you can sign up at VMT.ninja.

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