23- Boundaries with Heart: Using Proactive Teaching to Create a Positive Lesson Environment

What if the real breakthroughs in your piano studio have less to do with scales and more to do with the space between the notes—how we set boundaries, model calm, teach appropriate social skills and communication, and design lessons that students can actually navigate? 

We start with the gap most teachers feel but rarely name: students arrive with different developmental ages than their birthdates suggest. That mismatch can make a brilliant nine-year-old look like a distracted preschooler unless we plan for social-emotional learning. You’ll hear how a simple routine (paired with clear gestures) builds delayed gratification, listening, and respect. Along the way, we share stories—from the unforgettable iPad-in-the-microwave moment to quiet wins where consistency and kindness changed the arc of a lesson.

We also announce fresh resources to support your growth:
-a free member portal with a growing library of digital tools (click "Join Now" at the top menu)
-spring book club of "Bright Not Broken" to better understand twice-exceptional students
-a summer cohort of Adaptive Piano Pedagogy 101
-new St. Patrick's Day themed activities for lessons
-brand new sacred sheet music by Elizabeth for Lent

If you’re ready to move from firefighting to foresight, this is your roadmap to proactive teaching that protects creativity, honors neurodiversity, and gets more music made.

Transcript

One-Year Milestone And Gratitude

MTNA Conference Announcements

Introducing The Invisible Curriculum

Why Teachers Feel Unprepared

Taking The Whole Student Into Account

Defining Social Emotional Learning

Developmental Age Vs Birthdate

Boundaries As Kindness: The Script

Modeling Calm And Communication

Building A Yes Space And Routines

Visual Lesson Schedules That Work

Handling Meltdowns With Consistency

Key Mindsets For Proactive Teaching

New Member Portal And Book Club

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Creative Piano Pedagogy. I'm your host, Elizabeth, and I'm so glad that you're joining us. First, we're celebrating one year of the podcast. This is a result of a lot of years of work before we even launched it. And if you saw our post on social media last week, we almost never launched it. So check that out if you want a little backstory. But one year later, and we have several thousand downloads, listeners in about 50 countries and over 430 cities. Oh my goodness. Thank you so much. You can help us celebrate even more by making sure you're subscribed so you don't miss out on any new episodes. And the best thing you could possibly do is share this with a friend. Just pick your favorite episode that you've listened to and send it to someone. And I really want to thank everyone who's taken time to leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That makes a huge difference to the almighty algorithm and to the the outer, the inner webs that decide who to recommend this podcast to. So thank you so much. Next, a fun announcement. Both Tara and I are thrilled to be attending and presenting at the Music Teachers National Association Conference, MTNA, in Chicago, coming up very soon. My presentation will be on Sunday afternoon. I think it's at noon or um thereabouts, and I will be on a panel discussion with truly some of the most amazing people who specialize in teaching students with disabilities and neurodiversity, the experts in the country. Um so we'll be doing that, and I feel very honored to be a part of that. And Tara and her incredibly gifted daughter, Savannah, will be presenting on Wednesday morning, March the 25th. So make plans to come say hey, let us know if you'll be there. We would love to see you. We're also gonna have a little swag to give out to our friends who follow the podcast or who hang out with us on socials. So that'll be really fun. Today's podcast theme is a very relevant one and was actually inspired by some amazing questions on social media on a reel that I shared last week. I'll share more about that in a minute. But we've all been there. You've planned this wonderfully brilliant lesson on Chopin or Syncopation, and your student arrives like a whirlwind of energy, or maybe they're just struggling to stay on the bench for more than 30 seconds. Today we're peeling back the curtain on invisible curriculum. We aren't talking about fingerings or scales. We're talking about the power of proactive teaching versus reactive teaching. How do we build a studio atmosphere where boundaries feel more like a hug and less like a hammer? How do we model the impulse control and communication we want to see in our students? How do we set up our neurodivergent or gifted students for success so they can actually learn and be successful in the lesson? I actually had a completely different topic planned for today, but like I mentioned in the reel, I posted last week for a Tuesday teaching tip on social media. You can check it out if you haven't seen it. Um, it sparked some really great questions and discussion. So if you didn't see the reel, um I posted about how to have a yes studio where I eliminate as many distractions as possible so that I can spend more time teaching and less time correcting behaviors. There were some really good questions and in the comments of people saying, it's so hard to do that when it means abandoning my routine and what we need to do. And then my student is just kind of like creating chaos and distracting us. How do you say yes to that? Or someone else said, How do you say yes to bad behaviors when kids are running around everywhere and are uncontrollable? So it just seemed like a great time to clarify a few things and share some ideas with you. A disclaimer, I do not have a PhD in child psychology or development. I have taught a lot of students with very challenging behaviors. And by very challenging, I mean students who were expelled from school starting in kindergarten for dangerous or uncontrollable behaviors, students with rage issues that are far beyond anything you can imagine with oppositional defiant disorder, students who failed out of multiple therapies because the teachers were actually scared of them. I have learned through a lot of experience over the last 20 years using parents and other professionals as resources. I've done a boatload of research. So I encourage you to use what you can use from what I share with you. Adapt what you need, and please always do your own research and talk to your students' parents or their guardians. They're the best resource and a great place to start. This aspect of teaching is not really taught in music school or colleges and universities. Even in music education classes, we learn about classroom control, like controlling our classroom environments and somewhat how to deal with challenging students, but not at all to the level that would be helpful for us. Something that's really challenging with teaching challenging students is we have to teach appropriate behaviors and expectations for lessons along with the music. So we are actively teaching the proper social behaviors and communication skills that our students will need to use in the lessons. It is a huge gap in pedagogy and music education training. I honestly think this is a big reason why a lot of teachers either don't teach students with disabilities or stop teaching students who have behavior struggles because all they can see is a behavior that is inappropriate for the lesson. So today we're gonna dig deeper into what is required behind the scenes, the invisible curriculum, and patience needed to create a positive lesson experience for our students. Oh, and stay tuned at the end for an exciting announcement. So let's talk about how we can stop being a plan for each student. And these things might be helpful for you. Number one is consider the social emotional learning and development of my individual students. This is kind of an interesting thing to talk about in music teaching because I don't know that it's ever really been discussed much, but your students' biological age, like their birth date, is perhaps not the same as their developmental age. Social emotional learning and development is very often lower in students with disabilities or learning disabilities and neurodivergent students. Let's quickly define what social emotional learning is. The dictionary defines it as the lifelong process through which individuals learn to understand themselves, manage their emotions, build empathy, and form positive relationships. It begins at birth and is essential for developing self-confidence, self-regulation, social and communication skills. Whoa. It actually unpacks a lot of how we interact with others and respond in social environments, doesn't it? Social skills and this is such a broad category, but it includes responses in social situations and knowing what the appropriate behavior is in social situations. For so many of our students, this is a learned behavior. It's not something that they are born understanding or easily understanding. They have to learn what those are and how to act in different situations. A great example would be that when we teach a four-year-old student, a preschooler, we would expect for that student to have a very short attention span, not have great skills in communicating their emotions or their needs, like telling you I'm frustrated or I don't understand. They're more likely to have a physical outburst or shut down or have a meltdown because they have not learned the skills to talk to you in that way. We would expect them to be rambunctious and use their body in ways that's not appropriate in the lesson, like, you know, kind of uncontrollable behavior at times, because they have not learned to do those things and have appropriate behaviors. However, we would not expect a nine-year-old to behave the same way as a four-year-old. And this is the struggle with teaching kids whose developmental age is not the same as their biological age. When we don't consider our students' birth date or their biological age versus their development and their social-emotional learning, all we can see is a nine-year-old exhibiting behaviors of a much younger child. We don't see their gifts or their talents. We just see the problems. This is where individualized teaching really shines and stands out. We take the entire student into the equation, not just their musical aptitude or how long they can sit on a bench, but can they accept feedback? How long can they focus on a piece or a section in the music? Can they take direction and guidance well? Can they handle delayed gratification? Can they express their emotions using words like I'm frustrated or I need help? One of the reasons I started researching these very special kids about 20 years ago is because I noticed a huge gap. These kids are very smart and musically talented, but they often lack the social skills to easily fit into a lot of situations. And they were being excluded because no one knew what to do with them or they were scared to try. So social emotional learning is a really important part of assessing what my student needs. Number two is boundaries are kindness and clarity is kindness. For every new student I welcome into my studio, or even if it's a student I've had for a long time, I will have the talk with them to set the stage for behaviors and communications. If you have students who are a bit uncontrollable or you're struggling with, I highly encourage you to do this immediately at your next lesson. Don't do it with a lot of fanfare or making a large to-do. Just simply have this conversation. Be