In our second episode with Sarah McCaffrey Ritchie, we talk about the importance of early childhood music, running an audiation-based music school, and how to be one step ahead of skeptical parents.
Early Audiation: Creating a musical bath for our littlest learners
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Introduction to Audiation-based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano
Ready to learn more about audiation-based piano instruction and Music Moves for Piano? Visit Music Learning Academy for online courses, webinars, and resources.
Want to dive into audiation-based piano instruction? Check out Music Moves for Piano by Marilyn Lowe.
In our second episode with Sarah McCaffrey Ritchie, we talk about the importance of early childhood music, running an audiation-based music school, and how to be one step ahead of skeptical parents.
Early Audiation: Creating a musical bath for our littlest learners
Support Keys to Music Learning through the Keys to Music Learning Community!
Join us on Facebook!
Introduction to Audiation-based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano
Ready to learn more about audiation-based piano instruction and Music Moves for Piano? Visit Music Learning Academy for online courses, webinars, and resources.
Want to dive into audiation-based piano instruction? Check out Music Moves for Piano by Marilyn Lowe.
Welcome to Keys to Music Learning. I'm Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano.
Krista:And I'm Krista Jadro of Music Learning Academy.
Hannah:Join us as we discuss common goals and challenges in the piano studio and offer research-based ideas and solutions to guide every one of your students to reach their full musical potential with audiation.
Krista:And we are back with our friend Sarah McCaffrey, Ritchie. Welcome back.
Sarah:Hello, thanks for having me again.
Krista:So last episode, we talked about your music background and your audiation journey. And we thought today, we can start with what you're doing right now. So can you tell us about your music school Songs With Sarah?
Sarah:I would love to. I'm going to go back a little bit. Because when I started teaching, Music Play, and then Music Moves, I was teaching out of my home for Music Moves for Piano. And I had like, I don't really know how to describe it. So I kind of rented like a yoga studio-esque room for Music Play. And I had an opportunity to have a piano studio in the same building. So that's kind of how I segwayed into being in one place. And that's when I started to grow. And that growth was pretty awesome and a little overwhelming. And I hired another teacher who was an early childhood music educator as well. So she fell into Music Play really easily. And I trained her on Keyboard Games, and then had her take your course, Krista, because I was like, I think this is going to be better because I'm always busy and frantic. And we had such a good thing going, her and I, because she would do Keyboard Games for the younger sibling. And I would take the older sibling, like down the hall to another piano studio. But we would do movement together and and it was just awesome. And I finally felt like this is so cool. I'm expanding. And then SPOILER ALERT March 2020 happened. And we were like, well, and it just completely deflated everything. And I'm saying all of this not to like bring up all sorts of like PTSD for everybody in the world. Because that was such a hard time for music teachers. Even though we could go online, which was fantastic. But babies and toddlers did not transfer online in the way that I would have liked it to. Even though I did everything I could it was really hard to convince a mom with a baby to be like, yeah, just like sit your baby in front of the screen for me. It'll be great. So I actually it's, I say all of this because in May of 2020, I said to my husband, I was like, I just don't know, if I want to do this anymore. It just feels this just all feels too hard. And so he's like, do not quit. You have so many people that rely on you and love you and that have stayed with you. And it's going to come back. And at that time we were like it'll come back in September, right everybody like this is like we were like month to month at that point. And so I had a little bit of hope. But also just like I said, extremely deflated. But I live in South Minneapolis and I took a walk one day and walked by the studio I'm now sitting in and there was a for rent sign. And it was clearly a COVID tragedy because this woman who ran the her business out of this space, decided to you know, bag it and work from home. And I walked through this school, which had, I mean the potential I'd had a Music Play space. It had a large piano studio, it had a small piano studio, it had potential to build another large piano studio in the basement. And I was like this is absolutely insane. And I'm gonna do it. And I signed a lease on July 1 of 2020. And for the first year I meanit. I'm I am not going to try to sugarcoat it the first two years honestly, I would say that like last March and April and May, it started to get a little bit better and now we're just like a full running music school but a lot of it still stayed online. But I just was like I need to do this and try it and then if it fails then that's my that's my sign. So I hired teachers and just kind of went for it. And Jessica the woman that I I hired to teach Music Play and Keyboard Games with me was on board. She also has two pretty young children at home so she was you know, battling distance learning and teaching for me and teaching online and Music Play did not come back to in person until last year, so in 21, in September of 2021 and we still had I think one or two online classes to that still, were going very, very small. But that is the story of how it started. And I look back on that. And I remember, you know, that feeling of like, I don't