Ep. 194: Advocating Smarter, Not Harder – A simplified guide for exponential impact and reward; with Anita Collins, PhD

I'm Mindy Peterson, and this is Enhanced Life with Music, where we explore the ways music makes our lives better and spotlight the resources you can use to enhance your life with music. I'm so excited to bring back to you today a guest who I consider the global godmother of music advocacy. Dr. Anita Collins is an award-winning educator, researcher, and writer in the field of brain development and music learning. She is internationally recognized for her unique work in translating the specific research of neuroscientists and psychologists for parents, teachers, and students. I first became acquainted with Dr. Collins' work through the 2014 short film she wrote that has become one of the most watched TED Education films ever. It's called How Playing an Instrument Benefits Your Brain. I'll include a link in the show notes. It's 4 and a half minutes long. If you haven't seen it and you're listening to this podcast, you need to see it. If you've already seen it and it's been a while, like it was for me, watch it again on double speed to remind yourself how amazing music learning is for our brains. Dr. Collins is also the founder of Bigger Better Brains, a worldwide platform dedicated to advancing the understanding of music education through neuroscience. She was a guest here on the show back in the infamous year 2020 discussing her brand new at the time book, The Music Advantage: How Learning Music Helps Your Child's Brain and Well-Being. I'll put a link in the show notes. Her book is one of a few that she's written. This particular one offers comprehensive guidance for parents and teachers on how musical learning enhances learning in all areas and developmental stages. She joins us today from Canberra, Australia. Welcome back to Enhanced Life with Music, Anita.

Thank you so much. I can't believe it was so long ago that we talked, but it's great. It's so good to be back talking to you again, especially, you know, post-2020.

Exactly. Isn't it nice to have that in our rearview mirror? Like for so long it was like, can we say we're post-pandemic yet? I'm not sure. It just kind of like refused to go away, but I think we can say that now. Well, great to have you back. Here. Thrilled to have you. We're here because, as you know, I saw your Facebook post not long ago. Um, we're doing a really quick turnaround on this episode because I saw your Facebook post and immediately from my laptop at night, I'm emailing you saying, I just saw this Facebook post. The post was the BBB, Bigger Butter Brains Plus Method, is coming. The BBB Plus Method is your essential 10-step guide to confidently and effectively advocate for music education. From pinpointing your challenges to providing ready-made solutions, it's the ultimate resource every music teacher needs. And I saw that and I was like, oh, she has my attention. The global godmother has spoken and she has a new method for stronger advocacy. I need to know more. So reached out to you right away. You were so gracious and got right back to me. We're here on quick turnaround. So fill us in. Tell us about this new BBB+ method.

Oh, okay. This is such an exciting day. I'm kind of busting out of my skin a little bit because it's one of those things that I've, I've tried to do multiple times. I don't know if you've ever done it, but you know, you start a document, I'm going to write about this, or I'm going to do this podcast or something. And then you do it and you go, no, that's not quite right. And then I did it again. I did. And I think I've had 6 or 7 goes at it. So to get to the point where it's ready for the world. Is just extraordinary. So BBB Plus is the Bigger Better Brains membership. So basically what it is, is I strongly believe that everyone needs to have access to all of the resources that we make. And our resources come from our creative minds, but they also come from our community. And the membership, basically everything we've ever made sits in that membership for anybody to use. And it's, it's all sorts of res— it's things you can put on social media, handouts for parents, posters you can put on walls. It's everything, but I was really struggling to come up with a method, a sequence of steps of how do you best use this in your context, in your studio or in your marching band program or in your choir. And what was really hard is, of course, every single one of those things is different. Every single teacher is different. Every single context is different. You know, your students might be anything from little young ones who are 5 up to, you know, big 17, 18-year-olds into college. And how do you write an advocacy method that covers all of that? And it could be anything from classroom music to singing to individual piano playing. And I was just really, really struggling. But I sat down and I had another go at it. And it's like, I just kept saying, if I just keep going at it, it'll become clear. And I've been talking about it for 6 years and teaching it for 6 years. But I just couldn't figure out how to actually get it into a succinct method. And then literally within 2 mornings, and I'm a morning person, which is like, what? I just wrote it. I just went, these are the steps and they just popped out and there were 10 of them. And I had no problem writing it. I had no problem giving examples for it. And I went, it's taken 6 years to just come down through my brain, to filter through, to go through lots of experiments with every single music. teacher and advocate I meet and go, what is it? What's the distilled version of this? And yes, that's, that's what's going out to the world today. So it's both exciting and terrifying at the same time, but I want it to be helpful and I want to be there for music teachers all over the world and make their jobs easier and help other people to value the work that they do.

Wow. Well, it's really interesting to hear that behind the scenes story about how you've been at this for 6 years and how many iterations went into it because Hearing you say a couple of those words like succinct and distilled, the overwhelming impression that I got when I looked at just the little preview that I saw of it was like, oh my goodness, I love how focused and precise and simple and efficient this is. I'm sort of an efficiency geek. Like, I love efficiency and I am sort of a minimalist, which kind of goes along with that, I think. And it takes more effort and it takes more time to be able to distill a lot of information into an efficient, succinct type of a format. And that was totally what I was hit with, with, again, just the preview that I saw. And like you said, it is so versatile and adaptable as well to various situations, environments, usages. And so I can see why it took so long and so many different iterations to come up with something that's like so laser-like focused and yet also very versatile and adaptable. So really, really cool. Really exciting. Um, tell us more about how this is rolling out. Today is sort of like the launch of it, but tell us kind of how this, what this looks like in terms of the rollout.

