Simpedia

Marie O., Australia

My musical experience began 5 years ago when I entered a new career in life and attended a SM teachers training workshop. Six months later I became a Licensed SM teacher. One week later I started teaching the method to 3 new students. My teaching career began without ever having had a piano lesson.

Each year has brought many peaks, valleys and plateaus in gaining the skills to teach and grow my studio with confidence, ability and self knowledge. As time went on I began to see a pattern evolving. A high number of students were dropping out around the introduction of Reading Rhythm and Level 4.  The biggest drop in students happened at the end of 2004. By that time I had 91 students but over the 8 week school-break I had 20 students drop out. The reasons given were varied, but irrelevant as far as I was concerned.

Losing this many students at one time rocked my foundations as a teacher and damaged my confidence in my ability to teach. I felt completely lost and doubted my ability to continue with Simply Music. It seemed like a waste of energy to have a student leave before having the ability to self-generate.

I believe in this method with every fibre of my mind and soul, and I cannot accept that this is just a fun-filled introduction to music, and that other methods are going to be a greater benefit for students in the long run. If this were true why start the SM method at all?

My options seemed to be that I either find a way to maintain my students or leave SM.

I expressed my concerns with Neil and, like always, he has the ability to open your mind to thinking in a new mode. We all know about long term relationship, but we never spend the time to really know what managing LTRs really looks like – what actually happens?, what role do we all need to play?, how do we maintain and manage the LTRs within our own lives and that of those who we influence? This is something we all need to continually define.

I began to see and understand that I, myself, was in a valley in my own LTR with Simply Music, that my emotions and feeling were a very normal part of my journey as a teacher.  The effects of this new light and understanding gave me renewed hope in myself and a new set of challenges.

Neil’s recordings on Talking To People and The Relationship Conversation were heavenly timed for me. I began my quest to pass this valuable knowledge to all parents and students. My focus became not to grow my studio but to maintaining my student body, organising parent/teacher workshops, seminars and educating all my current students.

The result after 12 months of this has been that only 4 students have dropped out – 1 moved to USA, 1 moved to Norway, 1 to Melbourne and 1 to Singapore. I am now back to growing my studio and I now realize that we all need to be continually having Relationship Conversations with family, friends, students, parents and in particular, ourselves.

The things that we treasure the most in our lives are worth every valley, every plateau and definitely, definitely every peak.

I hope that by sharing my ‘lows’ with you, it will inspire you all at your low points, to continue in your journey and know you are normal and will all find your ‘high’ again.