OK, Who Can Come Up With The Most Inventive Piano Studio Quest?

There’s a great children’s book called Math Curse. The main character in the book believes his math teacher has put a curse on him; everywhere in his life he is surrounded by math problems. These days I feel much like the main character… but in my case, I’m surrounded by piano teaching ideas.

Of course, unlike the main character in the story, I don’t see my obsession with piano education as a curse! I love come up with new piano teaching games, programs, and blog posts. But still, I sometimes wish my mind would shut off (even for just 30 minutes!) so I could escape into a good book or something completely unrelated to music.

Take last night for example… a new book by one of my favorite authors, Chris Guillebeau, was recently released. So, I sat down before bed to read The Happiness Of Pursuit. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the book, it explores how ordinary people can find purpose, discover a sense of belonging, build community and, more broadly, enrich their lives by undertaking extraordinary quests.

Well, I had barely cracked the cover to start reading about people who endeavor to run 250 marathons, or produce the world’s largest symphony, or complete an entire MIT course in a single year, when my mind switched back into music mode… shoot! Here we go again!…

Be sure to read to the end of this post for a piano teaching giveaway.

With the book resting on my chest, I closed my eyes and thought about how fun it would be for an entire piano studio to go on a yearly quest. And then I realized that beyond it being fun, a quest might enrich the musical lives of piano students, might help them discover a sense of belonging, and might help build a real sense of community; all things that contribute greatly to a thriving studio.

As it turns out, before I could come up with too many great quest ideas I had fallen asleep. So today, I thought it might be fun to ask you (the readers of TeachPianoToday.com) to brainstorm a quest that your studio could undertake (example: perform 200 pieces in public, compose 150 pieces, keep a piano playing non-stop for 24 hours etc).

I’d love for you to share your ideas in the comments below. As an added incentive to fire up the creativity, Andrea and I are going to give away 2 copies of our newest resource TEDDtales to the two teachers who come up with most inventive piano studio quests!

Sooooo looking forward to your ideas!