Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson, and this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the ways music makes our lives better and spotlight the resources you can use to enhance your life with music. I am so excited to bring back to you today a guest who I consider the global godmother of music advocacy. Doctor Anita Collins is an award winning educator, researcher and writer in the field of brain development and music learning. She is internationally recognized for her unique work in translating the specific research of neuroscientists and psychologists for parents, teachers, and students. I first became acquainted with Doctor Collins work through the 2014 short film she wrote, that has become one of the most watched TEDx education films ever. It’s called How Playing an Instrument Benefits Your Brain. I’ll include a link in the show notes. It’s 4.5 minutes long. If you haven’t seen it and you’re listening to this podcast, you need to see it. If you’ve already seen it. And it’s been a while like it was for me. Watch it again on Double Speed to remind yourself how amazing music learning is for our brains. Doctor Collins is also the founder of Bigger, Better Brains, a worldwide platform dedicated to advancing the understanding of music education through neuroscience. She was a guest here on the show back in the infamous year 2020, discussing her brand new at the time, book: “The Music Advantage: How Learning Music helps Your Child’s Brain and Well-Being.” I’ll put a link in the show notes. Her book is one of a few that she’s written. This particular one offers comprehensive guidance for parents and teachers on how musical learning enhances learning in all areas and developmental stages. She joins us today from Canberra, Australia. Welcome back to Enhance Life With Music, Anita.
Anita Collins: [00:01:54] Thank you so much. I can’t believe it was so long ago that we talked. But oh it’s great. It’s so good to be back talking to you again. Especially, you know, post 2020.
Mindy Peterson: [00:02:03] Exactly. Isn’t it nice to have that in our rear view mirror? Yeah. It’s like for so long it was like, can we say we’re post-pandemic yet? I’m not sure. It just kind of like refused to go away. But I think we can say that now. Well, great to have you back here. Thrilled to have you. We’re here because, as you know, I saw your Facebook post not long ago. Um, we’re doing a really quick turnaround in this episode because I saw your Facebook post and immediately from my laptop at night, I’m emailing you saying, I just saw this Facebook post. The post was the BBB (Bigger Better Brains) + Method is coming. “The BBB+ Method is your essential ten step guide to confidently and effectively advocate for music education. From pinpointing your challenges to providing ready made solutions as the ultimate resource every music teacher needs.” And I saw that and I was like, oh, she has my attention. The global godmother has spoken, and she has a new method for stronger advocacy. I need to know more. So I reached out to you right away. You were so gracious and got right back to me. We’re here on quick turnaround, so fill us in. Tell us about this new BBB+ Method.
Anita Collins: [00:03:19] Oh, okay. This is this is such an exciting day. I’m kind of busting out of my skin a little bit, because it’s one of those things that I’ve. I’ve tried to do multiple times. I don’t know if you’ve ever done it, but, you know, you start a document, go, I’m going to write about this or I’m going to do this podcast or something. And then you do it and you go, no, that’s not quite right. And then I did it again. I do. And I think I’ve had 6 or 7 goes at it. So to get to the point where it’s ready for the world is just extraordinary. So BBB+ is the Bigger Better Brains membership. So basically what it is, is I strongly believe that everyone needs to have access to all of the resources that we make and our resources come from our creative minds, but they also come from our community and the membership. Basically everything we’ve ever made sits in that membership for anybody to use. And it’s it’s all sorts of it’s things you can put on social media, handouts for parents, posters you can put on walls. It’s everything. But I was really struggling to come up with a method, a a sequence of steps of how do you best use this in your your context, in your studio or in your marching band program or in your choir? And what was really hard is, of course, every single one of those things is different. Every single teacher is different. Every single context is different. You know, your students might be anything from little young ones who are five up to, you know, big 17, 18 year olds into college.
Anita Collins: [00:04:48] And how do you write an advocacy method that covers all of that? And it could be anything from classroom music to singing to individual piano playing and and I was just really, really struggling. But I sat down and I had another go at it and it’s like I just kept saying, if I just keep going at it, it’ll become clear. And I’ve been talking about it for six years and teaching it for six years, but I just couldn’t figure out how to to actually get it into a succinct method. And then literally within two mornings and I’m a morning person, which is like, that’s, um, I just wrote it. I just went, these are the steps. And they just popped out and there were ten of them and I had no problem writing it. I had no problem giving examples for it. And I went, it’s taken six years to just calm down through my brain, to filter through, to go through lots of experiments with every single music teacher and advocate I meet and go, what is it? What’s the distilled version of this? And yes, that’s that’s what’s going out to the world today. So it’s both exciting and terrifying at the same time. But I want it to be helpful and I want to be there for music teachers all over the world and make their jobs easier and help other people to value the work that they do.
