hi there this is Sharon Mark-Teggart from the curious piano teachers and you're
listening to musicality podcast ever wondered why some people seem to have a
gift for music have you ever wished that you could play by ear sing in tune
improvise and jam you're in the right place time to turn those wishes into
reality welcome to the musicality podcast with your host Christopher
Sutton hi this is Christopher founder of musical u and welcome to the
musicality podcast today I'm joined by Sharon Mark-Teggart who along with dr.
Sally Cathcart runs the curious piano teachers one of the leading
organizations training up the next generation of piano teachers and as
you'll discover in this episode they are leveraging the latest research into what
makes for effective learning and teaching to help those new teachers be
more successful enjoy their teaching more and be continually developing and
improving throughout their teaching career on the face of it you might think
this interview is one for aspiring piano teachers only or maybe just music
teachers but I would strongly encourage you to take the kind of attitude that
Sharon talks about in this conversation one of curiosity she talks about how she
would sometimes go along to training courses that didn't seem directly
applicable to her for example ones designed for classroom music teachers
but by being open-minded and curious she found she would always come away with a
ton of new tools and inspiration to apply in her own teaching in the same
way I would encourage you to listen to this conversation and not just take it
at face value when we talk about teachers and students try to consider
how it could all apply not just to your own role in a student-teacher
relationship but also when studying resources online by yourself or even
when you sit and practice and you're acting as your own teacher I think
you'll find that all the insights Sharon shares in this conversation can be very
relevant to you in one context or another in your own musical life
in this conversation we talk about the transformation Sharon went through in
her own teaching and why she is now so passionate about changing the status quo
in piano teaching we talk about what it means to bring curiosity to your
teaching and your learning and why that can be so powerful and we talk about the
teaching toolbox she has built up and now shares including the surprising
variety and power in the questions you ask to accelerate learning we also
talked a bit about the online course and the teaching diploma training they've
developed so if you are a teacher yourself or you'd like to be or maybe
you know somebody who would you won't want to miss the details on that my name
is Christopher Sutton and this is the musicality podcast from musical u
welcome to the show Sharon thank you for joining us today
oh it's such a pleasure to be here and thanks so much for having me Christopher
so you are well known online for being an expert in teaching teachers you
specialize in training piano teachers and I think anyone would assume that you
must have been one of these kind of virtuoso kids who sat down like keyboard
and could instantly play anything at the age of three having talked to you a
little bit I think maybe that's not exactly the case can you tell us a bit
about what it was like for you when you were first learning piano yeah sure okay
I was initially taught by my great-aunt I can remember it well she used to call
to the house and Saturday afternoon I started by learning to play hymns from
music notation so it was kind of as kind of you know as deeply through him at the
deep end as you could possibly imagine so I continued having lessons with her
until I started secondary school and so kind of I guess I started to wrong the
age of it and thereafter I've an had lessons from a teacher who was really
quite well considered in the area I think possibly because she was one of
the only full-time piano teachers and again it's interesting I you know
full-time because they do all the time it's considered that
amazing teacher but I've guess my biggest she was I did nothing but
prepare for exams so for the first kind of right through until I was age 17 when
I did my gradient and everything was exam focused and I did go off I did have
the motivation to go off and learn things by myself but I did not enjoy
learning the piano at all and only I had my mom there behind me pushing me on I
would definitely have quit in fact I remember two weeks before I took my
grade-eight exam bringing my mom into the room and saying okay sit down I want
you to listen to this hoping that she would say it's awful I'm not gonna make
you go in there so I did quite literally take it at that and I remember spending
those final two weeks in the run up to my gradient practicing madly listening
loads to recordings because I remember being I I was not scaled and technique
there were just looking back goodness me there were so many weak areas and so I
went in I did the exam I got a distinction and that was the one thing
that actually spurred me to continue with with learning piano but my playing
and my skills as a musician where let's say very shabby to say the least
interesting I talked to a lot of people who have had that kind of intense exam
focused childhood experience of learning an instrument
mm-hm and number one I'm sad to say it's all too common isn't it to feel like I
haven't actually learned to really play the instrument you've just learned to
tick the boxes and do your kind of Route performance
I remember feeling so embarrassed actually when I was you know somebody's
house there was a piano and they discovered that you have great with a
distinction and the first thing was you brilliant you must be amazing and it was
always this excuse because at that stage um I couldn't like memory I I couldn't
play by ear I couldn't improvise and it was always this excuse well I don't have
