Theory Poll Results, plus: how do you balance teaching & family?

We hope you have found our theory posts and links helpful! Remember, we keep a list (which we update often) of helpful resources for each topic we cover on this blog. Check back often for new great links!

Now for our poll results! Looks like about half of the voters use lots of creative games and activities to teach theory, and about half go the more traditional (boring?) route of going through the theory book together and assigning pages.

The “other” response was:
“I teach theory through their songs, every week!”

I don’t know about you, but I feel motivated to try more fun theory games and activities in my studio.

I am very excited about our next topic, which is Balancing Teaching & Family.

We, as music teachers, are so lucky in our career. Not only do we get to do something as wonderful as teaching music, but most of us have the option of doing this right from the comfort of our own homes (and even those who teach outside of their homes usually have a lot of flexibility). This has so many wonderful advantages, but also brings up a lot of challenges that face many of us as music teachers – how do you balance teaching and family?

I feel that this is a very important (and very personal) issue and decision, and is one that is constantly debated over and over again in my mind. The way you decide to balance this not only affects your spouse and children, but can affect your teaching and your studio in many ways. As many of our readers have families and have expressed interest in this topic, we are excited to focus on it this week, and are excited to read what our readers have to say. We hope to explore some challenges, things to consider, ideas, options, and insights into this important subject.

And we hope to get a lot of comments and input from our readers, for we know that many of you are in the midst of raising your own families, have already raised a family, or hope to someday raise a family. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter!