I have A LOT of catching up to do, but I wanted to post a quick note that I am back from MTNA conference and it was magical. I was able to spend a little time with my family at Disneyland and California Adventure parks after classes, which was fun. I was able to ride Radiator Spring racers 3 times when I didn’t think I would be able to get on that ride at all during this trip. And by the way- it is an AWESOME ride! The parks didn’t start getting super crowded until Wednesday so that worked out well.

This year I participated in Pedagogy Saturday for the first time and I am soooo glad I did. I went to the RMM classes in the morning and then the Jazz/Pop track in the afternoon. I am glad they opened it up to be able to attend any tracks however they did make it a little tricky to jump tracks with schedule overlapping. That would be my only complaint. Other than that, the classes were so motivating and inspiring and I am looking forward to sharing them with all of you soon!

The rest of the conference was great. I have learned over the years (this is my 4th MTNA conference) that it could be a bit overwhelming and could cause sensory/information overload. So even though I may hear 10 great ideas I would love to incorporate in lessons, I start with a couple and go from there. Sometimes what I thought was a great idea in the class, isn’t necessarily working out to be a great idea in my studio or for me as a teacher… Here is a good article from Diane Hidy’s blog on the subject. A couple other things I have learned over the years is to hold back on getting caught up in the showcase specials. I would be so motivated by the showcases and instantly purchase every deal that was out there only to come home and barely look at it later because I forgot about it or I just didn’t have any students to use it with. So now I put things on my wish list and if I can’t stop thinking about it and know exactly how I will use it, then I go ahead and make the purchase, but a lot of times the purchase will be later after conference. I do have a couple things on my wish list from conference…

I plan to blog about the classes I attended at the conference over the next week or two. In the meantime if you haven’t had a chance yet here are some bloggers that also posted about conference…

Natalie Wickham at Music Matters Blog did live blogging at the conference. I attended quite a few different classes then she did so I was glad to be able to read the one’s that she attended. And instead of re-blogging about classes or showcases that she attended that I also attended I will just refer to her blog.

Leila Viss at 88PianoKeys has a great post about the Jazz/Pop track on Pedagogy Saturday. Be sure to check it out. It includes links to some handouts.

Kathleen Theisen at Piano Teaching Tips has a few posts as well.

Jennifer Eklund at PianoPronto just wrote a great post on the frustrations from the “other side” of the coin so to speak. Take a look…

A LOT more coming soon!!! Be sure to like FPSResources on FaceBook and/or follow this blog so you don’t’ miss out on anything!