the music that I kind of know that because of course like to give me
something to say we would have been the other terrifying factor and I think when
I talk to people like yourself you've had that experience it's actually really
unusual to find they've continued with the instrument you know normally that
story goes and so I passed my exam and again yes so you clearly that wasn't the
case and you said getting a distinction encouraged you on was there anything
else that made you think okay maybe there's something to this the
distinction was I mean I remember actually where I was sitting on the
stairs and my aunt's house getting the news that I had got a distinction
gradiate and I didn't think it mattered that much to me but it did and I mean
still to this day I don't feel worthy of that I don't think I was worthy of that
distinction but provident it's call it whatever you like it was kind of it was
there because if I hadn't if I just got a merit or I just passed and certainly
if I'd failed that would have been it that would have been it but I think the
fact that I I got that encouragement and I then explored that and it was kind of
the people I met subsequently that I then realized okay yes I need to teach
the piano and I need to teach it in the way that is suddenly being you know kind
of in those years after being revealed to me so again like you said I came into
it not having a great experience at all in fact probably like what you would
term is a pretty terrible experience but I came into soap and passion of that in
knew one was going to learn the Chatham Harbor well I have and I think that I
mean that is what drove my passion to to be an effective teacher myself and then
obviously later as I really got into it my passion then like in training Pennell
teachers that's such a positive creative outcome
you know some people would have that resentment of the way they were taught
and just kind of bury their head in the sand
what's like their opened your eyes to the possibility of it being done in a
better way I move teachers um I got a new teacher from my diploma and it was
kind of this starting it was definitely the starting point because a lot of
things in those lessons changed and I I was it was that kind of humor glimpse
and to do this could be now this is really quite different and then I got
very involved in I started teaching I just about the same time that I started
preparing for a performance diploma with that new teacher I got involved in an
actor back to UK I actually run my own region for ten years in Northern Ireland
and I got I mean when I say I was immersed in professional development I
was you know for kind of 10 plus years of my life I was I was completely
immersed in it my professional development I mean I've spent over
100,000 pounds I I have on obviously being based in northern and I was having
all the traveling expenses as well you know I have lived in London didn't ever
let had London but it felt like that because I was always there for courses
and I think it was it was then it was getting light there was meeting there
right people at the right time and it was the people I met who did have the
spark and the enthusiasm and where I was just like wow you know I was literally
blown away because I was in contact with the people who were kind of me again
what they were doing was bringing transformation to my life he knew as as
a as a penis doesn't musician as a piano teacher and it was just saying the the
limitless possibilities which I hadn't seen before so take us back to that time
then because you mentioned passion there but I'm sure it wasn't just you know
these people were passionate about teaching the grade for ABRSM exam
syllabus to their students what was it that
that they were passionate about that had been missing for you up until that point
I think it was I mean the one I will say at this point is that until I did the MT
PP course and which is the music teaching and professional practice
course based at you were writing University postgraduate course followed
by a master's in music education research and it was I was kind of I was
I was teaching beyond of what five years before I did that course and I remember
distinctly trying so hard to teach in a way that kind of didn't reflect how I've
been taught if that makes sense okay so I went all like I was like I'm not gonna
teach as I US as I've been taught but until I went on that course did I
actually discover Oh Sharon actually you've been teaching exactly as you were
taught and the difference with that course was reflective practice and
really digging in and understanding before it was like I didn't know what to
be curious about I kind of didn't have enough knowledge to be able to explore
and I think it was that mushy filler course that really exploded everything
so up until then I guess I was inspired by little bits of pieces but actually
just before I started the MTP course I was considering quitting piano teaching
initially you know kind of going up you know going through school I wanted to be
a dietitian can't get anything kind of anymore different but not took the under
teaching I mean if someone it said you you're gonna teach you're gonna be kind
of teaching me way to be Nick absolutely not the only teaching is just not on my
radar so at that point kind of five years into teaching and was actually
considering going back into kind of Dietetics or something different because
I was getting frustrated and where was that frustration coming from and the
frustration was again I was doing lots of courses but there wasn't any
follow-through with them so if you like it was you know a one day conference
here or another Sam here the sort of thing that just fires
you up for the day 30 weeks later and then you're back at home you're back in
your studio and things just slip back into the routine because there isn't
that ongoing catalyst to keep you moving forward and that was where the MTP peak