Mindy Peterson: [00:06:02] Wow. Well, it’s really interesting to hear that behind the scenes story about how you’ve been at this for six years and how many iterations went into it, because hearing you say a couple of those words like succinct and distilled, the overwhelming impression that I got when I looked at just the little preview that I saw of it was like, oh my goodness. I love how focused and precise and simple and efficient this is. I’m sort of an efficiency geek, like, I love efficiency and I’m sort of a minimalist, which kind of goes along with that, I think. And it takes more effort, and it takes more time to be able to distill a lot of information into an efficient, succinct, um, type of a format. And that was totally what I was hit with, with, again, just the preview that I saw and like you said, it is so versatile and adaptable as well to various situations, environments, usages. And so I can see why it took so long and so many different iterations to come up with something that’s like so laser like, focused and yet also very versatile and adaptable. So really, really cool. Really exciting. Um, tell us more about how this is rolling out today is sort of like the launch of it. But tell us kind of how this what this looks like in terms of the rollout.
Anita Collins: [00:07:29] Yeah. So we want to help people. This is um, like I’ve seen lots and lots of stepwise versions. You know, you can five steps to this and seven steps to that. And, and what I really wanted to do is to help music teachers to grow through the steps. So a lot of it is about taking them through the steps of thinking, um, and then what I hope is they’ll do it once and they’ll go, okay, bits of that worked. And I really felt comfortable with this bit. But now I’m going to do it again and I’m going to get a little bit better at the next couple of steps. So I’m hoping that it’s a playbook for how music teachers can grow themselves to be these really confident advocates, and they can mold and change it in their own way, which was again, very hard to. We have a global audience. How do I speak to a music teacher who’s in the States versus one who’s in New Zealand? How different is it and how similar is it? So what we’re doing is over the next four weeks, we’re rolling out the first four steps. And the first step, I think is the one. I think when I found this step, it was like, oh, I’ve got it. Because all those other iterations, I think I wrote 25,000 words and I wasn’t even like a third of the way through. And no one has time to read this.
Anita Collins: [00:08:37] And music teachers, I think your love of being succinct and being efficient is actually something that’s very deeply held with music teachers as well, because we want our time every second of our time to be as valuable as possible to the students who are teaching. So giving time to something else actually takes is a big step. And I wanted to make it as as beneficial as possible. So every word was important. But the first step I called the thorn. And I know that sounds like a lot, but I was trying to think really creatively and go, okay, what is it that happens when we know we need to start advocating? And a lot of the time it’s someone says something, or someone writes something in an email and, and it feels like a thorn on our skin. It feels like it’s something that’s painful. Prick that goes, oh, they’ve done it again, or they’ve said that. Or often I watch music teachers and they exhale. At that point it’s like, oh, it’s the same problem over and over again. And what I want to start people by doing on step one and that’s today is what is just identify one thorn, one thing that people keep saying over and over again or keep assuming over and over again that really hurts you. That really is like, that’s a deep misunderstanding of the value of what I do.
Mindy Peterson: [00:09:49] And then what would an example be of a thorn?
Anita Collins: [00:09:53] Uh, the perfect one that always comes up to me is a wonderful parent who I’ve, you know, say, worked with for ages with their child in a band program. And we’ve been at a concert and they come up and they come and say, look, I can’t believe you’ve done it again. And it’s an absolutely amazing experience these kids have had. You’re doing so much for them, by the way. My daughter’s not having fun learning saxophone anymore. So she’s going to quit next year. And it’s like, what? Yeah. You just tell me how great this is and how wonderful it is. And then you’ve you’ve jumped to my child’s not having fun anymore. And that’s my thorn. That’s one of my big thorns is because music learning is not meant to equal fun. And it never has been. It’s actually about growing these children, particularly into the the wonderful adults that they’re going to be. And this misconception that it’s about fun was is my biggest thorn and the one that always gets me And I stop them and say, hang on a second, let’s talk about what is the music learning process. But so the first step is identify your thorn. Identify. And we have many of them. I’m pretty sure I’m going to see people go, I wrote 20 and it’s like, okay, just choose. Just choose one this time. But the next, the next step. Step two is about what is the belief that is sitting underneath that has the stem to that thorn, if it makes sense, what’s feeding that thorn? Ah, and that’s a thinking process for the for a music teacher to come back and go, okay, why does a parent believe that music learning should be fun over everything else? And there’s many, many answers.
Anita Collins: [00:11:30] And this is kind of where I cottoned on to, okay, how can we do this in lots of different contexts? In many cases, for me, I have asked parents about it. I’ve asked students about it. You know, why should music learning be fun? And that simple question and their answers that they gave me back were fantastic. But one of the ones that sticks in my head was when I listened to music, I feel good. Therefore, when I play music, I should feel good. It’s like, oh my goodness, that is so simple. And yet it’s driving so many parts of what they’re believing about the music learning process. And so that’s that’s the next step is what is the belief. And there’ll be multiple beliefs. But what’s what’s the stem the belief that’s sitting underneath that that’s feeding the thorn. So that’s step number two. And that’s a thinking process for music teachers and maybe a little bit of experimenting and investigating. The third step is what I call the fuel. And I was going with the plant version. And I thought maybe I could call it the fertilizer, but that doesn’t work as well.