Yeah. So we want to help people. This is, um, like a lot, I've seen lots and lots of stepwise versions, you know, you can 5 steps to this and 7 steps to that. And, and what I really wanted to do is to help music teachers to grow through the steps. So a lot of it is about taking them through the steps of thinking. And then what I hope is they'll do it once and they'll go, okay, bits of that worked and I really felt comfortable with this bit, but now I'm going to do it again and I'm going to get a little bit better at the next couple of steps. So I'm hoping that it's a playbook for how music teachers could grow themselves to be these really confident advocates and they can mold and change it in their own way, which was again very hard to We have a global audience. How do I speak to a music teacher who's in the States versus one who's in New Zealand? How different is it and how similar is it? So what we're doing is over the next 4 weeks, we're rolling out the first 4 steps. And the first step, I think, is the one, I think when I found this step, it was like, oh, I've got it. Because all those other iterations, I think I wrote 25,000 words and I wasn't even like a third of the way through. No one has time to read this. And music teachers, I think your love of Being succinct and being efficient is actually something that's very deeply held with music teachers as well, because we want our time, every second of our time to be as valuable as possible to the students who are teaching. So giving time to something else actually takes, is a big step. And I wanted to make it as beneficial as possible. So every word was important. But the first step I called the thorn. And I know that seems like a— but I was trying to think really creatively and go, okay, What is it that happens when we know we need to start advocating? And a lot of the time it's someone says something or someone writes something in an email and it feels like a thorn on our skin. It feels like something that's that painful prick that goes, oh, they've done it again, or they've said that, or often I watch music teachers and they exhale at that point. It's like, oh, it's the same problem over and over again. And what I want to start people by doing on step 1, and that's today is what is, just identify one thorn, one thing that people keep saying over and over again, or keep assuming over and over again, that really hurts you. That really is like, that's a deep misunderstanding of the value of what I do. And then—

What would an example be of a thorn?

Uh, the perfect one that always comes up to me is a wonderful parent who I've, you know, say worked with for ages with their child in a band program. And we've been at a concert and they come up and they come and say, look, I can't believe you've done it again. It's an absolutely amazing experience these kids have had. You're doing so much for them. By the way, my daughter's not having fun learning saxophone anymore, so she's going to quit next year. And it's like, what?

Yeah.

You just told me how great this is and how wonderful it is. And then you've, you've jumped to My child's not having fun anymore. And that's my thorn. That's one of my big thorns is because music learning is not meant to equal fun. And it never has been. It's actually about growing these children, particularly into the wonderful adults that they're going to be. And this misconception that it's about fun is my biggest thorn and the one that always gets me. And I stop them and say, hang on a second. Let's talk about what is the music learning process.

Okay.

But so the first step is identify your thorn, identify, and we have many of them. I'm pretty sure I'm going to see people go, I wrote 20 and it's like, okay, just choose one this time. But the next, the next step, step 2 is about what is the belief that is sitting underneath that has the stem to that thorn, if it makes sense, what's feeding that thorn.

Ah.

And that's a thinking process for the T, for a music teacher to come back and go, okay, why does a parent? believe that music learning should be fun over everything else? And there's many, many answers. And this is kind of where I cottoned on to, okay, how can we do this in lots of different contexts? In many cases for me, I have asked parents about it. I've asked students about it. You know, why should music learning be fun? And that simple question and the answers that they gave me back were fantastic. But one of the ones that sticks in my head was When I listen to music, I feel good. Therefore, when I play music, I should feel good. It's like, oh my goodness, that is so simple. And yet it's driving so many parts of what they believe about the music learning process. And so that's the next step is what is the belief? And there'll be multiple beliefs, but what's the stem, the belief that's sitting underneath that, that's feeding the thorn? So that's step number 2, and that's a thinking process for music teachers and maybe a little bit of experimenting and investigating. The 3rd step is what I call the fuel. I know I was going with the plant version and I thought maybe I could call it the fertilizer, but that doesn't work as well. It's what's feeding the root of the plant into the stem, into the thorn. And what's the fuel is what is adding into that belief. So this concept that music is fun when I listen to it, therefore it should be fun to learn it. And again, I worked with my thorn in particular and I said, okay, to a couple of students and parents. And I said, well, one of the things is we see these TV shows where, you know, America's Got Talent's a perfect example, where people get up and they sing and they tell their story often. And it's a wonderful story and it's moving and fantastic and great. But often it's around the idea that, oh, I just sing when I'm feeding the chickens, or I just sing in the bathroom, or I sing in the car on my own. And I've never had lessons and I've never learned. you know, music at all. And it was really interesting. I got to work with the first winner of Australia's Got Talent for a while. And he shared that same sort of story. He said, I just play for myself and I have my guitar and stuff like that. And then I said, but as I spent more time with him, I said, you've had lots of music teachers. And he said, oh yeah, absolutely. I've had these wonderful people who've, you know, who've supported me and believed in me and taught me so many important things about you know, the music learning process itself to be where I am today. And I said, why didn't you share that part of your story? And he said, well, that's not how these kinds of shows work. It's about this discovery of a person and that they've never really had any support and now they're being, they're being discovered. And that's a wonderful narrative to have, but it's actually usually missing the part that is actually, they've had lots of music lessons. They've had lots of teachers, lots of belief in them, wonderful experiences, which have led them all to this point where they're really very good at the thing that they do.

