5 Ways To Work Smarter, NOT Harder For Music Teachers
If you’ve been in my world for a while, you’ll know that I talk a lot about the importance of ensuring that your teaching life works for you and your family and the things that you love. And yet, this week, a few too many work calls have crept into family time. I found myself posting on our Music Monsters’ page when reading bedtime stories. And I found myself saying those dreaded words – ‘You’ll have to wait, Mummy’s working’.
This was the very thing that Luke and I set out to avoid.
We created Music Monsters to allow us more family time, more flexibility with work, more money for less hours. And yet I found myself slipping back into old habits.
I’m sharing this because with all the will in the world, even with a system in place, I get this wrong sometimes! But the thing is, I know that what I do next will have a big impact on readjusting my balance again.
Hands up if you’re frequently allowing work to leak into the things you love?
How can you set up your life so that you can create the maximum impact, without working every hour under the sun?
As I finish my hot choccie, I’m here to give you a few pointers on how to make this happen.
How to make work happen in a way that feels worthwhile, enjoyable, impactful – without it seeping into every evening/weekend/minute of every day.
How to ensure your teaching life works for you:
- Use group communications as much as possible. Take the time to set up an email list for all students, or whatsapp groups for different groups. Any generic communications can be sent to these en masse - don't get caught up in individual messaging and emails unless it is completely necessary.
- Stop multi-tasking. Believe me, it slows you right down! When you're teaching, teach. When you're writing out music, write out music. When you're hanging out with your kids, hang out with your kids. The constant headache of stuff to do is exacerbated when we feel the pressure to do all of the things, all of the time. The quality of our work takes a nose-dive, it takes us twice as long, and we're not present in the moments we want to love.
- Teach students in groups. The secret to growing a successful and profitable music practice isn't just to add more students and fill up more hours of my time. The secret is to work with pupils in groups, leveraging your time and allowing you to inspire more students in less time. This gives you more time, more money, more space, to be the very best teacher that you can be, and make the most impact on your students and on the world!
- Hold your boundaries. I know this stuff. I do. But I still find this the most challenging. When parents push against my boundaries, I find it very very hard to say no. But, I can honestly tell you, that this single thing has been the one that changed my teaching life the most. Every time I enforce my policies (always with love and kindness, but firmly), I grow as a teacher and as a person. It increases my feelings of self-worth, and our clients value us so much more too. When people value the service they have bought, they put the time and effort into it that is needed to make it a success - and their progress goes through the roof! Win-win.
- Know where you're going. Does you ever find your brain boggling with all the possibilities, all the options? I used to do this all the time. 'I need to take on more teachers', 'I need to start a podcast', 'I need to organise 25 years worth of music into alphabetical order and colour code it'. My coach, Rymel, once told me that this was a form a procrastination...! It was my brain standing in the way of what I actually needed to be doing at any one time!
Write down your priorities, for the year, for the quarter, for the month – whatever works best for you. Every time a new idea pops into your head, or a new opportunity presents itself, ask yourself ‘Is this going to help me achieve what I need to achieve right now?’ If not, write it down and park it!
Tomorrow is a new day and the decisions we make following a setback have a big impact on what comes next for us.
I’m here to cheer you on to get back on track with your teaching/life balance and we are in this together – I’ve slipped along the way too!
Lauren x
Lauren & Luke x
We would love to talk to you about the opportunities we have at Music Monsters, and to share with you all the ways that you can benefit from joining us. If you think that this may be of interest to you, let's arrange a zoom call - we would love to connect.
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