Anita Collins: [00:12:32] It’s what’s feeding the root of the plant into the stem, into the thorn, and what the fuel is, what is is adding into that belief. So this concept, that music is fun when I listen to it, therefore it should be fun to learn it. And again, I worked with my thorn in particular, and I said, okay, to a couple of students and parents. And they said, well, one of the things is we see these TV shows where, you know, America’s Got Talent is a perfect example where people get up and they sing and they tell their story often. And it’s a wonderful story, and it’s moving and fantastic and great. But often it’s around the idea that, oh, I just sing when I’m feeding the chickens, or I just sing in the bathroom, or I sing in the car on my own. And I’ve never had lessons and I’ve never learned, you know, music at all. And it was really interesting. I got to work with the first winner of Australia’s Got Talent for a while. And, and he, he shared that same sort of story. He said, I just play for myself and I have my guitar and stuff like that. And then I said, but as I spent more time with him, I said, you’ve had lots of music teachers. And he said, oh yeah, absolutely.
Anita Collins: [00:13:38] I’ve had these wonderful people who’ve, you know, who’ve supported me and and believed in me and taught me so many important things about, you know, the music learning process itself to be around today. And I said, why didn’t you share that part of your story? And he said, well, that’s not how these kinds of shows work. It’s about this discovery of a person and that they’ve never really had any support. And now they’re being they’re being discovered. And that’s a wonderful narrative to have, but it’s actually usually missing the part that is actually they’ve had lots of music lessons. They’ve had lots of teachers, lots of belief in them, wonderful experiences which have led them all to this point where they’re really very good at the thing that they do that are the fuel for my thorn is society. And the and this sort of narrative around that music ability is given. God given is genetic. However you would like to express it. That’s the fuel sitting underneath it. It’s kind of like a really deeply held belief or misbelief about where music comes from. So that again tells me, okay, this is what they say out loud. This is their belief themselves. This is a societal don’t believe. And then the final step that we’re going to release in four weeks time is okay, where do you go in bigger, better brains and what do you do? So then what I’ve done is I’ve taken four different types of thorns.
Anita Collins: [00:14:58] I’ve done ones for students, I’ve done ones for non-music teachers. So anyone who’s a colleague in a school or for example, for school leaders, that might be a school board, it could be, um, a head teacher, it could be a principal, it could be anybody. And then also parents and parents are the ones that I think most of us deal with most of the time. And then taking those examples and worked them down and gone, okay, here’s all the resources you could use. But then after that the next six steps are how do I use them? What plan do I make? How do I know it’s working? Um, how do I shift and change as really exciting opportunities come up for me? How do I look back and know that I’ve been successful? And then how do I do it all again, but kind of build on the foundation that I’ve, that I’ve already created. So my hope is that a music teacher will start with the BBB+ method, and we’ll start to grow slowly, and then we’ll really, really shoot up and we’ll have that sense of achievement, confidence, authority, really being grounded in their own practice, but also knowing that they can talk to anybody and help them understand the value of what they do. Sure. Long explanation, but I’m so passionate about it.
Mindy Peterson: [00:16:10] Well, I love that. That’s the example of the thorn that you gave, I guess, because I really relate to it. My teacher, my music education background in terms of being a teacher is being a private piano teacher. And so there were so many times where parents would tell me, I want this to be fun. I want my kid to have fun. It’s not fun anymore, you know, whatever. And I remember having conversations with parents and students and saying anything that’s rewarding and enriching in your life is going to have a mixture of fun and challenge. Think about a marriage, think about parenting, think about an education in general. Everybody loves to have rewarding, fulfilling job, a job and work, but you have to do homework to get there. And not everybody enjoys doing homework. Like, do you do your homework? I mean, that’s not always fun, but it’s part of the process to be able to have a rewarding, fulfilling job. And food is another example. Like dessert tastes great, but if that’s all you eat and you never eat the broccoli and the other vegetables and the protein and things like that, you’re going to be malnutritioned and you’re not going to feel good. So, you know, there’s there’s so much that goes into it. Another thought that came to me as you were speaking is, I understand how music teachers are weary of this process, because it was pointed out to me recently that if you’re teaching in a school district, you’re having to repeat this cycle over and over again because you work with your current students, their parents, the administration, other people, colleagues that are on the faculty with you, your community, and educating them on the value that music learning brings.
Mindy Peterson: [00:17:53] And then eventually, it doesn’t matter how successful you are, those students are going to graduate and move on, and you’re going to have to start all over with young children and their parents and new administration. So there is this cycle. What I like about your method is it reminds me of the it’s really looking at the source and sort of addressing that which is going to have longer term, more long lasting solutions. And it’s a process of really changing how you’re teaching so that this isn’t just one more thing to do, but you’re integrating it into your teaching method. And it reminds me of that analogy. There’s the story of like, you’re you’re on a riverbank and you’re seeing all of these people just coming down in the river drowning. And so you’re constantly running in trying to rescue these people who are drowning. Eventually somebody says, I’m running upstream to figure out who’s pushing these people in and like, stop that, you know? So this feels like a more long term successful method rather than just continually trying to pull people out of the water. But if you can sort of identify the thorn, identify the source, identify fuels, solutions, things like that. It just seems like a much more long term strategic type of a solution to this continuing challenge that we all face as music teachers. Yeah, I know that we’re talking a lot about K through 12 music teachers. I’m talking from the perspective of someone who is a private music instructor. Tell us a little bit more elaborate on who the BBB+ Method is for. Is this for college educators? Who did you have in mind? Is it for parents?
