Years ago, I received an email from a piano teacher asking about initial consultations and interviews.

“What do you do? What questions do you ask? How long should it be? What materials do you give them?” These are great questions!

Here are some of the reasons I offer consultations to prospective families in my studio:

1. They give you an opportunity to meet prospective students (and their parents) face-to-face before either of you commit to lessons.

2. For students who are transferring from another teacher, it's important to see what music they're currently working on, assess what they know, and determine where you want to begin in your first lesson.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to structure a prospective student consultation (including what to have the student bring or prepare ahead of time), six questions to ask, how to plan your time together, and how to onboard new students and families after the consultation.

Welcome to another episode of the Field Notes on Music Teaching & Learning podcast. Today’s episode is part 3 of a series I’ve been working on this spring all about how to plan and organize a musical informance.

I first mentioned the idea of a musical informance in Ep. 068. An informance is basically an informal performance or an informational performance where you share insight into the music and the learning process with the audience. In Ep. 068, I shared a few examples of musicians who exemplified this model of education and engagement in the past, talked about what separates an informance from a performance and how you could structure this in your studio, and shared how my students and I were preparing for this event.

In Ep. 069, I talked more specifically about the theme of our informances this spring—music to celebrate the Total Solar Eclipse happening here in Rochester. I shared my repertoire list, the questions I asked my students as they prepared, how I built in opportunities for student creativity and input, and how I organized the event with parents and families.

Today, I’m sharing how it all went including three things I learned, what went well, and what I would do differently next time.

The birds are chirping, the first Spring flowers are popping up in the front yard, and Rory, my dog, insists on laying in the middle of the daffodil bed whenever the sun is out.

These are my seasonal cues that it's time to start planning for our annual end-of-year studio recital. To give you a little context, I think I've mentioned before that I teach at a private school. It's nursery through 12th grade and I teach in the after-school program. Most of my students attend this school, so having our recital on-site is easy and convenient for everyone (and it gives us an opportunity to practice on the piano in the space during our lessons a few weeks ahead of time, which is helpful).

This year, Rochester, NY is in the path of the total solar eclipse. There are lots of special events happening in town—the orchestra is performing a special concert, the science museum is hosting a festival, and the schools are giving everyone the day off to experience this historical event.

As I looked ahead at this year, I thought it might be fun to plan a special event of our own to mark this occasion in the studio. Maybe special repertoire? An incentive program?

Then I thought about the informances the performing ensembles at my school put on early in the year: an informal demonstration for parents of what they're learning and what they're working on.

What if we did something like this in the studio? I thought.

Today, I'm taking you behind the scenes in real-time as I research, plan, and organize my first informance for my students. I'll share a few historical examples of musicians who exemplified this model of education and engagement, talk about ways you could structure this, outline the necessary components that separate an informance from a performance, and share how my students and I are preparing for this event.

"It feels almost like if we don't document it, did it happen? And I need proof that it did."

I was listening to an interview with Erin Napier of Hometown on Southern Living's Biscuits and Jam podcast recently and this statement stayed with me.

"A major part of my personality is documenting," she said, and I nodded to myself.

In this episode, I'm sharing what I've learned about the art and practice of documentation, six things I'm documenting in the studio lately, practical resources I use to track and organize this data, and suggestions for developing this practice in your music studio.

Do you improvise with your students?

If you have a classical background like I do, you may not consider yourself an improviser, but researchers and educators Christopher Azzara and Richard Grunow remind us that "we are [all] born improvisers, as evidenced by our behavior in early childhood." (source)

In their series, Developing Musicianship Through Improvisation, they define improvisation as "the spontaneous expression of meaningful musical ideas." It doesn't mean making things up in the moment; it means making meaningful choices, sequencing patterns, snippets, and ideas from a vast vocabulary of musical material, as I talked about in the last episode, Ep. 065.

In this episode, I'm sharing a simple improvisation prompt I use with my elementary students this time of year.

Last week, I posted a reel on Instagram of my annual planning process for my studio. At the end of the summer, I pull out all my books, curriculum charts, and other planning notes and spend several hours making repertoire plans for each of my students.

One teacher commented that they're very curious about other teacher's approaches to long-term planning because, like many of us, they're not sure if what they're doing is the best/most effective/most efficient way to do things. Can you relate to that? I know I can.

Let me tell you a secret: I still feel this way about my own process.

The truth is it's taken me many years to get to the version of long-term planning you see in the reel and that I'll talk through in more detail today and I tweak it a little each year.

There are lots of ways to go about this—I think it just takes some time to try things and hone in on a process that makes sense to you, helps you feel organized and prepared, and works for your studio.

Today, I'll share a little more insight into my long-term planning process (the reel was a 21-second time-lapse video, but I actually spent about three hours at the piano).