Uh-huh.

So part of the fuel for my thorn is society and this sort of narrative around that music ability is given, God-given, is genetic, however you'd like to express it. That's the fuel sitting underneath it. It's kind of like a really deeply held belief or misbelief about where music comes from. So that again tells me, okay, this is what they say out loud. This is their belief themselves. This is a societal belief. And then the final step that we're going to release in 4 weeks' time is, okay, where do you go in Bigger Better Brains and what do you do? So then what I've done is I've taken 4 different types of thorns. I've done ones for students. I've done ones for non-music teachers. So anyone who's a colleague in a school or, for example, for school leaders, that might be a school board. It could be a headteacher, it could be a principal, it could be anybody, and then also parents. And parents are the ones that I think most of us deal with most of the time. And then taken those examples and worked them down and gone, okay, here's all the resources you could use. But then after that, the next 6 steps are, how do I use them? What plan do I make? How do I know it's working? How do I shift and change as really exciting opportunities come up for me? How do I look back and know that I've been successful? And then how do I do it all again? But kind of build on the foundation that I've already created. So my hope is that a music teacher will start with the BBB Plus Method and will start to grow slowly, and then will really, really shoot up and will have that sense of achievement, confidence, authority, really being grounded in their own practice, but also knowing that they can talk to anybody and help them understand the value of what they do. Sure. Long explanation, but I'm so passionate about it.

Well, I love that that's the example of the thorn that you gave, I guess, because I really relate to it. My teach— my music education background in terms of being a teacher is being a private piano teacher. And so there were so many times where parents would tell me, I want this to be fun. I want my kid to have fun. It's not fun anymore, you know, whatever. And I remember having conversations with parents and students and saying anything that's rewarding and enriching in your life is going to have a mixture of fun and challenge. Think about a marriage. Think about parenting. Think about an education in general. Everybody loves to have rewarding, fulfilling job, a job and work, but you have to do homework to get there. And not everybody enjoys doing homework. Like, do you do your homework? I mean, that's not always fun.

Yeah.

But it's part of the process to be able to have a rewarding, fulfilling job. And food is another example. Like, dessert tastes great, but if that's all you eat and you never eat the broccoli and the other vegetables and the protein and things like that, you're going to be malnutritioned and you're not going to feel good. So, you know, there's, there's so much that goes into it. Another thought that came to me as you were speaking is I understand how music teachers are weary of this process because it was pointed out to me recently that if you're teaching in a school district, You're having to repeat this cycle over and over again because you work with your current students, their parents, the administration, other people, colleagues that are on the faculty with you, your community, on educating them on the value that music learning brings. And then eventually, it doesn't matter how successful you are, those students are going to graduate and move on. And you're going to have to start all over with young children and their parents and new administration. So there is this cycle. What I like about your method is it reminds me of the— it's really looking at the source and sort of addressing that, which is going to have longer-term, more long-lasting solutions. And it's a process of really changing how you're teaching so that this isn't just one more thing to do, but you're integrating it into your teaching method. And it reminds me of that analogy. There's the story of like, You're, you're on a riverbank and you're seeing all of these people just coming down in the river drowning. And so you're constantly running in trying to rescue these people who are drowning. Eventually somebody says, I'm running upstream to figure out who's pushing these people in and like stop that, you know? So this feels like a more long-term successful method rather than just continually trying to pull people out of the water, but if you can sort of identify the thorn, identify the source, identify fuels, solutions, things like that, it just seems like a much more long-term, strategic type of a solution to this continuing challenge that we all face as music teachers.

Yeah.

If you're a regular listener of this show, you know that my favorite energy bar is Jam Bar. One thing I love about Jam Bar is that the 4 original flavors are separate and distinct. Unlike some bars whose different flavors seem to all taste the same, there is no flavor fatigue with Jam Bar. This was especially helpful when we moved recently and were eating them even more than usual. I love all the flavors, so it took a while for me to settle on my favorite. Just as I decided Musical Mango was my favorite, Jam Bar came out with a 5th flavor, Tropical Trio. This bar is like taking your taste buds on an exotic island escape, and it's definitely right up there with Musical Mango as my new favorite. These certified organic whole food bars are non-GMO and gluten-free and include vegan dairy-free options. Support your active life and your taste buds with Jam Bars. Available at Amazon, select retailers, and jambar.com. This is a quick break to tell you about Sonix, the service that I use to transcribe these episodes. Sonix is an artificial intelligence transcription service that automatically converts audio and video files to text, and it can translate to over 40 languages. I transcribe these episodes to make them more accessible. I tried multiple services and chose to stick with Sonix because of their accuracy, affordability, and because their site is just so easy to use. That's a big plus for me to not need to spend a bunch of time figuring out one more platform. While I love podcasts, I do tend to be a very visual learner. I figure other people probably are too, and having that written form of of your work, just makes it more versatile. Sonix transcripts make the most of your hard work and can increase traffic to your site. Sonix is spelled S-O-N-I-X. You can check them out with a free trial plus an extra 100 minutes of free transcription by using the link sonix.ai/invite/enhancedlife100. There's a link in the show notes. Again, it's spelled S-O-N-I-X. And that link is sonix.ai/invite/enhancedlife100 for a free trial and an extra 100 minutes of free transcription. I know that we're talking a lot about K through 12 music teachers. I'm talking from the perspective of someone who is a private music instructor. Tell us a little bit more, elaborate on who the BBB Plus method is for. Is this for college educators? Who did you have in mind? Is it for parents?

