Why some singing lessons change your life and others break you

What if the teacher-student relationship in a singing lesson is not just the backdrop to vocal training, but the engine that shapes confidence, motivation, wellbeing and even performance anxiety?

In Season 12 Episode 7 of This Is A Voice, we’re joined by Michelle Robinson (singer, psychologist and researcher) to explore what the research says about relationship quality in one-to-one music teaching, and why it can determine whether learning feels safe and survivable, or tense and threatening.

We talk about:
Why the teacher–student relationship is mutually influential (it’s not one-way)
The three core ingredients of healthy learning relationships: Closeness, Commitment, Complementarity
How relationship quality links to motivation, autonomy, and wellbeing
The master–apprentice tradition, where it helps, where it can harm
What “good teaching” looks like in micro-behaviours, not slogans
Repairing ruptures, rebuilding trust, and creating studios where singers can truly sound like themselves

This one is for singers, vocal coaches, singing teachers, choral directors and people who cares about high standards without fear-based training.

00:00 – Why relationships matters more than we admit
01:34 – Meet Michelle: singer → psychologist → researcher
06:37 – “The relationship is mutually interdependent”, what that really means
08:26 – What does the teacher need?
10:48 – Jeremy’s hard lesson about different energies
17:51 – TWO humans in the room
24:30 – The 3 pillars: closeness, commitment, complementarity
29:02 – When “closeness” becomes unhealthy (blurred boundaries)
31:34 – IS there an inherent power dynamic?
33:09 – Students and safeguarding

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Transcript

Jeremy and Gillyanne: This is a voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher. This Is A Voice. Hello and welcome to This Is A Voice, season 12, episode 7, the podcast where we get Vocal about voice. I'm Jeremy Fisher. And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes. And in the last two episodes, The Recording Never Played, and Singer Interrupted, we've been looking back on our own early training and how the experiences can stick with you for years. Mm-hmm. Not just what you were taught, but how you felt about it. And we kept landing on the same thing. It wasn't just the teaching style or the knowledge, it was the relationship. So today we're going a step further. What if that one-to-one teacher-student relationship isn't just a nice extra or a bit of atmosphere about the learning? What if it's the main event? What if it's the mechanism that shapes your learning, your identity, your motivation, and even your wellbeing? To explore that we are very happy to have psychologist and researcher Michelle Robinson with us.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: She brings ideas from sports psychology and looks at how relational quality affects both performance and honestly whether people thrive in music education or not. Big topic. Michelle, you are so welcome. Hi Michelle. I'm delighted to have you.

Michelle Robinson: Thank you for having me. As a researcher who's been kind of looking at this for the last two years, I feel like I've been allowed out of the uh, of the tower. Ready to unleash my ideas.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Yes. And we first met you in, in the pandemic years, didn't we? We did. You came on one or two of our courses. And I'm really curious to know, because I know you trained as a classical singer and you have a background in choir conducting as well, I think. And then you became a psychologist.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: So just thinking about what it's been like for you being in the studio as a teacher, as a singer, and then as a guide, what's taken you into research?

Michelle Robinson: To be honest everything I've done in my career traces back to my experience at Music College. So as a state educated, isn't singing lovely, don't you have a wonderful voice, type background? I spent four years feeling like a complete fish out of water. I didn't fully understand the culture.

Michelle Robinson: I, I definitely didn't understand the unspoken rules 

Michelle Robinson: um, are so many of them. Aren't there? Aren't there? Yeah.

Michelle Robinson: And and what was valued. And essentially it had a real detrimental effect on me. But what it did do was grow this conviction that I had instilled in me from this, my wonderful teacher from home Shirley Court that high quality music making shouldn't be reserved for people who already fit the system.

Michelle Robinson: If someone's willing to work and they're supported in the right way, those experiences should be available to them. So I guess through both my own experience and later in my work, I've just found that music education, even with the best will in the world, doesn't create the conditions for people to actually find out who they are and thrive.

Michelle Robinson: And not just as musicians, but as people. So yeah and it's taken a long time and it took the pandemic uh, to realize that becoming a psychologist has given me the skills to kind of articulate these issues in a more informed way and start to look at having a role in resolving them.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: I love that. Me too. Right up front here we have inclusivity. Yep. And we've talked a lot in the past when we've talked about teaching that certainly when I was training as a singing teacher when I was training as a singer, sorry. Most people who went for singing lessons could already sing.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Yep. They could already pitch match. They maybe already had some kind of perceived talent for what of want of a better word. And then of course their parents could pay for music lessons. And those are the people who are in there, who have the maybe equally strong passion and ability get excluded.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: And I think what you're also saying is not, maybe not only in the one-to-one unspoken culture, which was really strong when I was training, but in this sort of, you know, the formal music education culture because of the way we assess people and all of that.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Am I guessing right? This is where you went? Yep.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. 