know if I want to do this, like, it's just so hard. And the pandemic is so hard. And I felt so strongly for my kid, my own kids in that time. I'm like, I feel like I need to be there for them. And instead, this other thing hatched that I never saw coming. And I look back on it, and I as a creative person, I think I would have been swallowed up in the pandemic, if I hadn't had this thing that I had to do. And I just was forced to do it. I really wanted to make it work. I wanted to give it a couple years, I wanted to try to push through the pandemic and see what it was like on the other side. And I know that it's not over right now as we're having this conversation, but it feels so much better. And so that's So how was it to go from music teacher to business owner, how, like, I went from being just Sarah, to Songs with Sarah Music School. And keeping the name was really funny, too. I polled some of my clients, I was like, I'm opening up a music school, should I just totally, like, change it to something like whatever. And they were like, I don't think so. And we crack up now because I have. Some nine teachers that work here and two of the women are named Stephanie. So we're like, we should change it to Songs with Stephanie and company. But now it's kind of like a cute joke among us, because then the kids will come in and be like, are you Sarah? And like, one of my, like, seven other women that worked for me are like, No, that's not me. But yeah. because they're two very different things. And I can imagine there's a huge learning curve when you do that. Still learning. I think it's, I looked, I did not know what I was getting myself into. I think now, again, another reason why I think this year feels so much better is that I have stepped back from having such a busy teaching schedule, where I was doing three late nights a week and three, early morning Music Play a week. And it was it was the schedule was insane. And now I have a lot of support. I've learned how to delegate, and how to manage what I can actually handle. And I am the person who's like I can do all of it is totally cool. And then I crash and burn. So it's been really, that learning experience has been great. I think that that maturity that comes along with it is it's hard for me to say no, but I'm learning how to say, not necessarily No, but like not yet or not right now. Or I want to do that a nd I will when things are in order, which will probably be never. But yeah, that's been hard. And I wasn't sure that I really liked it in the first year. And the first year, it was really difficult because parents just had so much going on. And as a parent, I'm glad I had that position of being like I get it. I know the emails were so overwhelming at the beginning of COVID. The communication from all businesses and schools and parents were trying to work and they were trying to help their kid get on the iPad every day. And it was just such a hard time. And that also has changed so much. where parents have a little bit more space to be able to read my emails and, and communicate with me and and that's been incredibly helpful.
Krista:Yeah. And so Hannah has taught Cleo, and you have actually taught my little Nico, during the pandemic, for some reason, who called you Mrs. Sarah, even though I never said that to him. But I remember you sending out an email to everybody in your school, just talking about the importance of early childhood music and how we don't want to miss out on that because of the pandemic. And can you talk a little bit about why early childhood music is so important?
Sarah:Oh, definitely. I mean, that is my entire life is early childhood music. I mean, I always loved the language parallel. And it's funny because I have a couple of teachers who are in their 20s. And God I love them so much. They're so motivated and wonderful. And one of my teachers, about a year ago, she was like listening to me say the language thing again, like well, you know, when a baby learns language, it's the same way that they learn music and the parallels between the two. And I was like, oh my god, Kelly, you've heard me say this 400 times. She's like I love hearing you say it every time. And I think that when she said that I was like, you know as music teachers, we hear it all the time, but it's so good to reinforce what we're doing. And that parallel with language resonates so much with me and resonates with my own children who are trying to be bilingual. So we actually had them enrolled in German immersion preschool and my husband, he will say he doesn't speak German, but he speaks it very well. And watching them be bilingual, and how much they were able to absorb and speak full sentences and ask for things when they were two and three. And knowing that their brains were capable of processing two separate languages, that is exactly how it is when they're processing music. So if we sing them one folk tune over and over again, and we don't allow them to hear the other languages of music, because that is how I see it, I see all of the tonalities and all of the different, you know, uneven and triple and duple meters that we move in. Those are like introducing all of the languages of music, and they're so receptive to it. I see such a difference in my Keyboard Game students when they've been with me in Music Play, because they've been doing it for so long, and that repetitiveness of moving in this way, and then moving in that way, and singing in this way and then singing in that way, has made them. So it's just been so interesting to see what they're like when they come up to Keyboard Games and how willing they are to just sing a tune in Locrian with me. Well, you've been doing that since you were like in utero in some cases, and very, very fun to see that. And I think that the fact that they're so absorbent, we should be throwing everything at them, and giving them as many opportunities.
Krista:And Dr. Gordon says the most critical stages between birth and three years old.
Sarah:Yeah.
Krista:Isn't like the really critical one, like zero to eight months or something? To 18 months. Yes, I think the critical stages, the sensitive stages, but really before three is just so, so important. The earlier the better.
Sarah:I actually use the before three, one way more with my clients. Because if you're even in a class, a baby's only class, and there are two four month olds and one nine month old, it's like, oh, shoot, you missed it. So I would never say that. Zero to Three. But I actually really lean on the zero to nine. Nine years old too. Just the whole period of early childhood music, because I don't know about you guys, but when I look back at my childhood with music by no fault of my parents, Hi, Mom, I love you. They didn't have the opportunities that we have as parents right now. If you go online and search babies classes in your neighborhood, there's there's a pretty good chance that you'll find something or someone I mean, I hope maybe it's because I'm in Minneapolis that I'm saying that but the opportunities are so much better right now.
Hannah:So speaking of your kids and their absorption of multiple languages, including music, which is not a language, but we'll say it is, for these purposes. Let's talk about your kids and music at home and how you've incorporated what you've learned through MLT and early childhood music and Music Moves. How has that influenced how you music with your kids?
Sarah:I mean, what did my mom once say when she was over at her house.?She's like, it's like being in a musical theater when we're here. We just sing everything to them, especially when they were really, really little. So as far as what I do at home, I sang to my babies all the time. And it's funny. Looking at it now. So they're six, six, and eight, and Frances and Cleo are my girls a six year old and eight year old. And I it was very clear from from the beginning that they they had I've never tested them. I will say that I've never done any aptitude testing, but their their music aptitude is clearly quite high. And, you know, that is, for a lot of reasons. Both John and I sang to them a lot. We're both also musicians. So I think we probably passed some of that stuff down to them. But Stephen, who I noticed very, very early on was not musicking with me in the same way. And I was trying to figure out how to get him to sing more. And as he was getting to, you know, the singing age where he's a toddler, my girls were matching pitch perfectly and singing patterns back to me. And he was not.
Unknown:And so that was sort of a mission of mine was to get him singing a bunch. That's where I think that the LSAs helped so much, and LSAs are so overwhelming, I think for a lot of new teachers. And what I took away from LSAs was the teacher mode and the evaluation mode side of it. I still use it so much with my students that can't quite sing their patterns in tune. I know that that means I need to sing it with them. And when I do sing it with them, they usually are like oh, and they they kind of come up and match me. And so little Stephen did that a lot. And he sings in tune now, he'll have a few moments where he's not audiating the same thing as what is being sung and I can tell, and he's kind of like off in his own world, but you can bring him back to it. And he sings really nicely in tune now. And I love that. Because I think if I hadn't taken that time, like, where would he be? And if I hadn't found an MLT teacher for him as well. I do not teach my children any more as a formal educator. I'm very, very lucky I can pass them to some of my other fabulous teachers here. And I do, because I, I have learned especially after doing distance learning that I am not to be their teacher. But I love playing with them at home. All three of them are in Music Moves for Piano. The twins are in Book One, Cleo is in the middle of Book Two kind of off doing a bunch of other stuff with her teacher right now. And with Hannah, she did a lot of the Diversions. And both my girls play violin. When I had my old location, there was a violin teacher that was across the studio from me. And I just said, Hey, I think at that time, I was like, oh my god, I can't teach her. I didn't have another piano teacher. So we started her on Suzuki violin. And I was really interested in Suzuki because of the fact that it was mostly ear training. And I find that when I have the time, I'll sit down with Cleo. So she's older, and she's in Book Two, of Suzuki, I will sit down with her and we'll sing through a song and I'll MLT it. And you know, like, listen to the rhythm patterns. And what do you think these tonal patterns are? And there was one really funny moment where we did that. And she picked up her violin and I, you know, I knew I was like, Oh, wait, we're not there yet. We're not playing it yet clear. Like, I just wanted to do the away from the violin activities, like to relate it to Music Moves or Piano like the away from the piano activities. And she was just like now and she picked it up and played the whole thing. And I was like, Oh, my God, what have I done? I wrote her teacher because I don't want to step on anyone's toes, that are teaching my children and, and I was like, I just want you to know that. We went ahead in the book, and I sang the song to her, I did not teach it to her. And I'm sure the bowings are all wrong. And she might not be using the correct fingers, or I don't really know, I really don't know very much about the violin. It's kind of shocking. But it's fun. And when she struggles with the passage, I'll have her step away from her violin. And we'll chant it together and move to it. And it makes such a difference, even in the way she plays and the way she moves when she's holding the instrument. It's very cool.