Yeah, I actually, that was one of the tricky things is while I work mostly with students of say younger people and with school systems, for example, I, I do a lot of work with adult groups as well with, you know, music for leisure groups and all those sorts of things. So I was trying to write a method that would work for a beginner ukulele group for people in midlife and choirs for people in later life and, and, uh, ways to advocate that you can, you can do it no matter what, where it is. So I was, I was talking to, um, a group in England just last week who have leisure groups and choirs, particularly for older people, and talking about how do you advocate to get more people to come along to choir. And part of, part of that was to go through the method almost to test it, to go, okay, what's the thorn for you? And I said, well, they say they'd love to come, but they never turn up. And I said, well, the thorn is, okay, what is, what do they say? It's like, oh, I haven't got time or I'm, um, you know, what's the thorn that's pricking them for not actually coming along? And it's that they're scared. It's that they don't necessarily know what the experience is going to be like. So how can you, and why are they scared? They've never had that through life. Um, they've never been to a choir for, you example, but they know they want social connection. They're fueled by some of the fuel sits in there that, oh, maybe I can't sing. Maybe I'm a bad singer and I just don't know. And I don't want to be in a choir and people turn around and tell me I'm a bad singer. That's very childlike in a way. So I worked through all of them to say, okay, how can you get them, make experiences for these people so that it's really easy not just to come along to a normal rehearsal, make it an event. Make it somewhere where you choose music that you're singing that they'll definitely know, that everyone greets them when they come in and asks them, you know, what life experience have you had? You know, have you always lived in this city? All those sorts of things. So recruitment isn't necessarily about just come along and see what it's like. It's actually how can I curate an experience for you so it's so accepting and wonderful and safe that I want to come along again. So it's, this method is for anybody, anybody works in, and I will, I call it the music education industry. So that covers anyone who's working as an instrumental teacher, anyone who's leading a school district in music, anyone who's working at a store that sells pianos, for example, they're all part of the music education industry. And the idea of being able to advocate in a way that is comfortable, that is replicable, which is really important to me. And I really wanted to get away from, I want teachers not to feel like they have to fight. I don't like, so often we use combat terms for, you know, I've got to build myself up. I've got to, you know, get all my ammunition. I've got to, you know, fight the school board. And that takes, A, it's very scary to do. And B, also, it's not necessarily our natural way of being. I have flipped it around to this concept that I want to be able to educate everybody in the value of the work that I do and the wonderful music learning experience and how great it is. And you mentioned before, you said, those students leave, they head off to college and I get down and get these young ones again. I would love to help music teachers reframe that to be, I'm not starting again from scratch. I've got all of these skills. I've just tested them out and made these amazing students. Oh my goodness, what an amazing opportunity to start again and to get them right at the beginning. And actually, and because the thing is, if we keep doing that, we're actually not just changing the students. However, whether you think of student or learner, you know, through the age, through the lifespan, we're actually changing everyone else around them too. So when it's a younger student, we are not only educating the students, we're educating the parents as well. When it's an older, let's say a college student, we're actually educating the community of students that they go on to then become parents to then keep going. So we're actually changing society through doing that. And so that's why it's so important to me that honestly, BBB Plus Method is 10 steps, but actually what it is, is helping, it's taking every single teacher and going, how can I help you feel better and more successful? successful and more authentic at what you do. So you are enriched as a person. And ultimately, that's what I want to do for every music teacher that I possibly can around the world.

I love that reframing because you're really looking at how this strategy has an exponential effect, a ripple effect. And you say in some of your materials, advocacy is our friend, not our burden. The question is, how do we do it in a way that's easy, effective, and even enjoyable? So I love that reframing. I think that's great. And as you were talking about who this method is for. Another demographic that I think this has huge relevance for are performing arts organizations, especially those that are geared toward kids and families. Because I think we are so fortunate here in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota, we have so many great theater organizations. One of 'em who I've been to many of their events and absolutely love 'em is Children's Theater of Minnesota. And they have such a great, platform for really training and educating these families and kids and parents on the value that music brings and the value that arts brings and can really have that exponential ripple effect. So I would really encourage any of those representatives who are listening to dig into this method as well.

