Teacher to Student: If I Knew Then What I Know Now - PHH 224

So please, as a student, lead me. Lead your own studies. I'm there. I'll direct you. I'll make sure you stay on course. But I want to know what you like and what you think. Be sure you're asking me questions. Don't merely accept what I say. Ask why. Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to emp every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started. First, I want to let you in on something special. I think the most important thing you can do for your harp playing is to develop the habits that lead to success. Whatever that looks like for you. All of us want to learn how to play the harp beautifully, how to play with confidence and enjoy making music. And if you really want to learn those things, videos are great. But live learning is essential. You need to be able to ask questions and get answers. You can't do that with just a video, which is what makes the My Harp Mastery community so special. My Harp Mastery membership is for those who really want an online experience that lets them learn at their own pace and learn what they want and be able to learn live from expert coaches every single week. Plus, you get to connect with other harpists in the community who have the same desires for their playing. This is not only a powerful learning platform, but it's also the most generous community of harpists anywhere on the planet. They're harpists with a positive outlook, a growth mindset, and a spirit of support for their fellow harpists on the journey with them. We're ready for you. Join us just go to harpmastery.comjoin-now that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. How often do we say if I only knew then what I know now. Sometimes it's about life experience, like surviving teenage drama. Sometimes it's about turning down an opportunity, like not buying stock in Facebook before the company went big. Obviously we aren't able to go back in time and really have a do over. I imagine that if we could, it's more than possible that the result wouldn't be what we expect. We can never know how our world would have been altered if we'd taken the other fork in the road. We can only guess. So here's my if I only knew then statement for today. If I only knew as a young harp student what I now know as a harp teacher. The fact behind this is key. The fact is that everything I learned about being a good student, I learned from trying to be a good teacher. If I had known as a student even half of what I've learned through my teaching, my harp life might have been so much easier. Most teachers of any subject will tell you how much they learn from their students. And one of the most powerful things I have learned is how many different paths there are to being a harpist. Discovering how to craft a course designed with each student's strengths, needs, goals and desires in mind is not easy, but I have found it indescribably rewarding. I have such deep respect for my students, for their efforts, for their their achievements, for their trust in me, for the incredible people they are. But we aren't talking about me or my students today. At least not exactly. What I want to share with you are the four most important aspects of being a harp student or a harp teacher. They have nothing to do with repertoire or technique. They are applicable to every student teacher relationship, and they apply equally but differently for both students and teachers. I'm offering them to you today in the hope that they inspire you to bring a different mindset or intention to your study or to your teaching, or both. Of course, what we are all about here at Harp Mastery is about harp learning. And naturally we have a lot of resources for that. If you've looked in your app recently, hopefully you've noticed that there is a Learn section to the app. So you want to look at the bottom of the screen of whatever device you're looking at. Look at that learn section We've got. Click on it. Of course we've got all kinds of courses in there for you. Some are free, most are free, some are paid. But you can look and you can continue your learning that way. And those kinds of courses are designed to sort of give you quick wins which hopefully will be ideas will be springboards for you to continue your learning in the direction that's right for if you're looking for more focused learning. Of course we have our certified coaching program. Our coaches are ready to work with you. They are experts at showing their students where the path lies for them, deciding together on what the student's goals are and really working with the student on an individual basis to make sure that they're moving in the right direction, taking the steps that are going to get them there faster. Our coaching program is now designed so that you can set the frequency of your lesson so that everything really works for you. So there's a lot of individual choice in here, and there's a lot of power in working with a certified coach if you're a teacher or if you've ever thought that you might want to be a harp teacher. We still have just a couple spots left for our teachers retreat. I would love for you to join us, but the registration for that is closing this week. So when this podcast goes live on September 1, we will be closing registration at the end of the week. So be sure you act now and join us there. So we've got lots of resources for you. Of course, I can't forget our My Harp Mastery membership, which is the easiest way to keep learning and growing alongside a community of equally dedicated harpists. So as we go through the podcast today, keep those in mind, because there are plenty of ways for you to follow through on what we're talking about today, and I want to be sure that you have the information and the resources you need to make your harp playing or teaching what you want it to be. So let's get started with this little 4L framework. What's a 4L framework? Well, it's simply four