course at rating University we changed all of that and again I mean my work is
still unconventional I didn't have a degree at that point I didn't you know
didn't have a piece of music degree I didn't have a basic degree of any sort
of description and I remember talking years later to the course director and
he said he really did con wonder whether or not you would be a good fit on this
course of course it's you know who's Frederick a masters and I think I was
one of the very few people to get onto it without a piece of music degree but
it was because of all the other stuff they could see I was doing they could
see I was I was thirsty and hungry to you know to develop my my skills to
channel teacher but yeah at that point I was severely frustrated and I think it
was because there just wasn't this ongoing thing to get to give me the
solutions that I needed and that was where them the MTP
really came into its own because there was the ongoing you know you had a
shooter you could go back the stuff that was frustrating you you then had someone
to talk to you had a network of fellow students and that actually meet all the
difference interesting I think well let's circle
back and talk about this a little bit later on when talking about your own
community now for piano teachers but I'm reminded so much of an episode we did
recently here on the show about online courses and when you are choosing and
following through with an online course and I was talking particularly about
trying to find a course that has really great support because it's one thing to
you know be able to submit an email question but it's completely different
if you have some kind of community or some kind of environment where a tutor
for example is keeping an eye on you and if you start to wonder of course they
can help you get that long and they can help with motivation and enthusiasm and
those little sticking points that can otherwise frustrate you I'm sure a lot
of people listening can relate to where you were up until that point kind of
taking little bits and pieces of learning from here and there and getting
bursts of enthusiasm enough to carry you through but not really kind of solving
the overall problem yeah you mentioned something that I'd love to pick up on
which was a reflective practice what does that mean okay reflective practice
is where I'm gonna describe it as okay before in my teaching staff was going
wrong I knew stuff was going wrong I didn't know how to fix it because I
basically didn't have the tools and Mytyl teaching toolkit to you know to
fix the problems the tools just weren't there and so what I was doing was I was
just you know sweeping brushing all of this stuff in under the carpet and just
kind of going on it felt very much to me like muddling on in the best way I knew
Hine and the EM TPP course was the first course that really helped me understand
reflective practices basically where if I could just take it as an example you
teach a lesson and one of the best ways to reflect analysis where are you video
recorded obviously with the people and the parents written permission obviously
that's very important ideas and whenever I'm talking about that I always that but
you watch that lesson back and you see the things that you never realized and
without the course I still would have struggled but of course with the support
of the course I understood how to dig into that so I I knew the sort of things
to look for and I think it was again being given that license to go yep
that's going all wrong but it's okay and you being given that that license to
say it's it's far from perfect but that's okay is actually the first thing
that actually mets your brain kind of just open up and go so let's take a look
and see what's going on in here rather than
all of those thoughts of I'm a rubbish teacher this is and so I'm just going to
close it all down because I'm just so scared of where this is going to go
feeling like an impostor so you just kind of close it down so instead being
reflective is where you just going it's fine it's fine to be wrong not to get it
right because that's the first step and actually moving it all forward and
improving it so yeah for me reflective practice is where you're looking at what
you're doing in practice you are using the tools and the resources that you
have and obviously the sorts of resources that we are providing a
curious kind of teachers to be able to go okay so what is that I know I need to
do to move that to the next level and to improve that so I think yeah you've got
to be you've got to be open first of all you've got to and again the helpful way
through is going it's fine to be wrong it's fine to be getting it you know for
it to be going completely up the left because that gets you into a place of
being really honest as a piano teacher and then it's having the tools where you
can go and undo again and start to see improvement fascinating it's amazing how
much of that I think applies to the individual learner too you know we've
talked on the show before about how you should record yourself practicing and
listen back it's gonna be uncomfortable but you know there's so much you can
draw from it you know I haven't really thought in the past about teachers doing
that for the practice of their teaching but it makes perfect sense it's exactly
something and it's actually exactly the same thing for again whether you got
people again listening to this show who are learning the piano by themselves
again go out there record record again for teachers students again what I
encourage my students to do is record themselves because you know you very
often get them saying you know do I really sound like that I mean you can
take that either as a positive or negative but it's so important because
it gives you the space that when you're actually in the activity whether you're
in the activity of playing the piano or in the activity of teaching the piano