It's so interesting you mentioned that. It's so wonderful to talk to you about it, particularly on today when it's, it's all happening. Because I didn't realize that, but I've been the creative chair of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for their learning and engagement program. And I've worked with lots of different symphony orchestras around Australia. And I've seen on the inside of the struggles they have with advocacy of how do we share that information and how do we get people to come to our concerts and get schools to enroll and things like that. And now I think about it, yeah, you're right. It's that. group as well that I've seen struggle with advocacy and I just want to make it easier for them because if it is, then we're just going to have more people going along to concerts, more audience awareness, more audience understanding, that openness to experience of trying out, you know, those new types of concert learning experiences. So yeah, it can absolutely be useful as well. So thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, how many, well, and how many people have you talked to who said that like their moment of inspiration and feeling like, ooh, this is what I want to go into as a career was an experience as a kid that they had going to a concert or watching a play or hearing musical theater or some other arts experience. And a lot of those people didn't necessarily go on to be musicians professionally. Like, they played instruments, but maybe they didn't perform professionally, but they went into music business or they went into producing plays. Or when, you know, there's so many career paths that you can take in the arts. Yeah. So maybe they weren't the exact musician up there on stage, but they had an integral part to play in making those events happen.

Yeah.

So yeah, really great platform that our performing arts organizations have. Well, I know a lot of the people listening to this totally understand. I mean, it's kind of like preaching to the choir to talk about why we need to advocate for music learning. But for those people who are listening and maybe feel like, well, why do we need to advocate for music learning? You have a lot to say about this. Are you able— can you just like in a couple bullet points give like some of the highlights of why it's so important to advocate for music learning or why we need to? Like, I know I talked to a certain number of music educators who kind of are— have a real negative sour taste in their mouth about advocating. Like, well, why should I have to? You know, what do you have to say about that?

Oh, so many things. I think It's, I think this is when I work with music teachers, it's the hidden belief, the hidden value that they really struggle with. It's like, yeah, I know I need to do this, but I don't think I should have to. And I think that's really important. And again, I always look at it as how do we, what can we get if we reframed it? What could we get out of this? I think for me, studying so deeply into the neuroscience is that we're using music learning as a tool. to enhance a person. But there is also a pathway that we're using music learning to create a musician, a person who goes on stage, but that's a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of all those students that we come in contact with. So actually the larger and more impactful, I believe, value of what we do is actually helping the cognitive growth of every single, not only child, but human. It does exactly the same thing in adult life as it does in childhood, no matter when you start. So it's about growing that human, keeping them healthy, making them reach the potential that they can get to. And that's ultimately any teacher, take away the music from the front of the word, any teacher or any educator or any parent wants that for their child or their student. They want them to reach that potential to do the very best they can. We know from the research that music learning is an integral, powerful, universal way to do that. And narrowing it down to, well, you're not going to become that musician on stage is taking— it's leaving so many students out. And I think so one of the reasons we need to advocate is to help others understand that music learning is not for this incredibly narrow goal of a musician. It's actually to enhance the future of every single person. No matter what age they are, no matter what, you know, if they're a student or if they're an older person. So I think that's part of it as well. We need to advocate and really think about what is the purpose of what I'm doing? Is it to create musicians or is it actually to enhance the world in general and the next generation if we're teaching children? That's important. I think one of the reasons we have to advocate is, and I've been looking into all the research, there's no really big studies, but around music participation, meaning people who learn music, only somewhere between 12 and 15% of any population in a Western first world country will have a really meaningful long music education. That's something that's over 5 years long, learning an instrument, reaching a certain level, learning with a teacher, learning to read music, all these different things that kind of make up that sort of thing. So that number really helps me because I flipped it around and I went, You know what, almost 9 out of every 10 people I meet, when I talk about the music learning experience, they have no point of reference. They've never experienced it. They don't understand it from the inside. And it kind of doesn't matter how much I explain it from the outside. They'll never really get it in the same way I do. So the reason to advocate is so that I can educate them about what it is either their child is involved in. They're wanting to get involved in, even to the point where they might have some what are called art scars around music learning themselves. They might have been told they're a bad singer. They might have tried learning an instrument that wasn't suited for them and they felt no success. So part of advocating for me would be the importance of it is that not everyone understands and has experienced what I've had the privilege to experience. How can I help them along that road to understanding? understanding what that experience has been and also how it's improving either them or their children's lives.

Yeah, you point out in your materials that the more you know, the stronger your voice is. And as you just said, a lot of people don't know. They haven't had that personal experience with playing a musical instrument, and we can't expect them to get it the way we do if we're in the music world. Just like I talked to my sister about the equestrian world. She works with horses. I have no experience with horses, so I know nothing other than what I've learned from her. And we, we tend to expect that everybody understands what we do know. And there's a term for it. It's called the curse of knowledge. Chip and Dan Heath have popularized that in their books. And we just assume that other people know what we do know and, and they don't, and we can't expect them to. But just bringing this back to teachers and educators, performing arts centers, the more you know, the stronger your voice, you know so much and you have such a powerful voice. And what I love about this method is you really help us see how much we do know and what value it brings. We don't need to overthink this. This isn't just one more thing to do. It's a way to not work harder, but to work smarter and with more focus and more precision.

Mm-hmm.

So I really love that. Teachers who are listening to this, it'd be easy to think, I'm already overworked and underpaid. And yes, you are. But if you can implement these strategies, it will make your work so much more enjoyable and rewarding and have those incremental exponential effects year after year after year. So I really, yeah.

