18- Lessons from Gifted/Neurodivergent Students about Flexibility, Stickers, Lunch, and Kindness

What if the most powerful teaching shift is letting go of how the lesson “should” go? We unpack four hard-earned insights from years of teaching gifted and neurodivergent piano students—ideas that lower stress, boost engagement, and bring the joy back to the bench.

If you teach music, special education, or any special learner, these stories and strategies will help you teach with calm, clarity, and heart. Listen, try one idea this week, and tell us what changed. If the conversation helped, subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a quick review on Spotify or Apple to help others find the show!

Chapters

• 0:00 Gratitude And Teaching Reality
• 5:18 Lesson One: No Expectations
• 7:33 Lesson Two: Stickers Still Matter
• 10:28 Lesson Three: Honesty Is Kindness
• 13:34 Lesson Four: It’s Probably Not You
• 15:35 Reflection, Thanks, And Review Request

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:17

Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Creative Piano Pedagogy podcast. This is episode 18, and I'm so glad you're tuning in. I'm Elizabeth, and I'm your host. It's the week of Thanksgiving here in the U.S., and that's a time when we typically try to reflect on our blessings and carry a spirit of gratitude with us. This isn't something we do to gloss over hardships or try to forget our worries and troubles, but it's just an intentional time to be thankful. And I know other countries and cultures have times that they celebrate seasons of Thanksgiving as well. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I've been doing some pondering on my past and current students and reflecting on lessons that they've taught me. Teaching highly gifted or neurodivergent students is a challenging endeavor. And anytime someone outside of the music world asks me, what do I do? I share a brief snippet about my students, and their response is almost always a variation of, oh, that's so sweet, or that is so cute. I'm a really calm person most of the time. And I'm really good about letting things just kind of roll off my back like a duck, as they say. But that is a response. If people give those kinds of responses, it can get under my skin just a little because it feels like they're not honoring or taking into consideration the hard, difficult work that goes into teaching kids with disabilities. I'm 100% certain that most of the folks who ask that question and then respond in that way are not at all intentionally minimalizing, minimizing what we do, but it's something that I work through every now and then. But it's a fact. Teaching is really hard work. I would be really curious to know if you have ever made a list of lessons you've learned from your students. I would like to share a few that I have learned from my students today. And if you're in a season of challenging students with difficult schedules you have to work around, or difficult parent and guardian communication patterns, challenging behaviors you're trying to navigate, or something completely different. I hope this can help you focus on the good that you bring to your students and find good and what they're returning back to you. Lesson number one, no expectations. In almost 20 years of teaching, and most of that focusing on students who learn differently, my students have taught me to have no expectations for the lesson. Now, don't get me wrong, I am very prepared for lessons, probably overly prepared, with music, activities, a mixture of challenging and fun things to make music come alive for them. I used to anticipate how much my students would love those activities because I took time to prepare them and I very carefully selected things I thought each student would like. And then I would feel so disappointed when my students didn't reciprocate that positivity during a lesson. On the flip side, I was constantly being surprised by how lessons went when I was more flexible rather than rigid. And I was allowing students to find joy in what mattered to them that day rather than me attaching emotions to activities like, oh, I think you're going to love this, or feeling that inevitable disappointment when they didn't. They have taught me simply to present the options, be prepared with more than we'll need for the lesson, and just see how it goes in the moment. The only thing I try to anticipate is if the music or activity is a good fit for my student in their current season, or if it works for their learning style. Otherwise, no expectations. And that has been a very freeing lesson to learn. Lesson number two: stickers are still cool. I love stickers, and I always have. I like tiny stickers, I like big stickers, I have water bottles that are covered in stickers, and honestly, I probably will always love stickers. But I don't just love generic stickers, I like quirky ones. My favorites are the dinosaurs that are wearing Christmas hats and scarves, or ice skating elephants. And my personal all-time favorite: animals and astronaut gear floating in space. That was one of my best discoveries at a Dollar Tree ever. Specifically, the hamster, the goat, and the cow. I just can't explain it, but they're so humorous to me, and I just love them. I've learned that toy prizes don't mean a lot to my student population unless they're fidgets. But I have learned that they love closing our lessons by choosing a sticker. I think some of them view it as sort of a ritual to end the lesson. I keep a folder of the most random, hilarious, and quirky