Krista:Before we end, Sarah, I want to ask just one more question. And I want to bring it back to running your school, your music school. What are some of the challenges of running a music school that is Music Learning Theory based, both with early childhood and piano?
Sarah:Yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. I will say yes, there are challenges with running a school, especially one that I do find myself trying to convince parents to allow their children to learn this way. It helps that I'm in South Minneapolis, because you've got a lot of Montessori families here, a lot of families who really want to change the way children learn. So to be like, Hey, we're trying to change how we teach music to your child, because it turns out, they learn it this way, really, really resonates with them. I do not have very much difficulty with Music Play, and convincing parents to show up and sing and move with their babies and toddlers. Maybe the challenge there is with my babies only classes like oh, this is actually a really good example. I have some sweet there are like five babies that come on
Thursdays at 11:15. And it's been outside too. So we've been like singing under trees with their adorable little six month old babies. And one woman has a five week old and very, very tiny tot and she arrived and she's like, Yeah, you know, I know. It's really like she's really little, but I just needed something to do. And I was like, No, you are doing so much by being here. And I didn't want to make the other ones feel again like oh, well you know, you were you already have a six month old. I just said this is so important that you sing to her and you're too busy to remind yourself to do that all the time. So you come here and that's my job. I sing to you. I give you ideas. You go home and saying to your baby and that's what and she had resonated with her too. But that would be the challenge is convincing a parent that like yes, you your baby needs to come right now. Obviously with Music Moves for Piano, the Keyboard Games A and B young kids goes over super well. And then you get a few parents who are like, so when are they going to learn how to read? And the hardest question is, When are they going to play songs because I'm like, that's what those are, those are actually songs that we're doing. Again, it's not a lot.
Unknown:One thing that we do at the school is we're constantly providing the information before it needs to be asked, reminding parents what we're doing. My teachers that teach Music Moves for Piano, we have a lot of notes that are kind of pre written for the song. So you know, like "The Woodpecker" already has, like the listening assignment in it, and it's nice, but then we'll add so much more in like, here's why we're doing this with your child. Here's why this is so important. And, and answering some of the questions about reading and writing. You know, I have my schpeel. I talk a lot about my favorite one is to say, again, like the language parallel is so great. And really, especially if it's like a seven year old, okay, why is why is my first grader not reading music, like your first grader is still learning how to read sentences at school. And you they have been having language talked at to them, and to them and with them since they were born. And I don't care who you are even Krista, you are singing to your babies all the time. You talk to them more than you're saying to them. And same with me, I talk to my children way more than I sing to them. And I think it's pretty fair to say that you and I both sing a lot to our children. It's just so heavy loaded on language. And yet they're reading sentences, barely. My first graders actually really struggle with reading. And so then to be like, oh, yeah, and also you're going to read these dots page. And I don't know what your child's context is. Maybe if they've been with me, since they were zero, I can then have a different conversation with that parent, because I know right where their kid is, and I have a lot more answers. But if they're a brand new person in my school, I have to talk to them about why we're not teaching notation. But also, I'll circle back to what I said earlier. We've already put that out there. It's on our website, it's in our welcome email. It's in our like, Thanks for your inquiry about our school, like, here's some things you need to know. This is what how we do it. And this is why we do it. And you have to make sure this is something that you want for your child. And it's very rare that a parent is like, no, that's not what I want. But it happens. And then they'll go, but go someplace else.
Krista:And that's got to be so wonderful for the new teachers that you brought in, to teach this. To already have that set and to have you there as really a mentor to them to help guide them, to teach with them. I mean, there are some lucky teachers,
Hannah:They are some lucky teachers,
Sarah:I feel very lucky to have them.
Krista:So before we go, I do want to mention that for Music Learning Academy, you presented a wonderful webinar on early childhood music called Early Audiation: Creating a Musical Bath for our Littlest Learners. You had some wonderful videos as well of your little learners. So I encourage, if you haven't seen that, you can find the replay. I'll make sure to post it on the show notes. And we'd love to have you back for one more episode to talk about your experiences with Music Moves for Piano and also any advice that you might have for teachers that might be just starting out with all this.
Sarah:Cool, I'd love to.
Krista:Great. So thanks for listening, everyone and we'll see you soon.