I would really love it to end up being easier too, because what this is, and this is not true, this is not a wish. I've seen this happen because particularly in Australia, because I've had so much opportunity to work with so many music teachers. They have followed these steps, even though I haven't laid them out this way, and they've seen the results. And there are things like when they start to advocate within their communities and educate them about the music learning process, they've come back to me about a year later and they've gone, something weird's just happened. He said, every single year when we go for our trying to recruit students to come into the program, it's been a big fight. You know, we've had, again, Fight, combat, right? Right. Uh, it's, it's been, you know, letters have gone out, reminder emails, you know, we've, we've done so many things and we've had to have, you know, and we've just got the numbers that we need. But something strange happened this year. We got people applying even before we'd sent out the first letter. And we had, we've got, we're oversubscribed. We've got a waiting list. We don't actually know what to do with this. And it's because they've done the work beforehand. To help the community, the schools in particular they were working in, to understand the value of it and to go, this is an opportunity I can't miss. I have to make sure I'm on the front foot for this. So I think in the end, it actually makes our jobs as music teachers easier because some of the things we have to traditionally fight for become just that little bit easier. So we can put our energies towards the thing we love doing, which is teaching music.

Love that. So how can people jump on board of the BBB Plus method? How can they take advantage of it to get access to it? Tell us about that.

Easy. Very, very easy. Uh, so our website is biggerbetterbrains.com and on, we have a membership page, very easy to find. And then you can basically, we have a free membership, which shows everybody everything that's in the membership area. And with a free membership, you can also see the method. And you can read through and you're going to be able to get the whole first 4 chapters to see what it actually looks like and to see if it's right for you. Also within that free membership, you get access to our very top and most popular resources for free, and you'll get them to use and to download straight away. They're made for sharing. They're made for putting out into your communities. There's all sorts of things. And then we have tiered memberships from there. You can go, if you think, I'm not quite sure, let's give this a go. We have a base monthly one. You can have, again, you can see about 100 of our resources. You can do our most popular one by far is our premium annual, which is when you get to look at over 300 resources, but then there's hundreds of other sort of activities you can do after that. Things you can hand straight to parents, activities you can do in class with your students. So I've done lots of those. And then we also have, and these are the really exciting ones, we have team So if you're in a department in a school and you've got, say, 5 music teachers, you can sign up as a team and you all get to log in. And there's very special parts of that where there's some, every single quarter we release activities you can do within your team to actually start team building, but also getting those skills together that the team will need together. So, because if the team is developed, then every parent who comes in contact with your team goes, wow, I'm getting the same message. And, and it's, it's really strong and it's a really big, you know, core part of what happens at this school or in this studio and this band, whatever it might be. So the team memberships are very, very powerful because, um, honestly, when you do it as a team, the impact is multiplied and it is very, very, very quick. So our teams are very important. Our teams also get to spend time with me. So every single year we do, um, team meetings and they can ask any questions they want or they can They can come with a thorn that they don't know how to start with, or they can come with just anything they want to. And I'm just a voice on the other end that can kind of go, okay, I'm hearing these things and reflect back to them about maybe the main problem is this. So they at least have a starting point. And then again, as that team, they get to grow and grow and grow. So we have lots and lots of different options and ways to do that. But the very best way is a free membership and, or just to sign up to our subscription list and you will see that, um, you can then get the emails that are coming out over the next 4 weeks starting today.

Great. And I think with that free membership, it's just inputting an email address. Is that right?

Yep.

Absolutely. That's what I thought.

One of them is possible.

Okay. Yeah. I thought unless I'm missing something, I think that's all you have to do. So, and tons, like you said, just tons of resources, even with the free membership, but then definitely all of those tiered levels as well, which offers so many resources. I'll mention too that there's a free guide available to download on your website, The Ultimate Guide to Demonstrating the Success of Your Music Program, which was really fantastic. And if you're thinking, I don't have time to read one more book, this guide is for you. It's 7 pages and there's not a ton of text on each page. Again, it's just like this surgeon-like precision. I love it. So just Like very to the point, just distilled in a very succinct way. Let's see what other resources. Ooh, the holiday season is coming. It's not that far off. You have a lot of fun and helpful resources on your website. You have socks.

Yeah.

I Turn Notes into Smiles socks. Love those. You have Music Learning Helps School Stress bundle. You have posters. Those, I mean, I know a lot of schools and teachers are able to now put together wishlists. And students can purchase things for them for the, for the holidays. Um, you could purchase them for the teacher in your life, whether it's your child's teacher, a colleague, a partner, spouse, friend who's a teacher. Any other special things that are available on your website, either great resources that can be downloaded or really great gift ideas that you want to mention?