Anita Collins: [00:19:38] Yeah, I actually that was one of the tricky things. Is while I work mostly with students, so younger people and with school systems. For example, I do a lot of work with adult groups as well with, you know, music for leisure groups and all those sorts of things. So I was trying to write a method that would work for a beginner ukulele group for people in midlife and choirs for people in later life, and a ways to advocate that you can you can do it no matter what, where it is. So I was I was talking to a group in England just last week who have leisure groups and choirs, particularly for older people, and talking about how do you advocate to get more people to come along to choir, and part of part of that was to go through the method almost to test it, to go, okay, what’s the thorn for you? And they said, well, they say they’d love to come, but they never turn up. And I said, well, the thorn is okay. What is what do they say? It’s like, oh, I haven’t got time or I’m, I’m, you know, what’s the thorn that’s pricking them for not actually coming along? And it’s that they’re scared. It’s that they don’t necessarily know what the experience is going to be like.
Anita Collins: [00:20:50] So how can you and why are they scared? They’ve never had that through life. They’ve never been to a choir, for example. But they know they want social connection. They’re fueled by some of the fuel sits in there. That all? Maybe I can’t sing, maybe I’m a bad singer and I just don’t know. And I don’t want to be in a choir. And people turn around and tell me I’m a bad singer. And that’s very childlike in a way. So I worked through all of them to say, okay, how can you get them make experiences for these people so that it’s really easy not just to come along to a normal rehearsal, make it an event, make it somewhere where you choose music that you’re singing, that they’ll definitely know that everyone you know greets them when they come in and ask them, you know what? What life experience have you had? You know, have you always lived in this city? All those sorts of things. So recruitment isn’t necessarily about just come along and see what it’s like. It’s actually how can I curate an experience for you? So it’s so accepting and wonderful and safe that I want to come along again. So it’s this method is for anybody anybody works in and I will I call it the music education industry.
Anita Collins: [00:21:59] So that covers anyone who’s working as an instrumental teacher, anyone who’s leading a school district in music, anyone who’s working at a store that sells pianos, for example. They’re all part of the music education industry. And the idea of of being able to advocate in a way that is comfortable, that is replicable, which is really important to me. And I really wanted to get away from I want teachers not to feel like they have to fight. I don’t like so often we use combat terms for, you know, I’ve got a I’ve got a I’ve got to build myself up. I’ve got to, you know, get all my ammunition, I’ve got to, you know, fight the school board. And that takes a is it’s very scary to do and be. Also, it’s not necessarily our natural way of being. I have flipped it around to this concept that I want to be able to educate everybody in the value of the work that I do, and the wonderful music learning experience and how great it is. And you mentioned before you said those students leave, they head off to college, and I get down and get these young ones again. I would love to help music teachers reframe that to be, I’m not starting again from scratch.
Anita Collins: [00:23:06] I’ve got all of these skills. I’ve just tested them out and made these amazing students. Oh my goodness, what an amazing opportunity to start again and to get them right at the beginning. And actually and because the thing is, if we keep doing that, we’re actually not just changing the students. However, whether you think of student or learner, you know, through the age, through the lifespan, we’re actually changing everyone else around them too. So when it’s a younger student, we are not only educating the students, we’re educating the parents as well. When it’s an older, let’s say, a college student. We’re actually, um, educating the community of students that they go on to, then become parents to then keep going. So we’re actually changing society through doing that. And so that’s why it’s so important to me that honestly method is ten steps. But actually what it is, is helping is taking every single teacher and going, how can I help you feel better and more successful and more authentic at what you do? So you are enriched as a person, and ultimately, that’s what I want to do for every music teacher that I possibly can around the world.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:14] I love that reframing, because you’re really looking at how this strategy has an exponential effect or ripple effect. And you say in some of your materials advocacy is our friend, not our burden. The question is, how do we do it in a way that’s easy, effective, and even enjoyable? So I love that reframing. I think that’s great. And as you were talking about who this method is for another demographic that I think this has huge relevance for our performing arts organizations, especially those that are geared toward kids and families, because I think we are so fortunate here in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota. We have so many great theater organizations, one of them who I’ve been to many of their events and absolutely love them as Children’s Theater Minnesota. And they have such a great platform for really training and educating these families and kids and parents on the value that music brings and the value that arts brings and can really have that exponential ripple effect. So I would really encourage any of those representatives who are listening to dig into this method as well.
Anita Collins: [00:25:28] It’s so interesting. You mentioned that it’s so wonderful to talk to you about it, particularly on today when it’s all happening, because I didn’t realize that. But I’ve I’ve been the creative chair of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for their learning and engagement program, and I’ve worked with lots of different symphony orchestras around Australia, and I’ve seen on the inside of the struggles they have with advocacy of how do we share that information and how do we get people to come to our concerts and get schools to enroll and things like that? And now I think about it. Yeah, you’re right, I it’s that group as well that I’ve seen struggle with advocacy. And I just want to make it easier for them because if it is, then we’re just going to have more people going along to concerts, more audience awareness, more audience understanding, that openness to experience of trying out, you know, those new types of concert learning experiences. So yeah, it can absolutely be used for them as well. So thank you. Yeah.