words that all begin with the letter L. That will hopefully help you remember the concepts that we want to talk about today. But the idea is that these are four words that apply to students and to teachers, although not necessarily in the same way. So I'd like to start us off with one of my favorite quotes about teaching. Now, I have a lot of quotes about teaching that I like, but this one, I think really works for our discussion today because it helps you shift, or at least it helps me to shift my perspective in between teacher and student. And the quote is this. It's from the poet Kahlil Gibran, and it says, the teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind. I'll say that again. The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind. I love that because it's not about top down teaching. In fact, it's all about the wonderful aspect of exploration and adventure and collaboration that can be the core of every teacher student relationship. And it doesn't matter whether we're talking about teaching children, teaching adults, teaching anyone. It's all about the excitement, the adventure, the exploration. It's not about a teacher sharing what they know and just depositing the wisdom there for the student, but it's really about drawing the student into that adventure in their own way and for their own reasons. That's the perspective I'm starting from today. If that's a new one for you, I invite you to go on this journey with me because that's part of the learning experience in itself. So I invite you into that process and we're going to look at it from both sides, from the student side and the teacher side. So if you're ready, we are going to cross the threshold and I invite you on this little adventure with me. And we're going to do it just pretty simply with these four L words. And the first one is learn. Okay, pretty obvious one for sure. I think the word learn though, brings up a lot of different images. And a lot of the images that it brings up, at least for me, are ones that are not necessarily in that spirit of adventure and collaboration. I can picture a teacher at a blackboard. They don't even have blackboards anymore, do they? But I can picture a teacher in front of a classroom or a college lecturer or, or a textbook or homework. These are the words that come to mind when I think of learning. And of course, when I think of harp learning, there's the inevitable practice and lessons format, right? That's part of what we do. And it is the primary way that we learn. We learn from our teachers. We don't have textbooks that are going to tell us everything we need to know. Not that that happens in any subject either. Right? You need the experience of somebody who really is a master of the topic. But I think this is where we need to start our discussion. For this to be an adventure, for this to be a collaboration, for this to be about exploration and growth and not just learning the how to's and the hopefully the whys, but to learn where it can take you. That's a different kind of learning. And I think for you as a student to approach your Learning in that way makes the whole journey a lot more fun. So for the student, learning is about gaining knowledge. It's about gaining skills. It's about gaining experience, for sure. It's also gaining access to someone with more experience. That's where that learning comes in. And it's about connection. It's about the connection that we can have with our teacher and with the world of the harp in general. We learn so much by watching, by listening, and by experiencing more. And we can do that when we get out of our practice room and get into the larger harp world. When it comes to learning from a teacher, I think certainly something very practical we need to remember to do is to take notes. I realize I'm probably preaching to the choir here, because if you're listening to this podcast, you are almost certainly dedicated enough to your learning to know that when you have a lesson, you want to take good notes. So that is a primary source of how we learn. It's not just doing and then going home and doing it over and over again, but it's really remembering what our teacher has to tell us. Okay. I think there's another big component, though, and it's about being open, being open to new ideas, to new music, to new ways of doing things. There is never just one way. So we need to remember to be open not only to the experiences that we get in the wider harp world, but in our lessons and in our own learning. We'll end up coming back to that theme as we go through the rest of the Ls in this framework, and we'll look at that in different ways. But for a teacher, when you're learning, teachers don't just teach. They learn from their students. And here's how I experience that kind of learning myself. When I'm working with a student, part of what I'm learning is how they learn what they love about the harp, what their strengths are, what they do well, where they need more support, and what they really want to do through the harp, how they want their harp playing to fit into their lives. Because that's going to really influence the way that I teach them. When I'm learning about a particular student, that's what I need to do. I need to figure out how to respond to that student. There's no cookie cutter way to teach. At least I don't think there is. There's not one only way. It's an interesting and tricky balance. As a teacher, we know the particular fundamentals and the progression of skills that every student needs to learn. I've known teachers who work very successfully by setting out their own program for making sure that their students learn those skills in a particular way that works for the teacher and, of course, works for the students development. I've seen that work very, very well. Because it gives all their students this very solid foundation. I've also seen teachers who don't use that same idea with quite the same mindset. And it turns into, all my students