Yeah, we do have our Christmas bundles. So we've put together 2 bundles. You know, if you've got a music teacher in your life and you want to give them a present, uh, we've put together one which is really useful, as you said, the socks are very, very popular. The ones that say, you know, music teaching is my superpower on the bottom of them. We've had like so many pictures of the bottom of feet in all around the world. We do a lot of digital downloads. Again, global community, we want to get stuff as quickly to you as possible. A lot of our bundles are about, you know, if you're talking to parents, here's our top resources digitally that you can download straight away. Some of them you can hand straight to parents. Some of them are for you to read so you feel a little bit more like you've got some confidence to maybe do a presentation in front of parents. We've got them for school leaders, we've got them around literacy and numeracy, we've got them around working with neurodiverse students, we've got as many things as you can get. But by far our most popular products are actually our posters which we send all over the world and that's a style that I use called stealth advocacy. So it's basically Getting something where you put it up on a wall and it does the work for you. We've got wonderful stories from all over the world. We have a series, very popular in the States actually, called This Is Not Just. And it's always that this is not just a tuba, this is not just a violin. And then it talks about what are the cognitive benefits of it. But we've had so many people, they're very beautiful and we've made sure they're beautiful to look at, but they've framed them and put them in corridors and all sorts of things. And they've suddenly had people walking past going, reading them and going, oh, I didn't realize that, you know, learning percussion was actually really good for completing homework tasks. So it's—

Or increasing literacy skills.

Absolutely increasing literacy skills. And again, our, um, how music learning helps is a very popular poster set as well, because it actually goes through and we always have the research on the bottom of everything we do or accessible through the website. So if someone says, oh, how do we know this is true? We've We've cited every single thing that we've done in terms of the research of where these ideas have come from, and it's very, very important. So, and we also have courses. So if you want to really knuckle down and get an idea of particularly literacy and numeracy and also impulse control or self-regulation, whichever word you'd use for it, we have online courses you can do at any time that basically walk you through all the research and by the end give you sort of that language around that, but also might help you with specific students, or say for example you're having a fight in your school around literacy time if it's for younger kids taking over music time, actually saying, you know what, these two are complementary activities and it's so much more powerful if a music teacher can walk into their own staff room and talk to their faculty and say, look, this is what the research says, here's the research that backs it up. That gives that teacher power, but it also is so much more impactful when someone does it when they're in their community because it's really changing their position in the community. And that's what I want to do. I don't want music teachers to feel anymore that they're down the bottom of the barrel. I want them to be as valued as they should be in any community they're in.

Absolutely. Yeah. And all of these materials are just so well done. I mean, they're so professional and aesthetically pleasing. Again, very succinct and distilled, so it's not overwhelming with tons of text. It's just very to the point and like, ooh, wow, yeah, that just hit me between the eyes, you know? So love that. And I love the term stealth advocacy too. I think that's a new one for me. I mean, I've heard of like reactive versus proactive advocacy, where reactive is like, my school program just got eliminated. I'm gonna fight this. Again, that battle terminology.

Yeah.

And then proactive, more like we're gonna educate so that people realize Why we never want to cut these music programs. But self-advocacy, I love that. That's great. Well, this is fantastic, Anita. I encourage everyone to go check out your website, sign up for either the free membership so you can take advantage of everything that offers, including this BBB+ method or one of the tiered methods too, to get even more benefits too. Check out the cool items that you can add to your wish list or add to your grocery— your not grocery, your holiday shopping list for the upcoming holidays. So, so many resources on there. I'll have all the links in the show notes, also to your books, which is another really great gift idea too. Well, Anita, as you know, I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending, a coda, by sharing a song or a story about a moment that music enhanced your life. I'm sure you have a bazillion of them that you could choose from, but do you have a song or story you can share with us today in closing?

I do. I do. It's a very powerful moment for me. I have to set it up a little bit so it makes sense about what happened. We're in Canberra, which is the capital of Australia, but it's not the biggest city in the world. There's only about 500,000 people here. About an hour from us is— we're surrounded by regional Australia. And about an hour from us is a small sort of satellite town called Goulburn. And I was working with the sort of, it was the conservatorium there on a program for particularly a very, really challenging school, very disadvantaged kids. And they were sharing between, I think it was 150 kids, they were sharing 5 violins. Oh my word. And they were all getting a go on it, but basically they could never take it home. They only got to have sort of 10 minutes every single week on it. And we just said, what can we do about this? So we started a program where we just aimed for every single one of the 150 kids to have their own instrument. And then they had music at the start of every day. So 10 minutes of violin at the start of every day. The outcome—

10 minutes? Okay, that's all it took.