Michelle Robinson: The whole kind of. Oh, that's probably another podcast. but you know, The whole kind of grade system in which, you know this is correct, this is right. This is what good looks like. Where there room for imagination and passion and communication.

Michelle Robinson: Uh, Don't know.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Yeah. Plus what we conceptualize as good is always contextualized.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: So it could be contextualized within the framework of western classical music, or it could be popular music practice, which is much more I would say there's much more leeway.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: And then when you get into musical theater, it's all about the industry.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: The industry.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: But there's something really interesting, and this is whether you are whatever brand of music you're working in, is that tastes change. And the really fascinating thing about being a teacher is are your tastes changing with them, or do you just stick with what you already know and what your teacher told you, which was 15 years in the past. And I think that's also fascinating is the realization that tastes change all the time.

Michelle Robinson: Uh, well, and, And even more nuanced than that, are your tastes changing with the particular student you are working with? What are their tastes? What really floats their boat? And that might be different from one lesson with one student to the next lesson with the other student.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Yes, absolutely. So you are talking about communication and communication through the medium of music and voice, and I think what you're saying is that sometimes the way that we educate people, particularly in a formal setting, that bit gets left out and that is something that an individual needs to be fostered to develop. Do you think? Is Yeah.

Michelle Robinson: Yeah. Getting into the nitty gritty of it, if you like, let's just jump straight in,

Michelle Robinson: If we take the idea that a relationship is mutually and causally interdependent, it really challenges how we've traditionally thought about teaching. So in music we know we come from a master apprentice tradition, and I know you are extremely interested in this, and so we can frame that as, as largely kind of teacher centered.

Michelle Robinson: So more recently there's been a shift towards student centered which is a step forward, but it still doesn't quite get us there. Because when we focus only on the student, two things happen. First, we remove any real consideration of what the teacher needs to function well.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. 

Michelle Robinson: And secondly, and more importantly, we miss the fact that something is being created between the two people in the room.

Michelle Robinson: So I, and I think this is the bit that we don't think about and should think about and caveat, it's not to say that it's not happening. I think it is happening. I think people do these things innately,

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. 

Michelle Robinson: but I think thinking about them in a more explicit way can only be help. More helpful. I tend to think of the relationship as the bit that happens in between the teacher and the student, like this kind of exciting co-created space.

Michelle Robinson: So it's not just what the teacher brings and what the student needs, it's what the teacher brings and needs, and it's what the student brings and needs and how those interact.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: I want to dig into this because you said Me too. You've said something that I didn't I don't understand, so I want you to break it down for me. What does the teacher need?

Michelle Robinson: Oh gosh. Right? So if we don't think of them instead of as teacher and student, let's think of them as two human beings in the room. Great. Then a teacher needs to enjoy their work. They need to feel that they're competent at their work. And they need to feel a connection with the person in the room. And actually I'm bringing a psychological theory that I absolutely love, which is called self-determination theory, which we can dig into.

Michelle Robinson: But to answer your question a teacher needs to feel those things in order to enjoy what they do, to be the best they can be, and for good wellbeing as well. And a student can help bring that out. We, you all know when you've worked with a student who you find really difficult, who doesn't open up, you just can't get them to understand what you're saying.

Michelle Robinson: You leave those lessons exhausted, and it's working on that because a teacher's got to thrive as well as a student.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: I love this. And as that's why we do what we do. Because you are completely right because we work in a profession where we're often isolated from each other, even within institutional educations. We don't come out of our little silos, our little practice rooms. So we don't get that collaboration with other teachers. But also, I mean, we've been digging into the nervous system, looking at insights from polyvagal theory. And teachers need to be. Be aware of their own nervous system and their own self-regulation before they start a lesson. And, I would love for time tabling, for example, just in a really practical way to allow teachers 10 minutes between back to back classes so that if they've had that student who's been terribly stressed because they can't get it right and they keep going at it and they're not really allowing themselves to explore and be curious that the teacher's able to decompress so they can truly welcome in the next person for their lesson and be present for them. You talk about this a lot, don't you, about diffusing different energies. Do you want to just say a moment about that? 'cause I think you'll relate, say something about it. 'cause I think you relate to Michelle's, I'm assuming you're talking about ending one lesson and starting the next.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: I am, yes. Yeah, I thought you were. Okay. So I took me years to learn this that I would get, we would ha I would have a lesson with somebody and we would get to a really great place. It was really exciting. They would achieve something and I would, everyone would be on a high, it would be really great. And then they'd leave the room and the next person would come in and I would carry that energy over and say, hi, it's been really great.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: How are you? And and I that no way were they ready for that sort of energy. Mm-hmm. And it took me ages to work out that what I had to do was to reset myself in order to meet them where they were. And when I did that, getting them. To a place where they could experiment and expand and, discover all sorts of things became much faster because I wasn't hitting them with a barrage of energy when they walked in the room.

