Summary
I often find piano teaching to be difficult. Each student comes to you as an individual learner, with different needs from the next child. What motivates one student doesn’t motivate the next. What’s hard for one kid is simple for the next, and vice versa. Fortunately, there is an amazing community of teachers who offer lots of piano teaching resources, much of it free.
I explore for inspiration on the Web in several different ways. Much of it comes through Webinars from the Music Teachers National Association, to which I belong. When I find a good site, I’ll click links that lead me to find other great sites. If I’m looking for something specific, I often find it just through a Google search.
Update
As part of a recent continuing education project, I have dived a lot deeper into three of the resources on my original list, and found a brand new one to share as well. These are grouped under Recently Helpful. The other resources under Also Worth a Look are carryovers from when I first published this post.
Recently Helpful
Piano Picnic
Ruth Power comes to piano from a different angle than most others in this list. She grew up loving to play piano by ear, figuring out songs she heard on the radio. This while taking traditional piano lessons and going on to a bachelor’s degree in music. I took her free course Ear Bootcamp, which was offered as a teaser to her more formal paid course Songs by Ear. She not only gave me a teacher discount but gave me permission to offer modules of the class to my students, sort of like a site license, at no extra cost. How cool is that?
Sara’s Music Studio
Sara interviewed Ruth Power just before her Ear Bootcamp began. I ended up adding a third project to my summer list as a result. My second summer project was taking a course Online Lesson Academy that Sara offers with her colleague Tracy through the Upbeat Piano Teachers. I wrote a separate blog post on that subject.
Tim Topham
Tim is an amazing source of inspiration who has a very extensive Website. I’ve hopped onto many free teaser resources he offers, including newsletters, Webinars, and downloads, while resisting frequent pitches to become a paid member of his Inner Circle. I’m sure the Inner Circle is great, but it’s really expensive and outside of my budget for continuing education right now
Inside Music Teaching
Philip Johnston is a blogger and publisher of two books that I have purchased as teacher resources. Check out the posts that rotate through the jumbotron on his home page. One of the books that many of my students know first-hand is the very expensive Scales Bootcamp. I use this in lessons for students learning the correct fingering on full octave scales once they’re ready to move past pentascales. Philip, if you ever read this, please lower the price on this book, as I would ask all of my students to buy it! I bet you would make up in spades on volume what you would lose in per-book profit!
Color In My Piano
Joy Morin talks about her studio, her influences, and inspiration for other teachers. Most recently, she released a really cute Post-It note project. The free download provides the basic Microsoft Word templates that allow you to affix notes to a page and type your own text. The upsell is to purchase some inspirational messages she designed by hand, then digitized, that can be printed on these notes. It’s really a clever idea, but I think I’ll stick to designing my own notes for now.
Also Worth A Look
Pianimation
Jennifer Fink inspired me to put together a version of her floor staff carpet, using cards that she developed to relate intervals to that staff. I created a separate portable felt board that I loan to parents to help young learners with the staff.
Piano4Life
Teacher Natallia created this Circle of Fifths Chart that I use with students. I use it to check off scales learned in major and minor.