Mindy Peterson: [00:26:22] Yeah. Well how many well and how many people have you talked to who said that like their moment of inspiration and feeling like, oh, this is what I want to go into as a career was an experience as a kid that they had going to a concert or watching a play, or hearing musical theatre or some other arts experience. And a lot of those people didn’t necessarily go on to be musicians professionally, like they played instruments, but maybe they didn’t perform professionally, but they went into music business, or they went into producing plays. Or when, you know, there’s so many career paths that you can take in the arts. Yeah. So maybe they weren’t the exact musician up there on stage, but they had an integral part to play in making those events happen. Yeah. So yeah, really great platform that our performing arts organizations have. Well, I know a lot of the people listening to this. Totally understand. I mean, it’s kind of like preaching to the choir to talk about why we need to advocate for music learning, but for those people who are listening and maybe feel like, well, why do we need to advocate for music learning? You have a lot to say about this. Are you able? Can you just like in a couple bullet points. Give like some of the highlights of why it’s so important to advocate for music learning or why we need to. Like. I know I talked to a certain number of music educators who kind of are have a real negative, sour taste in their mouth about advocating like, well, why should I have to, you know, what do you have to say about that?
Anita Collins: [00:27:55] Oh, so many things. Um, I, I think it’s, I think this is when I work with music teachers. It’s, it’s it’s the hidden belief, the hidden value that they really struggle with. It’s like, yeah, I know I need to do this, but I don’t think I should have to. And I think that’s really important. And again, I always look at it as how do we what can we get if we reframed it, what could we get out of this? I think for me, studying so deeply into the neuroscience is that we’re using music learning as a tool to enhance a person, but there is also a pathway that we music, music, learning to create a musician, a person who goes on stage, but that’s a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of of all the students that we come in contact with. So actually, the larger and and more impactful, I believe value of what we do is actually helping the cognitive growth of every single, not only child, but human. It does exactly the same thing in adult life as it does in childhood, no matter when you start. So it’s it’s about growing that human, keeping them healthy, making them reach the potential that they can get to. And that’s ultimately any teacher. Take away the music from the front of the word. Any teacher or any educator or any parent wants that for their child or their student.
Anita Collins: [00:29:12] They want them to reach that potential and to do the very best they can. We know from the research that music learning is an integral, powerful, universal way to do that and narrowing it down to, well, you’re not going to become that musician on stage is taking is leaving so many students out, and I think so. One of the reasons we need to advocate is to help others understand that music learning is not for this incredibly narrow goal of a musician, it’s actually to enhance the future of every single person, no matter what I say or no matter what you know, if they’re a student or if they’re an older person. So I think that’s part of it as well. We need to advocate and really think about what is the purpose of what I’m doing. Is it to create musicians, or is it actually to enhance the world in general and the next generation? If we’re teaching children, that’s important. I think one of the reasons we have to advocate is, and I’ve been looking into all the research, there’s no really big studies, but around music participation, meaning people who learn music only somewhere between 12 and 15% of any population in a western first world country will have a really meaningful, long music education. That’s something that’s over five years long.
Anita Collins: [00:30:29] Learning an instrument, reaching a certain level, learning with a teacher, learning to read music, all these different things that kind of make up that, that sort of thing. So that number really helps me because I flipped it around and I went, you know what? Almost nine out of every ten people I meet when I talk about the music learning experience, they have no point of reference. They’ve never experienced it. They don’t understand it from the inside. And it kind of doesn’t matter how much I explain it from the outside, they’ll never really get it in the same way I do. So the reason to advocate is so that I can educate them about what it is either their child is involved in, they’re wanting to get involved in, even to the point where they might have some what are called art scars around music learning themselves. They might have been told they’re a bad singer. They might have tried learning an instrument that wasn’t suited for them, and they felt no success. So part of advocating for me would be the importance of it is that not everyone understands and has experienced what I’ve had the privilege to experience. How can I help them along that road to understanding what that experience has been, and also how it’s improving either them or their children’s lives?
Mindy Peterson: [00:31:40] Yeah, you point out in your materials that the more you know, the stronger your voice is. And as you just said, a lot of people don’t know. They haven’t had that personal experience with playing a musical instrument, and we can’t expect them to get it the way we do if we’re in the music world. Just like I talk to my sister about the equestrian world, she works with horses. I have no experience with horses, so I know nothing other than what I’ve learned from her. And we we tend to expect that everybody understands what we do know. And there’s a term for it. It’s called the curse of knowledge. Chip and Dan Heath have popularized that in their books, and we just assume that other people know what we do know and and they don’t. And we can’t expect them to. But just bringing this back to teachers and educators, performing arts centers. The more you know, the stronger your voice. You know so much, and you have such a powerful voice. And I. What I love about this method is you really help us see how much we do know and what value it brings. We don’t need to overthink this. This isn’t just one more thing to do. It’s a way to not work harder, but to work smarter and with more focus and more precision. So I really love that teachers who are listening to this. It’d be easy to think I’m already overworked and underpaid. And yes, you are, but if you can implement these strategies, it will make your work so much more enjoyable and rewarding and have those incremental exponential effects year after year after year. So I really yeah.
