This week of March is always one of my favorite times of the year. Usually I’m getting ready for 4 days of intense learning at the Music Teacher’s National Conference! I’ve attended most years since I was introduced to it as an undergraduate student years ago. Each year I come back amazed at all of the new ideas & inspiration I received from sessions and chatting with colleagues. 

This year, I’m really missing all the in person parts that make conference so incredible. But I am still grateful for the chance to learn from many amazing teachers at the Virtual Conference. The conference begins tomorrow! I’ll be sneaking away to a quiet room at my house for the next few days whenever I can to listen and learn. 

Today I want to tell you about a session Spring Seals and I put together with our amazing colleague, Sarah Alexander. When we submitted session proposals last spring, we had no idea that virtual teaching would continue for another year! And with it, many presenters and bloggers would share all about their online music lessons and new ideas to help each of us. That left us stumped as to how we could make our session different and helpful.

So as we recorded our session, we decided to interview several other piano teachers across the country. We asked private studio teachers, teachers who run big multi-teacher studios, and college teachers. As we pulled together their interview replies and our thoughts, we really enjoyed looking back on what we learned from this unexpected year. And what we will take with us after this ends. We realized there have been so many good things that came from it despite the hardships too.

Our session entitled, “Lessons from Quarantine: What Three Piano Teachers Discovered Through Online Teaching” is scheduled for Tuesday, March 16th at 3:30 pm. If you’re watching, we’ll be live in the chat to visit with you. We can’t wait to hear what you’ve learned from this past year of teaching online!

Hope you enjoy this wonderful conference! We are all crossing our fingers we get to be together for it, in person, next year!

Author: Whitney

Whitney Hawker, NCTM, teaches group and private piano at Weber State University, Utah. She loves surprising students with the perfect piece or a new exciting game! After graduate school, she missed sharing ideas and resources daily with colleagues so she and her friend, Spring, began blogging together at 4DPianoTeaching.com