where you just don't that kind of like wide-open space to sit
back and you know lesson and again ideally in video because you get to see
as well and it's very interesting again for pianists listening or watching back
you get to see well you know what's my posture like what am i doing
only tensing my lips as I set the play on my breathing so you get so much
feedback and that is really a video is an excellent place as a starting point
for reflection amazing so you were someone who was at the point of
considering quitting teaching piano last forward you were launching evoko to help
other people in Northern Ireland become piano teachers and you went on to
co-found curious piano teachers and take this mission internationally online to
reach even more people yes somewhere in there you must have transformed from one
type of piano teacher to another maybe you could just paint a picture for us of
you know what the lesson looked like from the students perspective before and
after that transformation okay that's that's a great point
okay so yeah if I cast my mind back to my previous teaching it was I think
actually first of all it was mainly about me as a teacher and of course as
teachers the learning we are never the hero off the story
it's our students so I'm gonna say that that's the first main distinction and
pre reflection I was very much it was all about kind of me you know kind of
checking is my teaching good and feeling very stuck and very stifled back then it
was actually again I was teaching very notation based I had students who did
not enjoy practicing I did not have a lot of practice strategies oh my
goodness goodness there is there were just so many things that you know one
night fast forward to think about my teaching night where yes I am the
teacher but the piano lesson is not about me as the teacher it's it's so
it's not about my teaching it's a point the focus is on the students in learning
and that's a really important distinction so if you like I'm not a
hero it's this this learning journey belongs to my student and it's their
story they were the hero so the focus is again shifted and again I think this can
only really come when we become more confident as a teacher because when you
lack that confidence when you feel a bit of imposter you're always trying to
prove to yourself that you're OK my teachings ok as opposed to then having
the confidence in yourself as a teacher I mean there are still areas I mean
there will always goodness me there'll always be areas as teachers where you go
oh yeah I need to take into that more and of course I'll come back to being
curious there will never be there'll always be a quest off I need to improve
and this and this and this and the more we are curious the more we can earth and
dig up to explore and expand on but I think that is the me in distinction it's
where I'm obviously so much more confident and skilled as a teacher that
toolbox of that I prefer to do previously that was really quite empty
is not we know jam-packed with things that comes from experience but it's not
just experience because you could be teaching for a long period of time and
if you haven't been putting into your toolbox you know the tools still aren't
going to be there that's an active process that teachers need to do so yes
so looking at my teaching today it's the student is the hero it's all about their
learning and it's where again I have the tools at hand to be able to develop and
move them forward what kind of tools are you talking about there because I'm sure
I can imagine someone listening thinks well if you're qualified as a piano
teacher you must be able to get them to doing the things that the exam requires
and if that's what's the term requires surely that's that's what it means to be
a pianist so what extra tools would you need like
tums to give you an example
if I just dig into for example the art of questioning okay I mean there are
lots as I say you know as piano teachers there are lots and lots of little a few
much and kind of pockets of things that we need to we need to have awareness and
unskilled sets in so questions what sort of questions do we ask our students we
have you get skinny questions fat questions higher order questions will
order questions metacognitive questions no I did always know about these sorts
of questions and when I started to understand more about the way we enter
into dialogue with our students and the fact as well that music making is
actually what should make up most of the lesson not the teacher talking which
again can very often hinder the students learning so again just to kind of dig
into one of those examples I remember once watching back a lesson
looking specifically and knowing to look for these things like again you know how
am i interacting with the student this particular case study people there was
something like I spent about four and a half minutes talking her through what
she needs to do trying lots of different ways wasn't working and I'm and I just
demonstrate it and that was there you know ten seconds lyrics should got it
so you look back and you go okay so stop the talk you know stop talking charge
just demonstrate but again going back into questions we know again from the
research that we've done we knew from research that other people have done not
even necessarily in the music education profession you know it's about asking
good questions you know what is a good question I was talking earlier on about
you know skinny questions and fat questions
if we're asking questions like do you you're going to instance a get an answer
a yes/no so basically what you have done is you have shut down the opportunity to
really figure out if the student understands but if you ask a question
that begins with you know how could you practice that hi you know what might you
do so you're kind of you're instantly going into again open closed you're it's