do this, and they all learn this piece, then they all learn that piece, then they all learn the next piece without the additional component of response to the individual student. And bearing in mind their own interests and needs. I think there's a very healthy balance between those two. I don't think you have to have a freeform approach that's different for every student. Where you're creating an entirely individual curriculum. I think it can have that foundation, that solid. We work on these skills, and you need to learn these, or you won't be able to play whatever kind of music you want. Sort of foundation. I think that needs to be there. But it doesn't have to be everybody learning the same piece in the same progression at the same point in their studies. Because I don't think that serves either student or teacher best. And just as I would encourage the student to be open to new approaches and new ideas, I would encourage the teacher to be open as well, to stay in touch with what's going on in the harp world, to be in touch with other teachers. Reading books about learning and about teaching, thinking about new practice methods, new resources and new tools. I think that we continue to learn as teachers, not only about our students, but about how we can teach and become better teachers along the way. Once again, I feel like I'm preaching to the already converted here. But I would feel remiss if I hadn't mentioned that. So let's get on to our second L. Beyond learning. I think we lead. Leading, of course, really seems to be the teacher's provenance, right? The teacher directs the course of study. We set goals. We teach how to set goals. We help our students follow along that path so they achieve their goals. It is our role as leaders to challenge the student. Not beyond their capabilities, but to challenge them to see new possibilities for themselves, to see new things in their music, to see new, new ways of doing things. So we challenge. I think we also lead in a third way, one that perhaps we don't always remember to the degree we should. I know I have to remind myself about this all the time. I think we lead as role Models, we need to embody the kind of harpist that we want our students to be. I don't mean that we need all our students to be the same kind of harpist that we are. If we're performing professionally, professionally, for instance, and our student doesn't want to do that, or if we're primarily classical and our student wants to do more pop and jazz, we don't have to be similar that way. But I think we need to role model good harp practices, if you will. And that comes in in a few different ways, doesn't it? I think it comes in a lot in terms of our practicing. If we want our students to prioritize their practice, we need to be prioritizing our practice. And frankly, this is one of those places where I have to work very hard. Like every one of you. I'm busy. And so for me to figure out how to put practice in my day can be really tricky. And I have some habits that I have learned. Most importantly, just putting practice in my schedule first. Because if I'm not practicing, it hardly seems honest, or at least it doesn't seem like a position of integrity to ask my students to practice if I'm not right. So to me, that's really important. I think we can also be role models in terms of our attitude, in terms of our openness to come back to that word again. And I think we can be role models in terms of our connections in the harp world. When we reach out and have wider experience. When we go to conferences or when we go to gatherings, when we have harp friends, we encourage our students to be the same. I have seen teachers create very closed communities where we're all my students and we all stick together and we don't go anywhere or do anything. We're just our own little, little network here. And while that can feel very safe, like a family, it works so much better when the teacher is saying, well, we're all in our little studio together, and this is what we're going to do. We're going to go take a field trip, and we're going to go here, and we're going to learn these things and we're going to meet these people. That gives so much energy to a studio. So role modeling the behaviors that you want from your students, the attitudes that you want them to have, I think so so important. And that's part of the way we lead. But students get to lead, too. I prefer to work with a student who has the ability to talk to me about what they want. After all, if You're a harp student. Your music is yours. I'm there to help you achieve what you want with the harp. I'm not there to turn you into a mini me, unless that's really what you want. And then I have some other questions for you. But. But I'm there to help you learn to play the harp, playing the music you want, the way you want. And I want you as a student to be a partner in that process, to participate, to express your ideas and your opinions. It's okay with me if you say, you know, I know you want me to learn this piece, but I really don't like it. It's okay with me if you're the 10 year old student and you say that it's okay with me if you're the 50 year old student and you say that I want to know how to help you learn what you want. And if you tell me that, oh, I know you wanted me to learn this piece, but I really don't like it, that's okay, I'll come up with another piece that maybe teaches those same skills or fills that same hole that I see from a pedagogical standpoint, it doesn't have to be that. So please, as a student, lead me. Lead your own studies. I'm there. I'll direct you. I'll make sure you stay on course. But I want to know what you like and what you think. Be sure you're asking me questions. Don't merely accept what I say. Ask why I may forget to tell you. So please ask. Don't just accept it as okay, well, that's what she wants. No, no, no. I will direct you. I will find the right way to achieve what you want. But help me, give