20- What Worked For My Studio in 2025

We share eight concrete (but easy) changes that made teaching calmer, more creative, and more student-centered in 2025, from consolidating schedules to story-driven composition. Along the way, we explore deeper questioning, smarter research habits, and small rituals that fuel focus and joy.

If you’re ready to teach with more intention and less noise, this conversation offers concrete steps and tools you can try this week. Subscribe, leave a review if this helped you, and share the episode with a colleague who could use a calmer, more creative start to their teaching year.

✨ You can also watch the podcast on YouTube!

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Community Updates
• 4:40 Reviews, Sharing, And No-Ads Philosophy
• 5:31 Why A Year-In-Review Matters
• 6:32 Fewer Students, Tighter Schedule
• 8:53 Making Time For Low-Stress Creating
• 11:30 The After-Lunch Coffee Shift
• 12:33 Streamlining With Google Classroom
• 13:33 Moving Office Into The Studio
• 14:46 Asking Students Deeper Questions
• 16:25 Research Only What You Need
• 17:48 Composing With Art And Story
• 19:28 What’s Next And How To Support

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:22

Hello and welcome to the Creative Piano Pedagogy Podcast, episode 20. I'm your host, Dr. Elizabeth Davis Everhart. Elizabeth is just fine. In each episode, we focus on practical teaching tips, understanding neurodiversity, and using creativity to teach out-of-the-box students with intentionality, compassion, and understanding. We talk about crafting joy-filled and student-focused piano and music lessons where our students' humanity and their unique learning needs are not just an afterthought, but they're integral to each aspect of our teaching approach. If you're a new listener, I'm so glad you found us. We send out an almost monthly email with short little teaching tips, a free resource we've created for music teaching, and we just share that as a thank you for all of our teacher friends. And also details about our community events, things like our free piano teacher chats, our piano teachers book club, pedagogy cohorts, all the good stuff. You can click the link in the description to join the email list, and I can promise you this is a very um firm dedication from me and us devoted to very non-spammy emails. I've received so many notes from teachers saying that they actually enjoy reading our emails, so that's huge positive feedback for us. If you have followed this podcast or Creative Pan of Pedagogy on socials anywhere, then you know we are not about self-promotion, probably to a fault. There's almost nothing I dislike more than promoting myself as a person or doing anything that feels even remotely promotional in nature. It's on my loath list on equal grounds as going to the dentist. I really, really despise that. Okay, I digress. We would appreciate it so, so much if you would take just a minute to leave a review on your podcast streaming app after today's episode. This not only helps us know that teachers are enjoying the show, but it also signals to the algorithm, Spotify, Apple, the gods of technology up in the sky, and all the other bots that we are worth listening to and recommending. So it really greatly helps us get seen and heard by new teachers as well. We're completely committed to no advertising and a very non-salesy approach for the long haul. But each time you just take a moment to share this podcast with a friend, tell someone about creative piano pedagogy, it helps us connect with more and more music teachers, and it means so much to us. Now for today's episode. Juggling chaos and trying desperately to find my footing and establish a good routine for the year. I'm still on a mission to do that, so I'll keep you posted. This is not going to be one of those new year, new me episodes, but I do find it helpful to look back on what has worked in the past, especially when I am weighing what to bring into a new year and what to purge. I always love it as well when other podcasts share their version of what's working or what's saving my life. So I thought I would kick off this new year by sharing what worked for me in 2025. And hey, maybe you'll get a few ideas to try. Who knows? Number one, teaching fewer students in a consolidated schedule. I'm gonna be honest that this is just because I'm able to do that in this season of life. We are a two-income household, so this may not be an option for you. And I don't intend for this to come across in a I'm better than you because I was able to consolidate my teaching schedule. But I had not realized how scattered my teaching schedule had become. So I prefer to keep fewer than 15 students, just so I could focus on them and their individual learning needs and also do things like this podcast without feeling like the walls are caving in around me. But because I teach fewer students than I used to, they were very, very scattered on multiple days a week. And I would have very large blocks of awkward time. And it's it's so difficult to do something productive in 30 or 45 minutes that's deep work, like writing or podcast editing or video editing or even lesson planning. I really struggle to make the most of those small blocks of time. So after some thinking and working with my schedule, I was able to consolidate my students on to fewer days this past fall of 2025. And let me tell you, it has been game changing. I have families I've worked with for a long time in my virtual studio. So that also plays a part that they're willing to change their lesson time to what works for me most of the time. Um, but I just having a more consolidated schedule has just allowed me more time to do more things on other days. And that sounds so simplistic the way I'm describing it, but that's something that has really worked for me in 2025 and that I'm definitely going to carry into the new year. Number two, more intentional time creating. I started this a few years ago because I love baking and I just wanted something new and kind of a stressful season of life. I have really enjoyed it. It has not been one of those hobbies that I have started and stopped because I lost interest. I have dug in. I have notes of my sourdough recipes and what works and what doesn't, and trying different ratios of wheat and rye flour to all purpose. And oh my goodness, it sounds like I'm a total nerd. I am. But I love baking sourdough. It's very scientific and exact, but also very flexible when I have to just go with what feels right in the moment. It's really fun. So I'm definitely going to be doing more new recipes. It's really, really fun. I've also been doing a lot more improvising on the piano in 2025. Improvisation has been something that I have done my entire musical life, my musical career, ever since I started playing the instrument. But I've been more intentional about improvising and just creating imperfect musical art. And it has been really life-giving. So if you don't do that, I highly encourage you to do that and play your instrument. It's really encouraging, and I think it's important to take the time to do that as a music teacher. Something else I did a lot in 2025 was do a lot of creating on Canva. I used to use Canva just for work or just to make a social media post or a graphic, but I started messing around a lot on Canva in 2025 just to see what I could come up with. And it resulted in some really fun projects, some fun things that I've listed in the Creative Piano Pedagogy shop, some freebies. Just creating in that way has proved to be very low stress for me. I'm not sure how to