either questions shut something dying or open something up and just understanding
that make such a huge impact again just really quickly to share an example of
one of my teaching students she taught a lesson recently she watched it I she
gave it to me to watch and it was really interesting that she again asked a
question got the right answer but decided to ask another deeper question
and then realized naturally no his student doesn't understand this so again
that's just a kind of an example of one of the tools so again knowing how to ask
questions and interpenetration last minute isn't important
yes it's important because you may have a student who doesn't get something and
if you're asking the right questions you'll realize okay we haven't got that
I'm not thinking what can happen so often in lessons is where we talk to the
student and we assume and it's something that a guy called Leah fever has
referred to as the curse of knowledge you know we're at a 10
our students are about one in the two we try and communicate what we know and we
so often miss and we get it out of seven so there's this gap and it's because we
have learnt the stuff through long ago we've just forgotten the possibilities
for confusion and that's where we need to be asking those questions we need to
be interacting with our students because otherwise there
stuff that they won't understand you know it's the same way that if we have a
conversation with a lawyer or an accountant we don't live in their world
we don't understand and they will say things and you know we can still often
Motorhead as if to say it would be silly not kind of fun yeah okay I understand
well I don't so again it's the same with our pupils
so that's might be a very long-winded question but that's just one tiny tiny
area that it can just it commits such a transformative difference if you
understand mmm I think you've painted a great picture
there of how thoughtful you can be as a piano teacher and how easy I'm sure it
is if you don't if you never encountered these kinds of tools for your teaching
to be oblivious to that possibility and be a very thoughtless teacher
inadvertently and you've used a different word than thoughtful though in
creating your company tell us about curious piano teachers
where that came from and why you chose that word curious curious was I
initially I remember using the word curious on my very first Oroku banner on
the banner was how do you eat an elephant curious and of course the
follow through with that was you know how do you eat an elephant one bite at a
time because as with anything that can seem challenging again camera teachers
can look and when again they hear about questions or when they hear about any of
these little kind of pockets that I'm talking about the kind of like where do
I start it seems to me there's there's so much to learn bite and the whole
point is that you don't try and you know get your life throwing the whole
elephant you just take it one bite at a time and and
Sally again just to kind of put you in the picture with Sally Sally and I met
on the MTV food course one very hot sunny day in 2003 I think it was at
Reading University and then subsequently she was my Master's supervisor and then
we work together as principal shears on the GTC the piano teachers course that
runs at the Purcell school and she then back kind of 2020 2013 I think is she
came over and did some work for me at a cuckoo and she again
then she started up the curious piano teacher blog and then obviously from
there when we had a good chat join forces we decided okay let's become the
curious kind of teachers because essentially you can't be curious about
something that you don't know about so of course for example the whole love
concept of questions if you don't wear that questions are so massively powerful
new knowing all the questions to ask unless you're aware that questions are
transformative element you're not going to so again the idea with curious Jemma
teaches is that we again put out little things for teachers home yeah so that's
really where the whole word curious and of course it's piano teaching is always
you know anything in life it's always evolving constantly like I said earlier
there's no point we tiny can sit back hold your arms in there okay that's it
I'm done it's a mortgage again the more you on
earth the more you follow it at real the more it breaks off into all these other
trails so again Sally and I up Jersey tonight teachers were both we've got
research punk rinds we understand the importance of research we understand to
that total this amazing wonderful research
that has been done very rarely actually filters dying to to piano teachers right
there and if it did we would actually be realizing you know for example having
this focus on mutation is actually not the way to go in the first lessons so
again research fuels curiosity so yeah curious is a very important word for us
because it's in essence it talks about
asking that what-if question you on and again we did that you know what is we
could help piano teachers online and we didn't know if that was gonna work
because before then we were only doing it and you know kind of one to one
setting where we had piano in the room where we had teachers physically in the
room with us we didn't know if it was actually going to work so again not with
us being curious going well what is let's fish the blender here you
mentioned something there which i think is characteristic of your kind of
teaching philosophy or approach which is you know not going too heavy on the
notation based learning and I really enjoyed looking at your let's play
course which I don't know if it's a kind of equips teachers with a lot of
different interesting tools they can bring to their lessons and unpack music
in a very different way for their students and I wonder if you could talk
a little bit about that course and in particular what jumped out of me was