Okay. Yeah, logistically very hard to organize. But what we were trying to do is actually use music learning as a tool to enhance their literacy for sure, but executive function. In particular, a lot of these kids— Melbourne has a very large high-security jail in it, so a lot of the families are the children who have moved to the town because they have a member of their family who's in the jail for an extended period of time. They keep the families together as much as possible, but when you put all those kids in one school, they— it becomes a really interesting school and, and a school with many, many issues. So that's why it was perfect for this. That's the setup. What we then did is I worked with an Australian composer who actually lives in the States, Sean O'Boyle. And I said, could you write a piece of music where these very beginner violinists, not 150, I think we chose 20 of them, could play with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra string players? But it's a piece of music where it's not just the kids playing an easier version. They actually have an important role to play. And without them, the piece wouldn't work. So I was trying to get them on a stage and our Llewellyn Hall stage, this big concert stage, on stage on a piece of music that was really written very differently. It was there to showcase not kids joining in with professionals, but kids being equal to the professionals because the part that they do is just as important. And it— and I gave him this challenge and he went, absolutely, I can do something. like that. So he wrote this amazing piece, 3 movements called the Goulburn Concerto. We ended up— I ended up conducting it, which wasn't the plan, but that's actually how it worked out in the end. So imagine big concert hall, these wonderful professional string players on stage, really young kids quite overawed walking in going, I've never been in a place like this. And we rehearsed, it was fantastic. And we did the performance and we did it in the day so that parents could come and they were bussed from Goulburn. So that was one of— we got a philanthropist to support us to get the parents to come. And these are parents who, again, never walked into a concert hall before. Many of them, as I said, have someone who's in the jail or there's a lot of generational poverty, a lot of illiteracy, a lot of just people who are really struggling and on the edge a lot of the time. So this was a really important experience for them. So did the concert and I would just want you to imagine for a second, I'm on stage, very front row of the concert hall. So it was not ticketed seating. You just got to sit wherever you wanted to. It's very odd for someone to come and sit in the front row unless it's absolutely packed. So it was, as I was doing this concert and I turned around and talked to the audience quite a bit and explained what was happening, this father had come and sat with his 2 sons. in the very front row. And he was so close to me, he had to sit right back like this. But I clocked it because it was a little bit odd. I thought, that's really, really strange that he sat right there. But part of the concert was we were bringing so many people in who had never— they didn't know concert etiquette, if there's such a thing.

Sure.

They just were coming in and experiencing it as they wanted to experience it. experience. Anyway, we did the concert. The kids were amazing. The CSO players were extraordinary. And we bowed at the end and we did, they brought out flowers and all, everyone was standing up. And then we walked off the stage and just as we got to the wings of the stage, so myself and the head of the conservatorium, the composer as well, just as we got to the edge, the clapping was still going, but I heard this sound. I went, what's happening? And it almost sounded like someone yelling. I was like, oh my goodness, what's happening? Like, I was very like adrenaline was running. It was like, yeah, I made this thing work. But I heard this yelling, what I thought was yelling. And I turned right around and this father at the front had stood up and he, he had stood up in his very straight and extremely strong posture. And what he'd actually started doing was a haka. So if you, a haka is what, um, the only place you may have seen it is in rugby games where the New Zealand team will do a haka, which is a very strong, very shouty kind of chant, which is actually daring. They look straight at the, the other team and they kind of go, we are warriors, you know, we're daring you to take us on. It's got very spiritual, absolutely moving experience.

Hmm.

And he started doing this. So imagine again, concert hall, front row, kids on stage. I'm going, again, it's not, it's not right within, it's not within the etiquette of what you would usually do. You'd clap, clap, clap, lights would go up, and then you would leave the room.

Yeah.

Anyway, everyone did exactly the right thing, which is everyone stopped. And we actually walked back out and we watched this man because what you, what is really important to do is honor what he's doing because what he was doing was in the only way he knew how, and the deepest way he knew how, is to say thank you. Thank you for what you have done for my son. And his son, oh my God, was bright red. But his son was in the second-in seat, and you could see him going, I know my dad's doing this, I love my dad, but I'm really embarrassed right now. But what I was so proud of is that the whole audience had started to get up and stuff, and they had started— they either stood still Or they sat back down and they just let this man finish. It takes sort of 90 seconds to do a proper haka.

Okay.

Um, and they, they'd sat still and they had finished and then he just stopped. And there was this moment of, actually, I don't know how to react in this, like the audience, I don't know how to react. And then basically all of us just started yelling and clapping and thanking him visually. And he was so moved. He was, crying as he did it. And I mean, he had a chat to him. I went down straight away afterwards and I said, thank you so much for doing that. It's so powerful that you, you did that for us and that you showed us your art and, and your thanks to us. Um, and he really couldn't talk. He just ugly crying very much so.

Oh.

And he told me, I can't believe what you've done for my son. And he really felt it deeply because he said, I haven't done enough for him and you've done something for him. And it was so deep and so important for him to do it. And I think why it sticks with me is it was emotionally powerful, but it also said to me, we've got all these setup rules around how something should go. Whereas actually the power of music and the power of music learning can bust all of those open and can change people's lives. And that's why we do it. And that experience Every time I see the Harper on TV as well, I still— I go straight back to that moment and seeing this man and being so moved.

Thank you so much to Anita for sharing that beautiful story and for joining us today and putting this new simplified music advocacy program out into the world starting today. Lots of links in the show notes, including a link to sign up for this BBB Plus method and a link to my previous episode with Anita. You'll also find a transcript of today's episode. I want to give a quick shout out to Lucy Blanco, a fellow podcaster who recently had me as a guest on her show, Your Ageless Musical Brain. We discussed how parents can support and nurture their children's musical endeavors, even if they don't know much about music themselves. My own parents fit that description, and I describe what they did that was meaningful to me when I was young, even though I certainly didn't realize it at the time, and also ideas cultivated during my decades as a piano teacher. I hope my conversation with Lucy leaves you feeling inspired and equipped to provide your child the gift of music, theirs to enjoy for a lifetime. You can always connect with me on email, mindy@mpetersonmusic.com, Facebook, Instagram, X, or LinkedIn. Thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing the show. Until next time, may your life be enhanced with music.