describe it, but it's become a form of creating that I have truly looked forward to. So another good thing to keep. And another way of creating, I have been more intentional at trying new recipes. I love to cook. Um, I love following Amy Chaplin at the Piano Pantry podcast and website. Her blog is so much fun. And I always enjoy it when she includes little cooking tips or baking tips or things like that. It's just so fun. Um, if you don't follow Amy, then go check her out on Instagram or Facebook or listen to her podcast. But I've been trying more new recipes, and that has proved to be a very just another form of creating. It's been so fun, and I'm gonna keep that up throughout 2026 for sure. Number three, this one's kind of quirky, but I changed my coffee drinking time in 2025. I know that sounds so silly, perfunctory, ridiculous, but honestly, I changed my coffee drinking time to be after lunch instead of in the morning because I teach in the afternoon and evenings, and that has proved to be very, very helpful for me. There have been still some mornings when I wake up and I just really need a little caffeine jolt. So I'll drink some tea, maybe shift my coffee on that one day. But for the most part, I have shifted to drinking coffee right after lunch, and it has made a huge difference for just my level of focus, and um, it's something I have looked forward to every day. So a little tiny tradition that I look forward to doing again. Number four, I will continue using Google Classroom for my students. I've done this for several years, but I was kind of re-evaluating this in 2025, and I will definitely continue to do this. It is such an efficient way for me to share videos with my students of recordings I make of their music for them to use in practicing, um, for as we work on compositions together and projects. It's just such an efficient way for me to do that, and I will continue doing that because it is just working beautifully. So good to reevaluate, but also good to know what's working and not mess with it. Number five, I moved my office area into my teaching studio with the pianos. It sounds, again, like something very simple, but I was always having to move my computer around between my office and my studio, not only for virtual lessons, but for videos I was recording or webinars, presentations, whatever. And so I made a decision to consolidate those two spaces and just put my office where my teaching studio is. That may not be an option with your house layout or your studio, but if you're in a position where you're thinking, hmm, that could be helpful, I have found it to be such a thing I wish I'd done a long time ago. It just makes sense for me with the projects that I'm working on. And I love having my desk right here by the piano. It also makes it easier for me to practice. So a win-win. Number six, something I did in 2025 that I'm definitely going to keep doing is asking my students questions that have depth beyond just surface level, did you have a good week? Or how did that sound when you played it? Asking students questions that are intentionally leading them into deeper thought about their practice routine, about the music they're playing, about the sound of the music that they want to hear, about the articulations and the expression, asking them better questions at the beginning of the lesson rather than how was your week since I saw you last time? Really getting intentional about building those relationships with my students. I find that kids are a lot smarter than we think. And it's okay to ask them deeper questions. They actually respond quite well to them and they will learn to do that with you. Number seven, this is a hard one for me, but only researching things I need to learn right now in this season. If you're into the Enneagram at all or personality tests, I think they're really fun. I am a very strong Enneagram five, Enneagram six. Almost double in those categories, but definitely a five wing six, if you know what that means. I love researching things and learning new things. It's not scary or overwhelming to me at all to have to research something new. I actually love it, but sometimes I love it too much. And it makes me feel like I need to be an expert in everything that I'm doing right now. And with everything that we're doing at Creative Piano Pedagogy, all of our new exciting things that are going on, I have to remind myself, I don't have to be an expert in all of the new things that we're doing. I don't have to be an expert on the projects we are starting next year. I don't have to be an expert on, you know, fill in the blank. So reminding myself to do the lazy genius principle, like Kenda, Kendra Adachi and her lazy genius podcast, um, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. That doesn't mean lazy like slothful, but just making sure my priorities are correct and aligned, and I'm not researching things that do not, that I don't need to research right now. Number eight, this is the last one, composing projects with my students and incorporating art and storytelling in lessons. I've been doing this for many, many years, and I'm sure you have as well, but I really have made it very intentional part of my core curriculum that I teach my students. And I have noticed that especially using art has become a huge motivator for my current students. It changes with this different students I have. Um, I currently have students I've had for a long time. So I love switching it up every now and then and trying something new. But with my current students, I know they love things like video games, story-based video games. Um, they love writing stories, graphic novels, and art. So incorporating all of that into our composing and into the music lessons very intentionally. And it has been so much fun to learn from my students more about how they think about music, learn more about their perspectives and what is interesting to them in their season of life. And involving storytelling has been very, very fun. I encourage you to do it if you haven't yet. This was a very different type of episode for this podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed what worked for me this year, and maybe it'll encourage you to try some new things with your students and for yourself this year, and also look back on what worked for you last year. Moving forward, we're gonna be switching back to the buy weekly, every other format for the podcast. It just works so well for us since we tend to have episodes that are a bit more meaty and substantial with big pedagogy topics. So you can look forward to that. And we're gonna be starting off with a bang two weeks from today, um, with an amazing interview. Um, just some wonderful, fantastic professionals in the world of piano teaching and neurodiversity, great conversations about teaching, challenging students, and continuing to learn and grow together as we learn more about what works for our amazing students. Thank you so much for taking time to listen. In addition to leaving us a review on your podcast app, if you enjoyed this episode, could you do me a favor and just share it with a friend? This is so helpful in getting the world out there about the podcast. Something new starting today. You can also watch the podcast on YouTube. I know we're so late to the YouTube game. It'll be the same episode, just a video version with captions if that's more your speed. Don't forget that you can also read a transcript of every single episode, past and future, by clicking the link in the description down below. Thank you again for listening and hope you tune in next time.