that you are unashamedly or unabashedly putting singing front and center which
is I think my unusual for a piano teacher it is it is okay so we have an
online course called let's play it is it's for piano teachers they teach
beginners so obviously that's quite a lot of piano teachers
and the idea is you get to when you when you get the course you get to see Sally
and I teach lessons no it's it's not just one-to-one lessons we're also doing
small group lessons and again reflection is very much at the center of this
because you get to watch a lesson and then you get to hear us talk about it so
you actually get to hear our reflections of what went well what didn't go so well
and as a subsequent you know what would we do instead so we kind of follow
through with that because again new lessons perfect but again the the
underlying premise of this course is that we develop musicians first and
Kings second so if you think about it I mean one way that I will talk to parents
about this is it would be absurd to get your child to learn to you know read and
write without having first learned how to speak and can are lessons that start
with the tutor book so often can if kind of a similar thing and what song I are
very passionate about is that we develop musicians first of all and the natural
way to do that is through the singing voice my family has done a huge amount
of work for the voices foundation again it's something to to look at and google
video a wonderful course and it's actually where I did a course that was
one of the courses I did once there was an AMT PP course and where I was
struggling to get the practical side of this a holiday long before symbol
because it was presented quite theoretically and I thought but how do I
apply this in a piano lessons like what what do I do
how do I develop musicianship skills for my piano students and basically I I went
in this voices foundation course and it was for classroom teachers and again if
being open-minded it's being curious you kind of could think I'm not a strategist
so this will not apply to me but I came home with again a toolbox
fill of what I needed to do in my channel lessons developing singing so
again where for example you teach your beginner student a simple song they then
will be able to let say understand how to tap the rhythm understand how to play
that by ear understand how to write that die I mean obviously the scope of this
podcast I can't go into that but again that course looks at that so it's really
developing musicianship and aural skills it can work perfectly
as something alongside a piano tutor book so it's a way of you know songs
that you can teach and then how you can break down the elements you know so how
do you teach students to you know understand rhythm and pulse if broken
dog is broken time step by step in that which is get of course with again lots
of songs and rhymes and examples that you can use in lessons terrific and just
to play devil's advocate for a second why do it that way what's the advantage
of developing those skills away from the piano or in conjunction with the method
book again it's you music needs to come from within we can't sit dying at an
instrument and bring music out of flooded streamin with like the music
first being inside you know so the rhythm the intonation all that and again
people again singing it's maybe less obvious first thing to be used in piano
lassis people might say well you know a tuner comes in and that's their job to
tune the piano why do kind of students need to learn to
sing in tune but do you know what again from having done that voice of course
myself I developed so much musicianship spells and I realized the importance oh
you know where before I struggle to play a phrase musically if you start with
singing but just like the problems just dissolve but again going through
and understanding the approach and all the nuances of that approach which is
what I learned in the courses course and again which is what the let's play
course is very much infused with its this where we all have we need to have
this these musicianship skills the music inside us developed first you know
internalization then we can go to the instrument and we have got the full
sound in her head and that's quite make sense fantastic
well as you say unfortunately there's only so much we can pack into a podcast
I feel like we can do a whole episode on that approach and helping students be
comfortable singing and all that good stuff but I think for now we'll just
we'll put a link in the show notes to that let's play course and anyone who's
interested to see what this might look like or what that toolbox contains
definitely go take a look at that course we mentioned earlier the importance of
community or from a different angle we could talk about support and ongoing
training and advice and help when you're trying to learn something and I'd love
to hear about your online teaching diploma course because that's something
that I think a lot of people would assume needs to be done in person in an
old conservatory somewhere you guys are taking a very different approach to
preparing the next generation of piano teachers and you're putting community
front and center as part of that tell us why you're taking that approach
and what that overall program looks like so just to kind of backtrack a little
bit we obviously set up the community which
is our online membership site back in 2015 it's a big part of what we do um
but again prior to that with the boko I had my focus was on offering courses to
piano teachers again these were courses where that were you know physically
again in building with me with a piano and
a year down the line having started the membership site and realizing yes we can
make a difference we can do this online this is working we then went back and
looked at the idea of an online piano teaching diploma course again there's
that ongoing element and there is the accountability so again there are the
