As music teachers, we all want teaching studios that are dynamic, full

of life, and bursting with creativity. We want our students to arrive

for their weekly lessons feeling motivated and excited.

Yet, if we’re honest, there are times when this simply isn’t the case.

In this episode, I'll give you some strategies to try when things feel stagnant in your music lessons.

Find out more about membership at vibrantmusicteaching.com.

This is the vibrant music teaching podcast.

I'm nigga content.

And today we're talking about how we motivate fatigued or

disinterested piano students.

Welcome back.

Lovely teachers.

Today's episode is inspired by an article called how a virtual holiday

could reignite your music, students.

Motivation.

Bye Gareth Gale.

I'm going to go a little bit beyond that though.

And I'm going to use that as a jumping off point for talking about how we re-engage

students who are disinterested in general.

Students who are de-motivated.

Now this can happen for many, many different reasons.

So your student might need more motivation because hello, it's a pandemic.

COVID has just gotten to them and they're feeling fatigued.

They're feeling by the way.

I didn't mean that COVID had affected them, although that could be the case too.

But just the general malaise that is in many countries right now.

As we deal with.

However many lockdowns you've been through and school closures and just

the general feeling of fear and anxiety that many people are going through.

So maybe that's affecting your student.

Or maybe it's because they're entering a new phase of life right now.

Maybe they're moving.

From primary school or elementary school up to high school or secondary school.

Maybe they're moving into college.

Maybe they've just hit their teen years.

The hormones have kicked in they've turned 14 or 11.

Depends on the kiddo.

And.

They've started to become teenagery.

We all know what that looks like.

Maybe they're just in a general ALO we all go through ups and downs in our musical

journey and kids should be no different.

There are always going to be periods when they're not as

motivated as periods when they are.

Or maybe they're coming off a high, like an exam.

Uh, performance competition.

Another thing that kept them really engaged and motivated for a while.

But it's over.

Where do we go from here?

No matter what has caused this.

Unmotivated student.

This de motivation to occur.

There are a few ways you can reignite your student's passion.

And they don't all have to mean that your students suddenly practices

a huge amount again, like they did before, or like they never have.

Whatever the case.

I want you to, first of all, step back and say, It's okay.

We all go through ups and downs.

Sometimes we just need to accept that last practice is happening

or the enthusiasm isn't as great.

Now this doesn't mean we accept it when they're being forced into

lessons and they really hate it.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about.

The natural ups and downs that occur.

The natural highs and lows of learning a music instrument,

because it's such a long journey.

So option number one for remotivation is a virtual holiday.

This is the one that Gareth Gail came up with and it's

detailed info in the article.

Here's a brief idea of the process.

And I want you to keep in mind that this whole thing.

Should it be done with students?

Don't decide all this stuff.

Do all these steps outside of lessons.

This is meant to be a project that you do with them in the lessons.

So first you're going to determine the length of this holiday.

Do they need a two month vacation?

Do they need a four week vacation?

You determine it with them.

And this might be dictated by the fact that you're in between events like.

They just completed an exam and it's going to be six months

before they start on the next one.

And they're sure they want to do the next one.

Can't be persuaded out of it.

So you've got this gap.

And you need to decide something to do with it.

Or maybe it's literally the summer holidays and you choose to

do it for the length of lessons during the summer holidays.

Or it's just determined at random.

It's just something you decide on together.

Then you need to decide on your destinations.

Where are you going to go?

So if it's a eight week holiday, Then.

Decide how many destinations you're going to visit?

Are you going to do two a week, one a week?

One every two weeks.

All of these are valid options.

And.

Allow you to go into different depth or breadth across different countries.

During your holiday.

Remember, you're deciding all of this with your student.

Uh,

next, you need to come up with musical examples.

So, this is something you can do as you go on the fly.

Now, if you previously have been someone who always likes to arrive with

everything completed for the student.

And you never normally look stuff up on a computer during the lesson.

This might be a bit foreign to you, but I promise you it can be just as

an engaging and there's no issue with having to look stuff up together.

You're not going to spend the whole time on the computer,

staring at Google together.

And you are going to make sure that the search results are appropriate

and all that stuff, but you can absolutely do this research in lessons

and your students will learn so much.

So you come up with your length of holiday, the destinations, and then

each destination that you visit.

You find musical examples based on that destination.

If they decided to go to.

China.

Maybe you look up an R who.

And an example of someone playing one.

Right.

My mother-in-law actually plays that instrument so I could visually

show them my mother-in-law, but you can find examples on YouTube.

