The Spark for Music Teachers

Do you you have an image of what you want your teaching career to look like and where you want to grow to in the next few years? There’s no doubt that at times, life gets in the way and can distract us from these goals. This weekend I had the chance to see an unexpected yet excellent interview. Let me show you what I learned and how you can model it for what you do. Contact us on FB https://www.fa...

Have you ever wondered why we're always creating new resources using different instruments when it would be so much easier to sit back and relax?  Enjoy this episode explaining the reason why ukulele is a great instrument and resource for music education.

If you want to know the secret to feeling empowered with difficult questions in music teaching year after year ... this is a tool you can use.

On this episode Janice talks about creating empowering systems to make daily teaching routines faster and easier allowing you to fit more content into each day. Here are some of the awesome things to listen for in this episode: How using consistent systems can save you many hours per day in time and energy spent. How you can do a quick evaluation of your empowering teaching systems.

I’ve been journaling for years now and I wanted to share one of my big takeaways that I had with it this week. Leading up to Thanksgiving this is something we think about a lot. One of the first things I suggest to people who are starting out is to do something that feels good on the inside- then it will start radiating outwards to your school, students etc. One of the things I suggest is to trash...

What do you when challenges come up? Everyone has challenges, some big, some small. How we deal with challenges is more important than the challenge itself in many cases. This week Janice shares a story of one of the challenges that has come up for her in the past few weeks, and details a technique of how to get over the negative feelings associated with a challenge, and move forward with confiden...

What if you could master one thing this week, a little strategy or tip  and have it become a major shift to help you teach for the rest of your teaching life?  In this episode, Janice shares a simple concept which anyone could use to shake up the learning. 

In this episode of the Weekly Spark for Music Teachers, Janice Tuck talks about what it takes to have a breakthrough in life, whether it be a breakthrough in our own lives, a breakthrough in our teaching, or a breakthrough in our students. Recently Janice ran a marathon for the very first time, and so in this episode she shares what she learned in the process of building up to it, and her long jou...

In this episode Janice Tuck talks about how one simple change to what you say in response to the default question of “how are you” can radically change how you feel and how others respond to you. Whenever we see a friend or a colleague for the first time in a day,  "how are you" is a natural thing to say.  It flows off the tongue like we don’t even know we’re doing it! Sometimes it becom...

This episode is a special tribute to the wonderful speaker and inspirational educational mentor, Sir Ken Robinson, who passed away recently at the age of 70 after a battle with cancer. In this episode Janice Tuck talks about how the message in Sir Ken’s famous TED talk of 2016 resonated with her and her team when creating the Fun Music Company curriculum program, and how this shaped the direction...

In this episode Janice Tuck puts her music advocacy hat on once again, to talk about one of the most important gifts that we give our students. Music Advocacy is really important for anyone who teaches music - the ability to share information about the benefits of learning music with students and parents is something that we all need as teachers.  As teachers we need these little bite-sized n...

In this episode of the weekly spark for Music Teachers, Janice Tuck addresses the issue of what music teachers can do in lessons when they’re told that they can’t sing or play any instruments due to COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive effect on all teachers, but particularly music teachers, as we’re being asked to change everything we do, and teach without using some of the most impo...

In this episode of the Weekly Spark for Music Teachers, Janice Tuck talks about one thing that we all can control - and that is our mindset. We’re not in control of a lot of things in our life - our students, our school administrators, and things that happen to us from day to day.  However one thing we are in control of is our mindset and our attitude. 
 How do we react when someone asks us t...

In this episode Janice Tuck talks about the mindset needed to get more of what you want, and less of what you don’t want. Despite the challenges that we are all facing right now, there are those who are doing well, even in such challenging times. Despite the challenges of COVID-19 - some people are responding well and growing this year … and how are they doing that? In this episode Janice talks ab...

In this episode Janice gets excited about assessment! At the Fun Music Company we are working hard on a new product at the moment for Ukulele, and we’ve been putting together a series of assessments for this new program. This led us to think about the language that we use on rubrics and assessments - where we are always encouraging and positive about the student, even if they are really struggling...

This is a special episode of the weekly spark for music teachers to address the situation that is going on in our world right now. Since the terrible death of George Floyd in the United states there has been much said about racism and there have been protests everywhere, not just in the United states, but all around the world. Janice Tuck believes that as teachers and as people of influence in our...

In this episode of the weekly spark for music teachers Janice talks though ideas for dealing with problems. We all have problems in life - things come up every single day which we have to deal with and we have to find solutions for all the problems that occur in our lives. We all face problems as teachers - and this podcast episode aims to not necessarily deal with the actual problems themselves b...

In today’s podcast Janice is talking about something we need to seek, as well as be - and that is a role model. As teachers, we need to BE a role model for our students, and be the person that our students want to look up to. But of equal importance is to SEEK role models in teaching, plus in relationships, physical health and every other aspect of our lives.  Plus seeking role models helps u...

This episode is about the power of learning, and the three big benefits learning brings in our lives. With the whole pandemic situation going on at the moment, one thing most of us have (or should have) is more time. In reality though, as busy teachers - right now most of us don’t have more time, so this podcast aims to help you maximize the time you have available and keep a mindset of success th...

Right now, in these unprecedented times, with many of us working from home or having to adapt to many different situations, there is no better time to think about what is really important in life, and make sure that we’re really taking care of ourselves. For this reason in this episode Janice Tuck will talk about the priorities we have as teachers and how to align them with our situation. We all h...

This episode is about how to deal with a bad day… and what to do when life's inevitable challenges come up one after the other - like happens to all of us from time to time. There are so many things in life that we’re not in control of - we’re not in control of the weather, we’re not in control of what else is going on, and we’re not in control of the crazy situation that we all find ourselves in...

Today’s episode is talking about the ultimate source of resourcefulness: the power of connecting to the reasons why we do what we do. Particularly at this time, when the world is facing some major challenges - we all need to connect with our reasons why to have the motivation to get going in the morning. Many teachers around the world are being asked to teach remotely: teaching via the internet ri...

In this episode Janice Tuck discusses three ways to overcome fears or worries. There are a lot of stressors on Music teachers, and more than usual at the moment with the situation that the world finds itself in with the COVID-19 virus affecting everyone. Fear is a natural emotion - we all have it. Its natural to be fearful in normal everyday circumstances, and everyone is particularly fearful righ...

In this first episode of the Weekly Spark for Music Teachers Janice Tuck shares some thoughts about how music teachers can adapt to the current situation the world finds itself in.  The idea behind this podcast is to provide Music Teachers with a little bit of mindset and motivation to get going through their day, and keep inspiring and motivating their students.  This episode is actuall...

The weekly spark for Music Teachers is a podcast presented by Janice Tuck, creative director of the Fun Music Company. The weekly spark is a weekly dose of mindset and energy from everything Janice has learned from hundreds of mentors in the personal development field - applied to music teaching.  Its a ten minute podcast full of inspiration, stories, and energy to get you up early and keep y...