me some guidance. Let me know what it is you like, what it is you want to do. Be responsible along with me for your harp journey. Okay? So that's how you as a student can lead our third l listen. Ooh, listen. The listening that I'm talking about isn't what I would call first level listening. It's not the student listening to the teacher's instructions. It's not the teacher listening to the students wrong notes. It's. It's the kind of listening that has been described as qbq, which is the question beyond the question. There's always another level at which you can be questioning and we're going to call it lbl. There's listening beyond the listening. There's always more that you can listen for. So for the student, I want you to listen beyond the instructions, what is the bigger question or issue that your teacher is addressing? Remember, in a lesson particularly, we only have a limited amount of time and so we sometimes forget, as I mentioned a moment ago, to tell you the why, we don't always get all the steps that you particularly need. We think we're being complete, we think we're telling you everything. But we may miss. So ask, ask why we're doing this. Don't just go ahead and do and take that instruction blindly. Just ask. We'll be happy to tell you. You might also ask how to listen more in your practice. What should you be listening for? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to accomplish? And how do you want your music to sound? And how do you listen in your practice to make sure that it's coming out that way? Those are things that you can listen for. And notice that an important part of listening here is asking for what you don't hear, right? If you don't hear it in the instructions, ask now for the teacher, I want you to listen beyond the results, right? Our students come in, they play for us and we hear what shows up in the lesson. But listen beyond that. Don't just correct the mistakes, Investigate. The first question I usually ask, or at least sometimes ask, is well, is this the way it went in your practice or is this really different? Because I need to differentiate between the nerves that show up in a lesson and what they actually do at home. And even if there are things that aren't going right on a pretty systemic basis that I need to correct, because it's not going right at home either, this is still a really good indicator for me. So don't just make the correction. Investigate so that you and the student can understand what is really happening, why it's happening, and then you'll know how to address it. You might also really listen to what your student isn't telling you and that's about their own inner motivation. What is moving them to do their practice, to work in this particular way? What is their own inner motivation? Find that and respond to it. There are lots of ways to do this and probably we could spend an entire podcast on it. It's probably one of the things we'll end up talking about at the teacher retreat, by the way. But I think looking for the students inner motivation, what is really firing them up about this? And if they don't have a fire about it, why not? And what can we do to help their inspirational level turn into practical day to day motivation to do the work they need to do to accomplish. So. There's a lot there, but you need to listen to what's not being said, to what's not showing up. Listen beyond that first level, listening for students or teachers. That brings us to our fourth L, which is lean. Lean. This is all about the partnership idea. It's about the trust that needs to be part of any teacher student relationship. It's being able to establish those lessons as a place of safety where opinions and ideas can get discussed and perhaps thrashed out a little bit without the idea that these are personal issues that are being dealt with. It's just musical issues. It's a place of safety where respect and collaboration are honored. It's a place for teamwork. That partnership idea allows the student and the teacher to lean into the music and to lean on each other. For the student, I think that there are three questions that you can ask your teacher at different points when they feel appropriate to you, and really lean into your teacher's expertise and support. The first question is, if I wanted to fill in the blank, do this like I want to play at the nursing home. If I wanted to hire myself out as a wedding harpist, if I wanted to play a recital, if I wanted to do this, fill in that blank, what would I have to do? Well, you know, to answer that question, maybe it's develop a repertoire. Maybe it's this, this, this, so your teacher will have the answers to that. Lean into that. If I wanted to do this, what would I have to do to make that happen? Question number two, a more general any time of day kind of question. What are the three most impactful changes I could make in my heart, playing or in my practice? What are the three biggest things that I could do to move myself forward in that particular direction that's important to you? Make your teacher think, make them work. Make them really consider where you need to go. Now, most teachers are considering this already, and you might be surprised by either how quickly your teacher has an answer for you because they've already seen this and they just haven't been able communicate it to you, or because it's something that they really want to take time to consider, bearing your own goals in mind. So it either way, it might be a quick answer or a slow answer, but it's one your teacher will really have put some time into. Maybe it's just, you know, you need to put in more practice time. That might be an extremely impactful change. So, you know, think about that. But ask, ask the question. And then question number three. What Is the path or the plan that you see for me for the next six months. I like when students ask this question because it reminds me to keep planning ahead. Lots of times we as teachers and