stickers, and I just go through them on a rotation so students can have a different option each week. It's something so small, but something that they truly enjoy. And they are so disappointed if we forget. And then, of course, we have to catch up the next week by getting at least two stickers, even the preteens. As teachers, it's so easy to focus on the big and the flashy, the big moments, the recitals, the competitions, the music exams. But this is a great reminder that students can find joy in the smallest things, like goofy animal astronaut stickers. What a great perspective that is. Lesson number three: honesty is kindness. My gifted and neurodivergent students are very blunt. If you teach any students with autism or ADHD, then I'm fairly certain you know what I mean. I will never forget a student I had many years ago. Let's call him Henry. He was very energetic, and I was struggling to find a good communication approach that really worked for him. One lesson in the winter, he stopped in the middle of his playing to comment on my scarf. He told me, Did you know that there are YouTube videos for how to tie scarves? Maybe you could watch one because yours is very crooked. A giant light bulb went off in my brain. Henry was more pragmatic than most kids, and he truly thought in black and white. I also realized in that moment that my badly tied scarf, and it was very badly tied, was a distraction to him. So I took it off and he physically and outwardly sighed. Then he resumed playing and we never talked about it again. During that lesson, I changed my communication patterns to be much more blunt and pragmatic with him. I had already been doing that, or so I thought, but he needed a much more extremely pragmatic approach. From then on, we communicated so much better together. He would look at me while playing, and I would give him either a thumbs up for correct or a thumbs down for incorrect as he was playing. That seems very harsh and disruptive, but for him, it wasn't harsh. It was kind, it was concise, and it was exactly the kind of honest teaching he needed. What a great lesson to learn. Lastly, is number four. It's probably not you. If you've taught any amount of time in a classroom or even in your private lessons, you know that kids of all ages can have on days and very, very off days. For neurodivergent and gifted students, that can be even more unpredictable. And I believe that unpredictability is why many teachers are hesitant to teach those students. It's a bit scary because you never know which version of your student you'll get in each class or lesson. As a new teacher, I tended to carry the heavy weight of really guilt when the lessons wouldn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped or planned, or when the music was more challenging for the student than I anticipated because they hadn't practiced. As I started teaching more and more neurodivergent students, I would feel badly when they would get upset or overwhelmed in a lesson and have a meltdown. I'll never forget an aha moment when a student's parent texted me before their lesson about 15 years ago and said, Hey, my child has not had a good day. They had to eat their least favorite food for lunch, and it totally ruined their entire day. Now, I did not see that text until after their lesson because I had so many back-to-back lessons at that time. And yes, as you can imagine, the lesson was not fantastic. The child was obviously already upset and struggling with regulation and communication right when they walked in the door. And I certainly did my best to adapt. After the lesson, I checked my phone and I saw that text from the parents. And I instantly started laughing out loud. I cannot tell you the weight that lifted from my shoulders after realizing it wasn't me. It was lunch. It was a bad lunch. Definitely not what I expected, but such a valuable lesson. If your students have had bad days where their lessons are chaotic, when they're struggling to focus or regulate their emotions and physical energy, when they're easily overwhelmed and having meltdowns, I just want you to remember it's probably not you. I know that phrase is very easy to say and difficult to put into practice and truly remember, but learning this lesson has helped me repeatedly over the last 15 years or so. And yes, I still problem solve in the moment and adapt to meet my students where they are. I still analyze the lessons and I rewatch the recordings, taking notes on what I can improve and looking for patterns in the struggles. But through all of that self-reflection, I have learned to change my inner dialogue to reflect the truth that it's probably not me. Whether you're in the US and celebrating Thanksgiving this week or living elsewhere, I hope you take a few minutes to reflect on some of the good lessons your students have taught you and realize the impact you are having on the people you get to work with each week. I'm also incredibly grateful for you, each listener to the podcast, every subscriber to the blog, each teacher who is finding something helpful from our resources and is supporting what we're doing through the piano teachers book club or courses, whatever. Thank you, thank you. I'm truly full of gratitude this holiday season. That's all for today, and we'll be back next week with another wonderful episode for you. If you enjoyed today's episode, would you take just a minute of your time and leave us a quick review on Spotify or Apple? It would mean so much. Thank you again for listening, and I hope you have a very happy Thanksgiving.