assignments which we do have challenges for our members in the community but
again we're not we're not chasing every one out to make sure they've done that
you know done their homework as it were whereas with this course it's a full you
know for especially for teachers who either struggle to know what to do or
who get started something and it just falls by the wayside because there isn't
the ongoing catch us then this is what this course is designed to take you need
to help them keep going to where they've actually got unaccredited teaching
diploma so at the moment we are currently offering the HTC L and the
ABRSM so it's a course that helps you helps piano teachers prepare for either
one off of these teaching diplomas and
it's again we've got we've just launched the 2018 brochure the deadline for
applications is the 30th of June and that course then it's a 15 month course
it starts in in September and runs right the way through so everything yes is
online so we've got eight modules we've gots a good Facebook group for curious
people you're curious to know more because again we're in an hour answering
lots of questions and actually diving a lot more into the egg the module content
a lot more than what we can actually put into a brochure but what was really
important for us was that we we knew about piano teachers very often want to
feel that they have a recognised teaching qualification as
opposed to a performance one and of course you learn a whole new set of
skills because I sort of like teaching with kind of her decent after I started
teaching I got our performance diploma but it's there isn't pedagogical skills
that you then will learn about when you go and you do a teaching diploma so
you've got another whole set of skills and that's what we dig into in Museum
modules but again we didn't want people just to go away with a piece of paper
obviously in the same way that as piano teachers we don't want to use the exam
syllabus as a curriculum that's again what we've done so we have gone we have
looked at the requirements for these two accredited piano teaching diplomas and
then we have created this yet module course around that and it's so that
piano teachers don't just get a piano teaching qualification when they follow
through and they do the work they also get if you like the toolbox of skills so
the idea is that it's transforming their teaching so we have I think some sort of
tag line somewhere where you know it's if the piano teaching diploma for life
so and again from what people are saying we had a pilot course initially and we
then run are currently running a small course and then this year is a kind of
proper full ami course which we have also added three complementary live - so
we're really excited about that we had our first curious live event one event
in Belfast and one event in Oxford where a expiosion us in Australia earlier this
year the amount of sheer enthusiasm I mean
from bringing it was largely members who attended just that I mean the energy was
just awesome just awesome and we thought we've got to bring our teaching diploma
students together as well so we have a day in London at the beginning of
January just as they're starting module three and then later on there's two days
in this summer and we're we're also going to be delivering something I will
be delivering with people from the ABRSM and Trinity so I know for sure I was in
touch with Peter wild she's examiner of Trinity College X so he's gonna be
working alongside me delivering the content and one of the days and again we
just haven't confirmed who the person is from ABRSM so again the idea is to
connect with our members at those points because we know that bringing people
together in life setting is just it's just very very powerful no we know that
it's in London we do have applicants I mean we have people from us really I
have done the correct obviously you know if you're based in
the US or Canada or Australia you're very welcome to take a flight to London
but of course we've actually we decided okay we're going to make this
complimentary so we we haven't increased the cost from from last year and this is
another element not because we can't deliver it live we have had our first
batch of students who have gone through the course and who have successfully
completed the course and passed the course but the idea is we're just from
curious lives we realized yeah bringing people together is awesome so
for students that can make it to London it will be it will be our rocking
experiences all I can say tremendous well I have to say on the podcast here
occasionally the topic of you know instrument exams and the traditional way
of teaching comes up and I I have to admit that it's often a fairly negative
narrative that you know the old way doesn't work and the exams
do more harm than good and you know the dry notation based approach isn't much
fun so it's just really refreshing and encouraging and exciting to hear about
the work you're doing at curious piano teachers and think that there could be a
whole new generation of teachers coming up now and I'm sure you also have some
people retraining or taking their diploma even though they've been
teaching for 10 or 20 years so think of them going at Whitley and
teaching in the way you've been describing that actually puts the
student front and center as the hero and brings in musicianship from day one
rather than just robotic playing and that's all
tremendous and very exciting if anyone listening has thought about becoming a
piano teacher or maybe you are a teacher and you want more of these kind of tools
and ways of thinking about your teaching to improve definitely do check out the
curious piano teachers we'll have a link in the show notes and you can get that
brochure for this course it's the curious piano teachers org and
if you're not in that category don't avoid checking out that website don't