ready to hold the boundary with a smile and with love. If you do, I expect you might see a major shift in their behaviors and in your lesson environment. Here's my script for this, and you're welcome to use what I say or write your own variation or adapt it for however works best for you. Here's what I tell my students. As we work together in piano, you're going to have some wonderful ideas and great questions. I cannot wait to hear all your questions and ideas. When you're playing music or asking a question, I will give you my full attention and be excited to hear when it's your turn. When it's my turn to play or teach something, I know you will give me your full attention and listen. And I instantly start using my turn and hold my hand to my chest when I play or talk. And then I say your turn and open my hands and posture when it's their turn. If they start to interrupt, I will smile and say, it's still my talk, my turn, while I hold one hand on my shoulder or chest. I kind of combine my words with a physical action. That way they can better assimilate that. When I'm finished doing what I'm doing, I'll open my physical posture and kind of motion my hands toward them gently and say, now it's your turn. This sounds very simple, but this one conversation and boundary teaches students many, many things in this one simple act. It helps them learn delayed gratification. It helps them develop listening skills, respecting others' words, time, and music, and building those conversational skills as well. It even helps with focus and timing, pacing, and helping students remember and learn appropriate physical and verbal reactions. I have used this for kids as young as three years old, and I have used it with adult students. This sets your students up for success. It is proactive because they will know what to expect from you and really themselves. It allows you to be proactive and help shape proper communication and behaviors rather than always reacting to whatever the student might do. Many teachers fear that strict boundaries will kill the creativity, or they're just not sure how to set up those boundaries in the lesson. But clear expectations like this allow the student to actually have more freedom in the lesson. Kids actually forget to do these things because the lesson is a new environment. Maybe they're not accustomed to these behaviors or haven't learned them. It gives them clear expectations and boundaries that are unwavering. It eliminates the guesswork, frees up space in their brain so they can actually think about music rather than having you always react to what they're doing. I'm going to share a really interesting anecdote about a four-year-old student who was easily one of the most challenging students I ever taught. We started out with in-person lessons and then had to do some virtual lessons for a little while. And we were in the midst of learning this behavior. My turn, your turn. And even with just the description I shared, you can imagine how this might have a huge impact on a student who has some behavioral struggles. Just learning my turn, your turn is very impactful. So we we had not completely solidified this. And this student in a virtual lesson didn't like that I was not going with what he wanted to do in the moment. And he takes the iPad with which we were having the lesson. And I can see him as I'm sitting in my home teaching him, and I'm seeing him on Zoom take this iPad across his house, and his mother is chasing him furiously. He sticks the iPad into the microwave and goes, boom. That's what he said. He knew if he put the iPad in the microwave and turned it on, it would explode. He knew exactly what he was doing. And it actually ended the lesson because he closed the iPad. So we restarted the lesson, and his mother is sitting there holding his hands. And I had to have a little reminder talk with him about my turn, your turn. And I had to remind him that when we're frustrated, we have to talk about it. We can't put the iPad in the microwave. Oh my goodness. The third thing I really assess and work on hard in my lessons is modeling. I model the behaviors and communications I want to see my students portray in every lesson. And that goes for my students who have disabilities and my students who are neurotypical. This is really beneficial for every student. I really carefully check my face, my voice, my body language, my words to ensure that I am communicating what I want to receive. It's a lot of work, isn't it? But it's so important. I want to encourage you to do the same. Check your face, your voice, your body language, your words. Are you communicating in a way that you would want your student to communicate back to you? Are you exhibiting the calm and consistency that you want to see modeled? I want to encourage you to use your words to be descriptive. Model what it looks like to have really good communication skills. Model what it looks like to express frustration through words. This is a great thing to do if your student becomes frustrated to echo what they say, summarize their feelings or actions, and say, I see you closing the book, and I think it's because that song felt really tricky, didn't it? Things like that, like noticing what they're doing and verbalizing it, not only helps them feel seen and heard, but it helps them learn, ah, I can verbalize what I'm feeling. My teaching vibe was explained to me by a former student last year, and I thought this was pretty hilarious. She, I think she was at nine years old, and she randomly, in the middle of the lesson, said, Um, do you want to hear how I tell my friends about you? And I said, sure. She said, Well, you're like if Mr. Rogers was a piano teacher, but a little more crazy, and I never have to wonder um what to expect or what to do in a lesson because you are always