After 25 years of teaching, Jill still thought she was in a “pretend job” – here’s what changed
I’ve spoken to hundreds of teachers over the years.
I’ve had insightful conversations and discussions about pedagogy, business, and the life of a piano teacher.
But there was something about my chat with Jill King that stayed with me for a long time afterwards.
She put into words something I think a huge number of private music teachers feel but hardly ever say out loud.
She said she thought running her studio was a “pretend job.”
Jill had been a classroom teacher for 25 years and is extremely passionate about music education.
But she’d been consumed by the judgmental question, “When are you getting a real job?”
Jill is a piano teacher based in Sydney.
She trained as a classroom music teacher and spent most of her career in schools – private teaching was always the side gig.
But then her life changed, and she needed more flexibility.
She asked herself:
What if piano teaching was my main thing?
But she still had that niggling voice telling her no.
She’d built her studio through word of mouth – connections from her school. The lack of a website, marketing, or clear policies didn’t help with the feeling she was just playing at being a teacher.
And on top of that, she’d just started as the on-site piano teacher at a Sydney private school, taking on 30 transfer students she’d never met.
Three of them were preparing for Grade 7 and 8 AMEB exams. The highest level Jill had ever taught was grade 5.
I was absolutely terrified. I just felt so out of my depth. I spent an evening of highly panicked Googling. That’s when I found TopMusic.
Her Googling led to her discovering a TopMusic course for teachers working with advanced students.
Jill started it the same night, and began to realise how much support was available to her.
When she saw the 12-Week Studio Transformation, she knew straight away it was what she needed.
A lot of teachers wonder how the program works, so I asked Jill to explain it in her words:
It’s one hour on Zoom each week, split across time zones so teachers from Australia, the US, Europe and beyond can all join.
Everything’s recorded, so if life gets in the way (and with a daughter doing Year 12 at the same time, life was certainly busy for me) you don’t fall behind.
The program works through what we call the PRESTO framework:
Pedagogy, Repertoire, Educational Journey, Studio Setup, Technique, and Outreach.
Rather than spending three weeks on one area and moving on, we weave between all six across the full 12 weeks, revisiting and going deeper each time.
It kept the topics all alive in my mind at once. You’d go in a bit deeper one week, brush the surface the next, then revisit. It just helped the transformation happen organically.
There’s also a private forum for each cohort where questions get answered, ideas get shared, and teachers learn as much from each other as from the weekly sessions.
It was in the forum that I found out how to set up lessons for online teaching – I asked around and other participants were able to help me out.
Homework is split into core (roughly an hour to 90 minutes a week) and optional. If life got in the way of the optional stuff, you didn’t feel bad about it.
After the 12 weeks, Jill grew her studio from 35 students to 50, which was the target she set herself.
Her extra income covered the cost of program within a month.
She launched online teaching, something she’d wanted to do for years but hadn’t known where to start.
She now has a wait list for students from rural communities.
Using what she learnt from the program, she built a website, a marketing plan, and a studio policy she describes as “life-changing.”
She’s a self-confessed people pleaser who used to run herself ragged trying to keep every family happy – having a clear policy has helped more than she ever imagined.
She feels braver in difficult conversations with parents (again, as a people pleaser, she hated telling them no, but now feels stronger and more confident to stand her ground)
There are no more worries about teaching advanced students.
Her studio is future-proofed if she needs to move towns to be closer to family.
But the thing that’s stood out the most for her:
The thing you can’t put a price on is how much more confident I am. I actually feel like I’m doing a real job — whereas before, I just felt like I was doing a pretend job. That whole way of thinking, ‘it’s not really a career,’ it’s just completely turned around.
I want to highlight something else Jill said that I think is one of the biggest things that stops teachers from exploring the 12-Week Studio Transformation.
She admitted she was nervous about the phrase “grow your studio” – she didn’t want to be inundated with enquiries.
But midway through the program, she realised:
Growing your studio might just mean giving a richer experience to the students you already have. Or learning to run buddy lessons. Or getting better at admin so your work-life balance improves. It doesn’t mean you have two students and want 20
In her cohort, Jill was working alongside a teacher just starting her first home studio in Ireland, a veteran teacher from England, and an exhausted teacher in US. They were all at different stages in their journeys and they all had different goals.
And each one got what they needed out of the program.
While Jill’s story is unique to her, I know many teachers can relate.
Especially to the feeling that what you do is undervalued and seen as a “pretend” job.
If you’ve ever felt that way, I highly recommend listening to Jill’s episode of the TopCast.
She’s living proof you can make the shift from imposter syndrome to proud teacher.