Then you might try and simulate that on your instrument, or you might

use it as a jumping off point for composition or try and play the

tune that they're playing by ear.

It all depends on what musical example you're looking at.

Maybe it's something like Indian music.

Really doesn't fit our instruments at all.

I mean, they are who doesn't really either, but anyway,

And oh, you can take from it as a rhythm.

Well, great.

Take the rhythm, dissect it, understand what's going on.

Cause there's so much interest there.

So the virtual holiday idea is so adaptable and simple.

Which makes it beautiful.

You can make it any length.

You like, you can visit as many destinations as you'd like, and you

can do different things along the way, depending on your student's

age and level and interests.

Idea number two for re motivation is to take a circle of fifths Odyssey.

The circle of fifths.

Odyssey is actually a course inside vibrant music teaching, but it's an

idea you can totally do on your own.

The course just makes it simpler to do it has games along the way, and fully laid

out lesson plans and all that good stuff.

So it does make it easier.

Uh, members can of course go to the courses library to find that.

But this is an idea that you're free to take, because I want as

many people to do this as possible.

It's something that I've seen many members.

Revolutionize the whole way there teach based on this course.

So I want that to reach as many people as possible, even if membership

isn't right for you right now.

The idea behind the circle of fifths Odyssey.

Is that each week?

You visit one key.

It's like the virtual holiday.

Except it's a little bit more defined because there are 12 keys.

So you do one key a week.

And you do it over 12 weeks.

Each week you improvise in that key.

Depending on the student's age and level, maybe you also play a

chord progression in that key or swap roles in the improvisation.

Maybe you do a composing project in that key.

And maybe you play some games that help reinforce the scales or

keys that they've learned so far.

So we have two versions.

We have the circle of fifths Odyssey.

And we now have a minor version of that as well, which is called the 3, 4, 6

carousel, which takes on minor keys.

And goes a little bit further on the cording work and the vamping

skills and that kind of thing.

No matter what age or stage your student is at, even if they're

right at the beginning, you can do a circle of fifths, Odyssey.

You just accompany them with some chord progressions in

the QC and they improvise NC.

And then the next week you do the same thing with G.

And the D and so on.

I like to do it, that they actually build up.

So we do see and then see Angie the next week and then C G D the next week.

And then if it starts to become too lengthy.

Then we'll start to reduce it to like the most recent five, but at the end of your

circle of fifths Odyssey, make sure you do all 12 in a row because it is so much fun.

Your student does not have to know the scale fingering.

They don't have to remember every time.

What key, what, um, can user in the key.

What sharps and flats are in the key.

You can tell them.

It's all about exploration and understanding the function of keys

and scales and chords and how they build music so that when they do

learn scale fingerings later, they'll understand better why they're doing it.

Re motivator.

Option three is to do a composing project.

We have tons of these available for free.

On the blog.

And we also have lots of them inside the vibrant music teaching

library, of course, for a members.

So composing projects that I do follow a simple structure

where students choose a theme.

And then brainstorm some elements on that theme.

Then compose a melody, then compose a B melody to go with that.

And put it together in a form.

And then at the harmony.

There are many ways to approach a composing project.

You don't have to do things in that sequence.

That's just a simple structure.

That I've found works in my studio.

Uh, to make sure everyone gets to a completed piece.

You might like to have your students start with the harmony.

You might like them to.

Compose lyrics first as we did last year.

There are many, many different ways to approach it.

But a composing project is wonderful for when students aren't practicing.

Yes.

It is something where if students are practicing bleeding homework, They

can complete parts of at, at home.

But when they're not practicing, when they're going through a

period where it's just a low.

And you have to get through it and you have to keep them learning.

They can come to the lesson each week.

You can work on their composing project together.

They can write down the notation by hand or even learn how to

use music, notation software.

If you know how to do that, you can teach them on the computer.

And.

They can create a beautiful piece of music while learning so much along the way.

And yes, still playing still experimenting, still

improvising to find their ideas.

Re motivator.

Number four is to take a break from reading.

And to play by ear instead.

You can do this by having them pick out their favorite song and

you teach them parts of it by ear, or they figure it out during the

lesson, by ear with your guidance.

You can have them learn songs that their family members love

so that they can surprise them.

Or you can follow a course, like the ear elevator.

Which takes a layer based approach.

So it.

But your elevator is a course where there's a series of songs or pieces.

That consists of repeating motifs.

Or ostinato patterns.