Anita Collins: [00:33:17] I would really love it to to end up being easier too, because this is and this is not true. This is not a wish. I’ve seen this happen because particularly in Australia, because I’ve had so much opportunity to work with so many music teachers, They have followed these steps even though I haven’t laid them out this way. And they’ve seen the results. And they’re things like when they start to advocate within their communities and educate them about the music learning process. They’ve come back to me about a year later and they’ve gone. Something weird has just happened. He said, every single year when we go for our trying to recruit students to come into the program, it’s been a big fight. You know, we’ve had again, fight combat. Right, right. That stuff. Uh, it’s it’s been, you know, letters have gone out. Reminder emails. You know, we’ve we’ve done so many things and we’ve had to have, you know, and we’ve just got the numbers that we need. But something strange happened this year. We got people applying even before we’d sent out the first letter. And we had we’ve got we’re oversubscribed. We’ve got a waiting list. We don’t actually know what to do with this, and it’s because they’ve done the work beforehand to help the community, the schools in particular, they were working in, to understand the value of it and to go, this is an opportunity I can’t miss. I have to make sure I’m on the front foot for this. So I think in the end, it actually makes our jobs as music teachers easier because some of the things we have to traditionally fight for become just that little bit easier so we can put our energies towards the thing we love doing, which is teaching music.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:43] Love that. So how can people jump on board of the B.b.b? Blossom method? How can they take advantage of it to get access to it? Tell us about that.
Anita Collins: [00:34:53] Easy. Very very easy. So our website is bigger better brains.com. And on we have a membership page very easy to find. And then you can basically we have a free membership which shows everybody everything that’s in the membership area. And with a free membership you can also see the method and you can read through, and you’re going to be able to get the whole first four chapters to see what it actually looks like and to see if it’s right for you. Also, within that free membership, you get access to our very top and most popular resources for free and you’ll get them to, to use and to download straight away. They’re made for sharing. They’re made for putting out into your communities. There’s all sorts of things. And then we have tiered memberships. From there you can go if you like. I’m not quite sure. Let’s give this a go. We have a basic monthly one you can have. Again, you can see about 100 of our resources. You can do. Our most popular one by far is our premium annual, which is when you get to look at over 300 resources, but then there’s hundreds of other sort of activities you can do after that, things you can hand straight to parents, activities you can do in class with your students. So I’ve done lots of those. And then we also have and these are the the really exciting ones. We have teams. So if you’re in a department in a school and you’ve got a five music teachers, you can sign up as a team and you all get to log in. And there’s a very special parts of that where there’s some every single quarter, we release activities you can do within your team to actually start team building, but also getting those skills together that the team will need together.
Anita Collins: [00:36:29] So because if the team is developed, then every parent who comes in contact with your team goes, wow, I’m getting the same message. And and it’s really strong and it’s a really big, you know, core part of what happens at this school or in this studio and this band, whatever it might be. So the team memberships are very, very powerful because honestly, when you do it as a team, the impact is multiplied and it is very, very, very quick. So our teams are very important. Our teams also get to spend time with me. So every single year we do um team meetings and they can ask any questions they want, or they can come with a thorn that they don’t know how to start with, or they can come with just anything they want to. And I’m just a voice on the other end that can kind of go, okay, I’m hearing these things and reflect back to them about maybe the main problem is this. So they at least have a starting point. And then again, as that team, they get to grow and grow and grow. So we have lots and lots of different options and ways to do that. But the very best way, is a free membership and or just to sign up to our subscription list, and you will see that you can then get the emails that are coming out over the next four weeks, starting today. Great.
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:37] And I think with that free membership, it’s just inputting an email address. Is that right? Yep. That’s what I thought.
Anita Collins: [00:37:43] I mean, it is possible.
Mindy Peterson: [00:37:45] Okay. Yeah. I thought unless I’m missing something, I think that’s all you have to do. So. And like you said, just tons of resources even with the free membership. But then definitely all of those tiered levels as well, which offers so many resources. I’ll mention too, that there’s a free guide available to download on your website. The ultimate guide to demonstrating the success of your music program, which was really fantastic. And if you’re thinking, I don’t have time to read one more book, this guide is for you. It’s seven pages and there’s not a ton of text on each page. Again, it’s just like the surgeon, like precision, I love it. So just like very to the point, just distilled in a very succinct way. Let’s see what other resources. Oh, the holiday season is coming. It’s not that far off. You have a lot of fun and helpful resources on your website. You have socks. Yeah, I turn those into smile socks. Love those. You have music learning helps schools stress bundle. You have posters. Those. I mean, I know a lot of schools and teachers are able to now put together wish lists and students can purchase things for them for the for the holidays. You could purchase them for the teacher in your life, whether it’s your child’s teacher, a colleague, a partner, spouse, friend who’s a teacher, any other special things that are available on your website, either great resources that can be downloaded, or really great gift ideas that you want to mention.