the same. I kind of love that. I hold boundaries with love and consistency while being my student's biggest cheerleader. I don't expect them to behave in a way or achieve a specific goal without making a footpath for them to get there. There are no invisible walkways or invisible bridges over chasms in my studio. None of the do this, but not showing them or telling them how to get there. Doing that creates unsettling anxiety. It sets your student up for defensive behaviors because they're always wondering and always on edge. I do my best to remove any of that by giving my students clear steps forward for both music and behavior. No guessing. And if they mess up, I am kind and smile and end the lesson and tell them I'm looking forward to seeing them next week. A really powerful quote that has to do with modeling is this quote. And I wasn't able to verify who actually originated it, so I'm just gonna share it with you. An escalated adult cannot de-escalate an escalated child. I'm gonna say it one more time. An escalated adult cannot de-escalate an escalated child. So, so, so important. The fourth thing that I do, and this is very much tied to the reel I shared on social media last week, but I do my best to set up my teaching atmosphere and remove distractions so it can be a yes space. Here are some things I know. I know that my student may be delayed developmentally. I know that my student needs consistency from me and the lesson routines and in the behaviors and communication. I know that I am working to create a positive learning environment. I know that my goal is to have a lesson where I can focus on teaching rather than spending all my time correcting behaviors. So that is the reason why I remove visual and physical distractions in my studio. If it's something that I'm not going to use in the lesson, I put it away. Now, the exception to this is like decorations I have in my studio, which are fairly sparse. I keep it fairly minimalistic so it's nice and clean. But I do not keep out music or drums or stickers or teaching tools that I'm not going to use in that lesson. It's a temptation and very distracting. I hold the boundaries with kindness. I speak into their feelings and help them process. I know you love using that drum. We're not using it today because we're using other things. We will use it next time. What music are you most excited to play today? And I'll just redirect them. So that is how one of the reasons why I can turn my lesson space into a yes space is eliminating and being proactive. Something I want to encourage you to do, in addition to looking around your studio and thinking, are any of these things continually distracting to my student? Am I always having to prevent behaviors or reactive behaviors around this item? Just take it out. The other thing. It is to take your students' temperature when they come through your door. What's their temperament like? How are their communication skills? Do they seem overwhelmed and already escalated when they come in the door? This lets you know how deeply you can work on difficult things that day. Maybe it's not a great day for in-depth theory study if you know that's something that's usually stressful for them. The other thing you can do to create a yes space and be proactive in your teaching rather than reactive is to use a visual lesson schedule. I cannot tell you how many different things this one teaching tool helps, but it is incredibly impactful for young students as well as even young adult students. A visual lesson schedule can look a lot of different ways. And I'm gonna link Tara's below. Tara has created one that is really wonderful that has all of these little blocks with pictures to represent the things that her students or my students might do in a lesson, like theory book, composing, improvising, um, rhythm and movement, clapping rhythms, singing a melody, doing a coloring page, um, taking a bathroom break, whatever it is. There are dozens of these little little cards with pictures, and there are also blank ones so that you can write your own thing on them. So what I do, and what Tara does as well, I will select the things I know I'm going to use that day. This is basically my lesson plan. If I know we're going to do lesson book, something in the performance book, we're gonna do a theory activity, we're gonna do an ear training game, improvise, and we're gonna do um some clapbacks. I will put those six tiles on the little sheet. And I use Velcro stickies in the back so they can move them around. The first thing my students do when they come in the door is rearrange those in the order they want for that day. It does not matter to me what order we do them in. And this is not allowing my student to control the lesson or manipulate me and take charge of the curriculum. It's actually the opposite. I have already planned what we're going to do. This just gives them autonomy and choices to pick the order of the activities. And by arranging them, they're actually choosing probably to do their favorite things first and then lead up to the most difficult thing at the end. If your students do this, let me know because I am always interested to see how kids' choices affect how they really feel and think and understand music. But choices is a wonderful way to help your students be involved in the learning process, help them learn delayed gratification. So if they start to complain or say something, oh, you chose to do your game at the end today, and you can remind them. It's such a great tool. Um, I'm gonna link it below. If you don't have something like this, I highly encourage you to download it and get it ready for your next lesson. It is very impactful for young students as well as older, and it really, really helps to be proactive in your teaching. This is just a snippet of how I create a positive lesson environment and work with students to teach them how to communicate and act in appropriate ways in the lesson. Here's the caveat: there is no perfect student, there is no perfect teacher. I am a very imperfect person. You're gonna have lessons where it's a hot mess and your student has a gigantic meltdown that you have to calmly end the lesson and stop for the day. You may have to call the parents or text them or ask them to step in and say, hey, until this behavior is fixed, we can't have lessons. Um, but I can't wait to see you when you know it's more under control and we can work again together. That happens, it has happened to me, and it's really hard. But here's the thing the majority of these behaviors are easily managed with parental support, and our students are capable of communicating with us and creating music that's beautiful. But a huge part of that is creating the right circumstances in which they can be successful. It's like eliminating the matches and not waiting for things to catch on fire. This whole mindset of reactive versus proactive teaching takes a bit of adjustment, but I hope I've shared a few things that have been helpful for you. Lead with the energy and the communication you want to receive, model it. Remember that boundaries are kindness, clarity is kindness, behavior is communication. It just helps me understand my student better and preparation over perfection. And I also want to encourage you patience is modeled, not demanded. Oof, that's a big one. Okay, if you stuck with me this far, thank you. I promised a couple of fun announcements at the end, and so here they are. The big one is that we now have a member portal on our website where teachers can create a free account and have access to some really neat resources, like an exclusive member resource library where we are constantly uploading and sharing new teaching resources for you to try and use with your students. They're all digital. And another thing that we have coming up is the spring piano teachers book club. The poll ended today. So I just checked the results, and teachers have selected by far that we will read Bright Not Broken. This is a wonderful book about understanding twice exceptional students. So kids that have two different diagnoses or neurodivergence going on, like ADHD and autism or autism and dyslexia. It is a really insightful book that shares kind of stories from the author's perspective. It's wonderful. So if you're interested in joining, registration is open and you can do that on our website. I'll put a link below, and you can create a free account to get your freebies and join book club for just$4 a month. We also have some brand new materials we've added to our online store. Our goal is not to just create more stuff that exists in the web sphere, but to actually share things that we've been using with our students for a long time. One of those is what I mentioned today, and that is Tara's lesson schedules. So make sure you take a look at that. As we close out today's episode, I want to leave you with one thought. The environment you create in your lesson is just as impactful as the music your students play, if not more. When we shift from reactive to proactive teaching, we aren't just managing behaviors and putting out fires. We are teaching our students how to manage themselves. We're giving them the gift of focus, the strength of impulse control, and the security of a kind, firm boundary. We're teaching them life skills they can use well beyond the lesson, and these skills will allow them to better focus on music in the piano. So this week, don't just look at the music sitting on the piano. Look at the atmosphere in your teaching room. Are you modeling the calm you want to see? Are your routines serving the student in a way that works? Remember, you're not just a piano teacher. You are an architect of a teaching space, a creative space. We meet our students where they are and create a plan to take them up to where we know they can be. We don't just focus on their faults and deficits. Something I want you to think about this week. What is a part of the lesson where you feel the most reactive or find yourself having to react and be a firefighter? Is it when your students walk in the door and you're trying to calm the chaos? Is it in the middle when you're trying to get them to do repetitions or really focus deeply on details in the music? Is it at the end? Assess this and see what you can do to be proactive so you can spend more time teaching your students and less time correcting preventable behaviors. If this is something that you're really interested in, digging into why your students behave the way they do, learning really excellent communication skills and transferable skills you can take to any student or any method, we're going to be doing another session of adaptive piano pedagogy 101 this summer, starting in May. This helps you really understand your students and take your teaching to the next level by digging into the whys of behaviors, understanding really what disabilities are and the diagnosis, learning really excellent communication skills that will just help make your lessons all the better for your students. Digging into lesson planning and pacing and really how we should teach improvisation and composition, viewpoints and ways to assess method books for different students, classical music, technique and hypermobility, rhythm, expression, all the things. This is in a um very supportive environment where you can focus on learning your students, but be surrounded by the kindest teachers in the music world, truly. The wait list is open now, so you can find the link below if you're interested. Thank you again for joining me on Creative Piano Pedagogy. Now, go out there and have a wonderfully proactive teaching week.