miss the opportunity because there is a ton on there whether you are thinking
about teaching or thinking about learning there is a back catalog of blog
posts that will expand your mind in lots of interesting ways and no doubt give
you a ton of new things to be curious about Sharon it's been such a pleasure
having you on the show today thank you so much for joining us oh it's my
pleasure it's been absolutely wonderful to be here thank you so much for having
me Christopher unlock your full musicality with musical
you membership musicality comm /join i was saying to sharon before we started
recording that I've really enjoyed digging into their back blog posts and
learning more about the way they teach at the curious piano teachers and I
realized I was absorbing a lot of the ideas and material not from the point of
view of if I was a piano teacher this would be useful but wow this is super
interesting for myself as a music educator and just as a musician so I'm
hoping you had the same experience listening to Sharon's insights and ideas
and you're feeling freshly inspired let's do a quick recap
Sharon started learning piano in childhood and on paper she was very
successful Dovan at the deep end learning hymns
from sheet music and then working through the exam grades eventually
passing her grade eight with distinction but she shared how this learning process
really didn't leave her feeling very confident in herself as a musician and
the idea of being asked to sit down and play piano outside of that exam
structure left her feeling a bit helpless and frustrated fortunately her
good final exam result encouraged her to pursue things a bit further and she had
regular bits of encouragement from passionate piano teachers she met and
training courses she went on these started to offer a glimpse of what piano
teaching could be but it wasn't until she took her Mt PP the music teacher
professional practice course that things really clicked for her there she
discovered reflective practice the technique of recording and watching back
the lessons you teach it was fascinating to hear about this because it's so
closely parallels what we've talked about several times on the podcast here
from the perspective of the student that recording yourself playing can reveal
amazing insights and opportunities to improve but it does take some emotional
fortitude and a mindset shift to face up to what you find on the recording Sharon
described how exactly the same thing that helps a musician become a better
musician can help a teacher learn to improve as a teacher this reflective
practice helped her to make a pivotal mindset shift from having her lessons be
all about her and whether she was delivering teaching correctly to putting
the student front and center as the hero and making it all about their learning
rather than her teaching the third big part of her transformation was building
up what she calls a toolbox for teaching she gave one example of what a tool
might look like which was understanding the power and usage of different types
of question and how being very thoughtful about the questions you ask
students can produce very different results in their learning and how
effective your lessons are Sharon pointed out that you can assemble your
own tool box over the years spent teaching but this doesn't happen
automatically it is entirely possible to teach for years without
electing any new and useful tools along the way and clearly you can shortcut the
whole process by learning from other teachers and resources like those that
the curious piano teachers publish online I loved hearing about why curious
is the word they chose for their company and how that spirit of curiosity binds
together the reflective practice and being opened opportunities to improve as
well as the toolbox idea and the desire to keep extending and upgrading the way
you teach we talked a bit about their let's play course which encapsulate SAN
important part of their teaching philosophy that the goal is to develop a
musician first and a pianist second this involves doing musicianship work
separately from having fingers on the piano keyboard including a big focus on
singing as the way to internalize the music before trying to recreate it using
the piano this isn't something they do just because from some personal
preference this is an approach informed strongly by the latest research into
what actually works and will be most effective and rewarding for the student
sharon had been providing teacher training in northern ireland with the
organization she started evoko but the spirit of curiosity and what if led her
and sally to explore the possibility of taking it even wider providing an online
community to support piano teachers and to launch a full training program to
prepare aspiring piano teachers to get their teaching qualification if that's
something you've considered yourself then definitely check out that diploma
course enrollment for 2018 closes at the end of June and we'll have a link in the
show notes for more information at the curious piano teachers org you will find
a wealth of blog posts and other resources about the curious approach and
as I said at the beginning of this episode I would encourage you to take a
look whether or not you're a music teacher yourself because there is so
much there that can benefit you if approached with a curious mind thanks
for joining me for this episode stay tuned for our next one where we'll be
talking about something Sharon mentioned the importance of being able to hear
music clearly in your head before you try to play it
thank you for listening to the musicality podcast this episode has
ended but your musical journey continues head over to musicality podcast comm
where you will find the links and resources mentioned in this episode as
well as bonus content exclusive for podcast listeners
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