Anita Collins: [00:39:12] Yeah, we do have our Christmas bundle. So we’ve put together two bundles. You know, if you’ve got a music teacher in your life and you want to give them a present, we put together one which is really useful. As you said, the socks are very, very, very popular the the ones that I, you know, music teaching is my superpower on the bottom of them. We’ve had like the so many pictures of the bottom of feet in all over the world. We do a lot of digital downloads. Again, global community. We want to get stuff as quickly to you as possible. A lot of our bundles are about, you know, if you’re talking to parents, here’s our top resources digitally that you can download straight away. Some of them you can hand straight to parents. Some of them are for you to read, so you feel a little bit more like you’ve got some confidence to maybe do a presentation in front of parents. We’ve got them for school leaders. We’ve got them around literacy and numeracy. We’ve got them around working with neurodiverse students. We’ve got as many things as you can get. But by far our most popular products are actually our posters, which we send all over the world. And that’s a style that I use called stealth advocacy. So it’s basically getting something where you put it up on a wall and it does the work for you. We’ve got wonderful stories from all over the world. We have a series very popular in the States actually called This is not just. And it’s always this is not just a tuber, this is not just a violin. And then it talks about what are the cognitive benefits of it. But we’ve had so many people, they’re very beautiful and we’ve made sure they’re beautiful to look at, but they’ve framed them and put them in corridors and all sorts of things, and they’ve suddenly had people wandering past, going and reading them and going, oh, I didn’t realise that. You know, learning percussion was actually really good for completing homework tasks. So it’s increasing.
Mindy Peterson: [00:40:56] Literacy skills.
Anita Collins: [00:40:57] Absolutely increasing literacy literacy skills. And again, our How Music Learning Helps is a very popular poster set as well because it actually goes through and we always have the research on the bottom of everything we do or accessible through the website. So if someone says, oh, how do we know this is true? We’ve we’ve sighted every single thing that we’ve done in terms of the research of where these ideas have come from. And it’s very, very important. So and we also have courses. So if you want to really knuckle down and get an idea of particularly literacy and numeracy and also impulse control or self-regulation, whichever word you use for it, we have online courses you can do at any time that basically walk you through all the research and by the end give you sort of that language around that, but also might help you with specific students or say, for example, you’re having a fight in your school around, you know, literacy time. If it’s for younger kids taking over music time, actually saying, you know what, these two are complementary activities and it’s so much more powerful. If a music teacher can walk into their own staff room and talk to their faculty and say, look, this is what the research says, here’s the research that backs it up, that gives that teacher power. But it also is so much more, um, impactful when someone does it, when they’re in their community, because it’s really changing their position in the community. And that’s what I want to do. I don’t want music teachers to feel anymore that they’re down the bottom of the barrel. I want them to be as valued as they should be in any community they’re in.
Mindy Peterson: [00:42:29] Absolutely. Yeah. And all of these materials are just so well done. I mean, they’re so professional and aesthetically pleasing. Just again, very succinct and distilled. So it’s not overwhelming with tons of text. It’s just very to the point and like, oh, wow. Yeah. That just hit me between the eyes, you know. So love that. And I love the term self-advocacy too. I think that’s a new one for me. I mean, I’ve heard of like reactive versus proactive advocacy, where reactive is like my school program just got eliminated. I’m gonna fight this again. The battle terminology and then proactive. More like we’re going to educate so that people realize why we never want to cut these music programs. But self-advocacy I love that. That’s great. Well, this is fantastic, Anita. I encourage everyone to go check out your website. Sign up for either the free membership so you can take advantage of everything that offers, including this plus method or one of the tiered methods to to get even more benefits. To check out the the cool items that you can add to your wish list or add to your grocery, your not grocery, your holiday shopping list for the upcoming holidays. So so many resources on there. I’ll have all the links in the show notes also to your books, which is another really great gift idea to. Well, Anita, as you know, I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. I’m sure you have a bazillion of them that you could choose from, but do you have a song or story you can share with us today? In closing.
Anita Collins: [00:44:05] I do, I do, it’s very it’s a very powerful moment for me. Um, I have to set it up a little bit so it makes sense about why it happened. We, uh, we’re in Canberra, which is the capital of Australia, but it is, um, It’s not the biggest city in the world. There’s only about 500,000 people here. About an hour from us is we’re surrounded by regional Australia, and about an hour from us is a small sort of satellite town called Goulburn. And I was working with the sort of it was the Conservatorium there on a program for particularly a very, really challenging school, um, very disadvantaged kids. And they were sharing between I think it was 150 kids, they were sharing five violins and they were all all getting a go on it. But basically they could never take it home. They only got to have sort of ten minutes every single week on it. And we just said, what can we do about this? So we started a program where we just aimed for every single one of the 150 kids to have their own instrument. And then they had music at the start of every day. So ten minutes of violin at the start of every day, the outcome being ten minutes, ten minutes.
Mindy Peterson: [00:45:13] Okay. That’s all. That’s all it took. Okay.
