To plan or not to plan.

Lately I’ve seen a lot of questions and debate about lesson planning in the piano teaching world. All teachers have different personalities and will find different strategies that work for their studio, and therefore what works for me may not be your cup of tea. But today I’m sharing what has worked well in my teaching life to give you a starting point – with the hope that it helps those music teachers who may be overwhelmed 🙂

I’m currently in a season where I have two toddlers bringing joyful chaos to the majority of my day. And although I’ve spent significant amounts of time lesson planning for my students in the past, I have much less capacity to do so now.

The longer I teach the more confident I am in the materials, but my personality also has me feeling most at peace when I have a plan. I can handle the unexpected and shift my direction so much easier when I have thought things through. Put simply, I find it easier to change an existing plan than to run without one entirely.

Enter batch planning. My goal has been to know one method inside and out, have it planned by unit, and work with over-arching studio “themes” outside of any method. What this achieves –

~ I have extras on hand for every concept a student might be learning or need reinforcement with – AND I can find them quickly.

~ If a student is working in a different series than my main method I’ve mapped out, I can easily find each concept’s reinforcement because I know my core system inside and out.

~ Valentine’s Day? School just let out? Christmas? Easy, I have the activities set aside and will use with as many students as I can in a week. No need to go hunting to find something new unless I want to. All students need consistent rhythm, note and interval review.

~ Something new and exciting I’ve created/found/purchased? I can implement it and also have the perfect place to file it so it doesn’t get lost. (Ask me how I know. I’ve lost SO many amazing resources to random piles or simply not used them because I have an overabundance.)

If you feel that batch planning might be helpful for you, may I suggest starting by

~ Gathering all of your teaching resources in one place. I found I had collected teaching tools on my computer, in my studio, floating around my car, and in at least 3 different rooms in my house. Embarrassing, and my house really isn’t that big. Collect and take stock of what you actually have.

~ Editing what you have collected. You should do this often, but start now. If you haven’t used it recently, will you? Start to think about how you’ll organize what you do keep so you will be able to find what you need when you need it.

~ Organizing what you choose to keep in a way that you will be able to easily pull what you need when a student reaches any given lesson in their method. This is key, or else batch planning isn’t effective.

As far as organization goes, a few examples (not comprehensive) of what I’ve done includes

• a folder for each unit of my core method with my most needed and used resources for reinforcing the new concept.
• an excel sheet for my non-method book literature organized by level and skills addressed.
• a bonus book for each student at each level that includes worksheets, listening prompts, and any extra music I feel addresses concepts that typically need further study or are not addressed in the method book.
• etc.

To get you started, I’m sharing my very simple method organizing page as a free download. Each student learns differently. My intention is to have a wide variety of options at my fingertips for both teaching and practicing a new concept. This cuts down dramatically on my overall planning time from week to week.

Completing this seemed overwhelming at first, but as I took my core method book by book and unit by unit, I became an expert at where it was heading. I was able to wrangle all of the amazingly creative teaching tools I’ve gained from all over the piano teaching community. Holes in the method book and my extra supplements also started to show themselves, and I was able to start creating or looking for resources to fill them!

Batch planning has satisfied my organizing itch while actually cleaning up my resources and not just giving me the illusion of feeling organized. I no longer waste time finding what I need for my students because more often than not it is at my fingertips. Sound like this could help you? I urge you to start the process with just one book and see where it takes you!

Click here for my unit organizing sheet 🙂