So they have different layers that they can build together.

There's.

Really low part and then the next part, and then the next part.

And then there's also rhythmic parts on top of that.

It's all split out into individual tracks to help them work the map.

And of course the, the tracks also get harder and harder.

As you go through the course so that they can develop their

ear, but always feel successful.

So for instance, the first.

Track starts entirely on the black keys so that it's easier to find

the notes you're looking for because it's a pentatonic scale, right.

So, whether you teach your students or you sound, but, you know, by ear, by wrote.

Or have them work at a song entirely by ear.

By just listening to the song and testing things out on the piano

and doing that over and over.

Or you use a more structured course, like the air elevator.

A break from reading might be just what the doctor ordered.

The last re motivator idea is the practice bullseyes challenge.

This is a challenge that I shared on the blog and inside

the membership a while ago.

The basic structure is that students have to try and get 30 practice bulls eyes.

In 10 weeks in my studio, although I've left the 10 weeks off, the actual

challenge, like printables and charts.

So that if you feel you want a gentler pace, you can go for 15 weeks, you

can go for 20, whatever you like.

We define a practice bullseye as any goal, any target that

they've set the week before.

So students in lessons.

With the teacher's guidance, we'll set a series of targets.

Things that they want to be able to do by the following week.

They want to be able to play a certain piece at a certain tempo.

They want to be able to play the right.

And left-hand separately with the correct rhythm.

They want to be able to clap a particular rhythm without help.

They want to be able to play a particular scale with dynamics.

It could be anything.

The goal for the teacher is tab five or six targets every

week set with this student.

Now in pre pandemic times, we would list these at the top of the sheets.

I now do all assignments digitally through an app called Tanara.

So we have just a separate assignment that we leave at the top of their

assignment list that has all their practice targets for that week.

So we edited it each week.

The reason you want five or six, even though if you can do simple

maths, you figured out that they only need to get three a week is to

give them good odds of getting there.

Chances are they won't get most of them.

So we want there to be at least.

You know, double the number that they need each week so that they

have multiple tries at getting it.

This is a great challenge for developing practice focus.

Uh, motivation in that way.

It's not right for every student who's feeling de-motivated because

some of them really do need a break from practice expectations.

Especially if it is that they're coming off a period when they

had to do intense practice.

Or be really studious.

Leading up to an exam, a competition.

This is more pressure, so it's not right for everyone.

But it is great for certain times.

We're actually doing the 30 practice bulls eyes challenge right now

in my studio in colorful keys.

And that's because I feel like.

2022.

January.

Um, You know, going on towards the second year, the third year of the pandemic.

I just felt like we all needed a boost and a bit of focus and determination.

I thought it was the perfect time for my whole studio to do it.

So you can do it with just one student at a particular time.

When you think it would suit them, or you can do it studio

wide as we're doing right now.

The ideas that they come to the next lesson.

And they then have to.

Try for each of those targets.

So play the piece at the speed you decided or whatever the target was and

they have to get it on the first try.

Now in the beginning, this can sound a bit harsh and a bit frustrating, but

they soon learn that they need, and I encourage them to take a breath think

before they start grind themselves, relax, you know, all the stuff we need to do

for performing or something like that.

And think about it before they really try.

If they get old 30, within the 10 weeks, that means they completed the challenge

and their name goes on our challenge board here, and they get the special

sticker for the front of their book.

If you're curious about that whole challenge board system, you can look

up the blog to learn more about that.

So there you have it.

Five different remotivation ideas.

You've got the virtual holiday idea, which comes from Gareth, Gail.

Who's a guest writer on our blog.

Right now you've got the circle of fifths Odyssey.

Composing projects.

Playing by ear or taking a reading vacation.

And the practice bull's eyes challenge.

I hope you can take one of those and apply it into your teaching.

You're one thing this week is to assess your students and see if

anyone needs a break from the norm.

Look at each one individually and see who might benefit from a bit of a vacation.

For motivation.

I choose a vocation package, whether it's one of these five or your own idea.

And off you go.

That's it for this week, folks.

I hope you've got a lot out of this episode.

And that you'll come say hi to me on the Instagram code for keys is our

Instagram or inside the Facebook group, which is vibrant music studio teachers.

I'll see you there.

Vibrant music.

Teaching membership costs less than the price of one lesson each month.

That is totally worth it for all of the courses games.

Resources downloadables printables that you can get access to as a member, as

well as a fabulous community support.

You'll find inside.

Go to V M T dot Ninda and become part of the revolution.