as students, we get stuck in that just think into the next lesson kind of mode. And that's where working on longer term goals can be so helpful. We need an actual destination beyond. We'll come back next week and we'll see how this is. So if the teacher hasn't worked with you, if your teacher hasn't worked with you to set out that longer term plan and to talk about it, it's time to review that. And as teachers, of course, we can always give ourselves reminders to do that with our students. But to think about that longer term plan is so important. So there are ways that you as a student lean into that teacher student relationship a little bit more, but the teacher can be leaning into that too. And sometimes these are questions that are a little bit scary for a teacher to ask because they ask us to step out of that. Well, all my students do this and then this and then this, and this is what I expect them to do. Kind of box that kind of routine is comfort for us sometimes as teachers, but I don't think it's necessarily very inspiring. It can work for some things and some people in some situations, but that's the whole problem with it. It doesn't work for everybody. So these are three questions that the teacher can ask the student that really helps center on what the student wants to do with their harp playing, which is what we need to know to give them appropriate goals, to lead them in the right direction, to tell them which are those impactful changes that are going to help them get where they want to go. These are questions that I ask all my students before they start working with me. You might know that I have just a handful of students that I coach personally in my Gold Circle program. And it's a long program, it's a 12 to 14 month program, which of course we can renew. But these students are committed at that level to their harp playing. That doesn't mean to say that they're all at the same level of playing. There are some who are at, you know, intermediate levels, some who are more advanced, some who are just coming in earlier on in their harp journey. It's not about the level of playing, it's about the level of commitment. And so these are questions that I ask them and that we work through before we ever start working together. And they have been so helpful to me. As questions to really identify how to set goals and how to make sure that the students are going where they want to go, as opposed to where I think they want to go. So here's question number one. In your happiest harp daydream, what will you be doing in 12 months time? What music will you be playing? Where will you be playing it? It? Who will you be playing it for? This encourages the student to really think about, okay, this is what I want to do. So that they're not just focused on one lesson at a time. We've got a daydream goal. And then question number two, thinking about that daydream, what will you be able to do then that you can't do now? What will be easier for you? Is it technique? Is it reading? Is it performing skills? What are the skills that you see that you're going to need? What's going to be easier? Well, you're going to have music that you're able to play at a moment's notice that you don't have now. Okay, this gives us a place to work. This gives me some real direction as your teacher. And then the third, what is your most meaningful harp goal? I think this is a good question for all of us. Teacher or student, doesn't matter. But when I'm working with a new student, I want to know what's important to them about their harp playing, where it fits in their life, where it's going to be most satisfying for them, what is their most meaningful goal? It's not always an easy question for a student to answer. Sometimes I've had students who know right away what is important to them about their playing other students. It changes as they go. It can be a little bit harder to identify at first, but thinking about your harp journey in this way is a different way to lean into that teacher student relationship. It creates or helps create that partnership, that sense of trust, that feeling of safety that goes along with a good teacher student working relationship. So those are our four L's. Learn, lead, listen and lean. And they can be helpful. Obviously, whether you are a teacher or a student, they're important because they are our journey. Those four things are things that we do along our journey to help us stay motivated, to feed our inspiration and of course, to fuel our playing. So important. And as I mentioned before, we have so many resources to help you with that. At Harp Mastery, there are free courses in the app. Don't miss those. Just even participating in our Harp Mastery hub, which you can do easily through the app, gives you access to a large harp community that is generous and helpful, and you'll be able to find lots of support there if that's what you need. Stepping up a level, We've got My Harp Mastery, which is another community of people who get weekly learning on a harp topic to help keep their journey moving forward. We have plenty of teachers who participate in that as well, because there's plenty to learn from the way other people teach. I teach in there and so do our certified coaches. Of course, our certified coaches also coach individuals, and so our coaching program is always open for you to join. So there's so much going on and I really would love for you to be sure you're taking advantage of it. Think about where you can up your game in one of our four L's or in a different area of your playing and see how we can help. Help. Now next week on the podcast, we're talking about the power of one more. What if you did just one more? There are lots of one mores we're going to be talking about, so don't miss next week's episode because there's a lot that you can accomplish with just one more. In the meantime, remember, every day is a day you can add more Harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.