Anita Collins: [00:45:16] Yes. It’s physically very hard to organise, but, um, but what we were trying to do is actually use music learning as a tool to enhance their literacy, for sure. But executive function in particular, a lot of these kids, Goulburn has a very large, high security jail in it. So a lot of the families are the children who have moved to the town because they have a member of their family who’s in the jail for an extended period of time. They keep the families together as much as possible. But when you put all those kids in one school, they it becomes a really interesting school and a school with many, many issues. So that’s why it was perfect for this. That’s the setup. What we then did is I worked with an Australian composer who actually lives in the States, Sean O’Boyle, and I said, could could you write a piece of music where these very beginner violinists, not 150, I think we chose 20 of them, could play with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra string players. But it’s a piece of music where it’s not just the kids playing an easier version they actually have an important role to play, and without them the piece wouldn’t work. So I was trying to get them on a stage. And our Llewellyn Hall stage, which is a big concert stage on stage, on a piece of music that was really written very differently. It was there to showcase not kids joining in with professionals, but kids being equal to the professionals, because the part that they do is just as important. And I and I gave him this challenge and he went, absolutely, I can do something like that. So he wrote this amazing piece, three, three movements called the Goulburn Concerto.
Anita Collins: [00:46:51] We ended up I ended up conducting it, which wasn’t the plan, but that’s actually how it worked out in the end. So imagine big concert hall, um, these wonderful professional, um, string players on stage, really young kids, quite overawed, walking in, going. I’ve never been in a place like this. Um, and, you know, we’d rehearsed it was fantastic. And we did the performance and we did it in the day so that parents could come and they were bussed from Goulburn. So that was one of we got a philanthropist to support us, to get the parents to come. Um, and these are parents who again, never walked into a concert hall before. Many of them, as I said, have someone who’s in the jail or there’s a lot of generational poverty, a lot of illiteracy, a lot of, you know, just people who are really struggling and on the edge a lot of the time. So this was a really important experience for them. So did the concert. And I would just want you to imagine for a second that I’m on stage, very front row of the concert hall. So it was not ticketed seating. You just got to sit wherever you wanted to. It’s very odd for someone to come and sit in the front row unless it’s absolutely packed. So it was as I was doing this concert, and I turn around and talk to the audience quite a bit and explained what was happening. This father had come and sat with his two sons in the very front row, and he was so close to me he had to sit right back like this, actually.
Anita Collins: [00:48:15] But I. But I clocked it because it was a little bit odd. So that’s really, really strange that he sat right there. But part of the concert was we were bringing so many people in who had never they didn’t know concert etiquette. If there’s such a thing, they they just were coming in and and experiencing it as they wanted to experience. Anyway, we did the concert. The kids were amazing, the CSO players were extraordinary, and we bowed at the end and we did. They brought out flowers and all. Everyone was standing up and then we walked off the stage and just as we got to the wings of the stage, so myself and the head of the conservatorium, the composer as well, just as we got to the edge, the clapping was still going. But I heard this sound. I went, what’s happening? And it almost sounded like someone yelling. And I was like, oh my goodness, what’s happening? Like I was very like, adrenaline was running. It was like, yeah, I made this thing work. But I heard this yelling what I thought was yelling, and I turned right around. And this father at the front had stood up, and he he had stood up, and he was very straight and extremely strong posture.
Anita Collins: [00:49:22] And what he actually started doing was a haka. So if you a hacker is what, um, the only place you may have seen it is in rugby games where the New Zealand team will do a haka, which is a very strong, very shouty kind of chant, which is actually daring. They look straight at the the other team and they kind of go, we are warriors, you know, we’re daring you to take us on. It’s got very spiritual apps, very moving experience. And he started doing this. So imagine again, concert hall, front row kids on stage. I’m going again. It’s not it’s not right within. It’s not within the etiquette of what you would usually do. You’d clap, clap, clap. Lights would go up and then you would leave the room. Yeah. Anyway, everyone did exactly the right thing, which is everyone stopped and we actually walked back out and we watched this man. Because what you what is really important to do is honor what he’s doing. Because what he was doing was in the only way he knew how, and the deepest way he knew how is to say thank you. Thank you for what you have done for my son and his son.
Anita Collins: [00:50:27] Oh my God was bright red, but his son was in the second seat and you could see him going, I know my dad’s doing this. I love my dad, but I’m really embarrassed right now. But what I was so proud of is that the whole audience had started to get up and stuff, and they had stopped, and they’d either stood still or they sat back down and they just let this man finish. It takes sort of 90s to do a proper haka. Um, and they, they sat still and they had finished and then he just stopped. And there was this moment of actually, I don’t know how to react in this, like how to react. And then basically all of us just started yelling and clapping and thanking him visually. And he was so moved he was crying as he did it and I had a chat to him. I went down straight away afterwards and I said, thank you so much for doing that. It’s so powerful that you you did that for us and that you showed us your art and and your thanks to us. Um, and he really couldn’t talk. He just ugly crying. Very much so.
Anita Collins: [00:51:33] And he just said, I can’t believe what you’ve done for my son. And he really felt it deeply because he said, I haven’t done enough for him, and you’ve done something for him. And it was so deep and so important for him to do it. And I think why it sticks with me is it was emotionally powerful. But it also said to me, we’ve got all these set up rules around how something should go, whereas actually the power of music and the power of music learning can bust all of those open and can change people’s lives. And that’s why we do it. And that experience, every time I see the hacker on TV as well, I still I go straight back to that moment and seeing this man and being so moved.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai