Music For Kiddos Podcast
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If you have regularly listened to the Music for Kiddos Podcast, if you read this blog or if you follow me on Instagram, you may already know that I have this tendency of “overdoing it.”
I am a super ambitious person, probably to a fault. And, I just have a tendency to overwork. I think a lot of it is out of this sense of trying to prove myself to myself. Or maybe, I'm trying to prove myself to other people a little bit (but I think most of it is just myself).
I want to show myself I can do things and that has led to a series of burnout cycles, maybe you can relate to this, too?
Not just burnout, but this thing that leads to burnout. I think that something that leads to our burnout is this feeling of inadequacy and what I'm figuring out is that, to some extent, it's built into what we do as music therapists and music educators; it's built into the framework of our jobs. From talking with you all over on Instagram, it seems like you agree with this statement too.
I posted this Reel on Instagram, where I shared that for the longest time when I taught preschool music up to third grade, I felt like every class needed to be this incredible thing.
In addition to this, we find ourselves creating curriculum for our classes, we're creating lesson plans or we're borrowing them or we're buying them from somebody else or we’re creating visuals...
In sum, we do a lot, we tend to over prep and then we also sometimes worry about the teachers that are watching our classes and sometimes participating. We feel the need to impress or at least, the need to make sure they don’t think we are not putting on effort depending on what we bring to the classroom or how we plan our lessons.
So, what I would do is I would feel like I needed to bring new stuff to my classes every week and I thought that my lessons needed to be new, amazing and awesome every single class that I ever did. Even though I had no energy and no time, I would put my daughter to bed and I would stay up really late around midnight or one o'clock in the morning to plan everything out, write new songs, find new things on the internet and create this amazing lesson plan
The more planning I did (I kid you not), the less successful my groups were.
Now, that is backwards, right? One would think that the more planning you do, the more successful they are, but this is not what was happening in my classroom.
Why wasn’t it working? I was showing up and I was bringing all these new things every time and it wasn't working because it was too much new.
I thought it was what the teachers wanted.
I thought it was what the parents wanted.
Maybe, what the principal wanted.
I thought maybe it was what the kids wanted too.
I didn't want the kids to be bored with repetition, but what I discovered is that the more I did this and the more I had these experiences where these brand new, fresh lesson plans, that should have been so awesome and so well received “crashed”, the more I felt inadequate. So, I was either feeling inadequate because my lesson plans bombed or feeling inadequate because I wasn't planning enough.
Over time, I noticed that when I brought something new to my classes, I would just get these looks from kids. I was interpreting this as the lesson plan going wrong or that the kids were not liking it.
But what I later understood is that, their brains are constantly processing and I learned that repetition is my friend. Repetition is our friend because it helps us to not have to constantly plan something new because, logistically, this is not possible. Also, repetition helps the kids. It supports their development, it supports learning and it really is what kids need to thrive.
With this knowledge, I changed my approach.
A 20-min family music class where you can get a sense of how I plan my lessons.
What I do now when I am preparing for classes
1. I introduce no more than two new songs a week.
And often that's actually a two week chunk because I'll do the two new songs then, and then I'll do them the next week. So, no more than three over the span of two weeks.
2. I introduce those songs at the beginning of music time when their attention is fresh and when their brains are ready for that more challenging process.
I create a monthly lesson plan so that I have fresh content, but I take one lesson plan and I use it for an entire month. My lesson plans usually include eight songs, Including a hello and a goodbye song. So, I have about six different songs in a lesson plan and I use them over the course of a month.
I introduce a new song here or there.
I do a lot of repetition and by the time we’re at the end of the month, we can use the whole lesson plan but I sprinkle them in and introduce them slowly with a lot of repetition. One lesson plan lasts me a whole month.
3. I keep a bank of songs in my back pocket and they are favorite songs from past lesson plans.
They are sensory songs, which I talk a lot about, and I keep all of these favorite songs in my back pocket. I sprinkle those into our lesson plans especially after introducing new songs, I go back to familiar songs.
4. I do all of this repetition completely unapologetically.
I explain what I'm doing to the teachers, to the principal and to the parents. I point out those moments when kids are looking at you and they take a minute to process what you are presenting to them but then, “magically” they respond. I take the opportunity to point out to teachers when I see something like that happen.
I explain that sometimes that pause, that look or that little stare into space is processing time. I explain that music is incredibly complex. It has layers and layers of information in it. It has the lyrics, the melody, the key, the rhythm, the groove, not even mentioning the emotional aspect of it; all of the emotions that exist inside of music, whether it's in a minor key, a major key, a different kind of mode that has a specific feeling to it, along with the lyrical emotional content as well.
All of these separate layers require a lot of processing and what we are asking kids to do as music therapists and music educators is engage and participate in the music. So now we're adding this whole new layer of things that their brains have to process. We are adding movement instruments, singing, learning the new words, listening; all of this stuff all at the same time.
We have to give kids enough time to process that information
I explain the complexity of music and why we use music as an important educational tool. I point out to teachers and to people things like “wow, last week they weren't very interested in this song and this week when I tried it, they remembered the lyrics! They sing along, they participated and they loved it. What that tells me is that their brain was processing this music over the course of the whole entire week. Look at how much progress their brains have made in a week on this one song. Isn't that incredible?”
Start pointing those things out to people and start sharing with them why this repetition is so incredibly important for kid’s brains. Then all of a sudden, you're not worried about this repetition because:
you are excited about it
you're telling their teachers or administrators about it and you're bringing them in to your plan
you're showing them that you're doing this on purpose because this is what is good for the kids
This isn't because you are lazy and you didn't plan any new songs for this week. This is because this is what is good for the kid’s brains. Thank goodness that repetition is also good for us. We are doing too much and we need to cut ourselves a little bit of slack.
More about feeling inadequate… Laurie Berkner felt this way too
Laurie Berkner was a part of our Music for Kiddos Symposium and she shared that she felt inadequate in her work at a certain point too, because she was tired. She was exhausted. She couldn't keep creating and doing the level of work she had been able to do earlier in her career, so she left teaching and started recording music. I mean, thank goodness she did that! But, Laurie, Berkner feeling inadequate about her work with early childhood music? Can you imagine how incredible her classes had to have been? So yes, I think this feeling of inadequacy is universal in our field and we need to start talking about it and acknowledge it.
We also have to give ourselves permission to use repetition, because it’s good for us and we also know that it happens to be better for our students.
Listen to this episode of the Music For Kiddos Podcast!
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