Michelle Robinson: That's re Yeah, that's really interesting because I'm in the process of analyzing a lot of re a lot of data from my focus groups. So I can't go into too much, but what I will say is, the one thing that came out particularly with the students was we talked about this idea of mood matching and they said it was really important that they felt that their teacher, if they went in a kind of bad mood, they didn't want their teacher to match that but to just be above them to help bring them up and into that space.

Michelle Robinson: And that. And if they felt their teacher was passionate and enthusiastic, they felt that really impacted on them as well. So I guess it's, we are talking about the same thing and yeah, that those energy levels are so important because I think, again. What and these are the things I'm wanting to talk about that I don't think we do talk about this idea of, are we aware that all the time we are reading people's emotions?

Michelle Robinson: So a student is, if you are having a bad day or whatever and you know you've got your mind's on something else, a student is internalizing that, what have I done wrong? Why are they not okay? Oh, they seem really grumpy. What? Oh, it must be me. And it's not that you've got to go in there and put on this mask of everything's great actually.

Michelle Robinson: It's more that you can be more open and have conversations tell them what's going on with you. No, it doesn't need to be in any great detail. I'm not talking about not having boundaries but saying how you are feeling, that's important. And I will say I've done my research with students who are 16 plus.

Michelle Robinson: I think that's important to say. I think things might be slightly different the younger the student gets, but certainly that aid above, you are a, I keep coming back to this. You are a human being. They are allowed to see you as such.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: So interesting. 'cause in a way that feels like a hangover from you are the expert and therefore you must always be this person and you must always be in this mood and you must always do this. I think that's a really fascinating thing and it's, you are right. It is one of the hidden things that you don't realize that exactly how you communicate and what emotion you are portraying and what the vibe is when somebody else walks in the room is they're gonna pick up on it.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: I think it's a huge stress for teachers as well. Teachers have a really high sense of responsibility. They want their students to to do well. They want to teach them well. And I think if they can give themselves that little bit of slack, it will really help.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: I mean, there's, There's two things that came up from what you said.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: First of all. Um, One of them is about rapport, which as you know, is mentioned quite a lot in the literature. And years ago we stumbled on a framework for rapport. I think we were both doing it anyway, which was using NLP,

Michelle Robinson: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: which I know, some people are skeptical about the value of NLP, for instance, in psychotherapy. But in terms of learning to match the mood of the singer when they come in, and then maybe gently being able to lead them to a more uplifted place I think rapport is enormously useful. And we learned a lot of those techniques, didn't we? Mm-hmm. Yeah. From our from an NLP practitioner and where I wanted to go with this, which is a bit referring to us, I dunno if you remember we talk about what do you see? What do you hear and what does the student tell you? Now, this might not be verbal at all. Mm-hmm. And what we tend to deal with, of course, is what we hear, because that's our job. we have these amazing abilities to understand what's going on acoustically and work with that. But there are other hidden cues that I think well, we all need, you know, none of us is we're not dealing with therapy here because we, most of us aren't psychotherapists either.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Yep. So that's the other side. Okay. How do we create that rapport? How do we, develop that what you call relationality, which I love. And how do we do it without going into Therapizing? There's a big set of questions

Michelle Robinson: That's a huge, I mean, that's sort of my PhD

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Yeah. Good. There you go. And go.

Michelle Robinson: so let me deal with rapport first of all. So yes there's lots of um, well I say lots. There is more stuff in the literature about rapport than anything else in terms of thinking about relationship, and I think it's absolutely valid. Um. But I don't think it is, I don't think it speaks to the whole relationship.

Michelle Robinson: I think it is part of the relationship. Okay. And I think we get a bit hung up on rapport in terms of, if we get on well, then it'll, everything else will work. And I think this is where we need to dig a bit deeper. So you talk about hear, hearing the student, seeing the student, and what does the student tell you?

Michelle Robinson: Abs absolutely. I couldn't agree, but I find it interesting that you also talk about the nonverbal. And Yes. Okay. The nonverbal is absolutely important, but that also means that then a teacher has to be a mind reader

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Good point. Very good point.

Michelle Robinson: how you interpret a nonverbal gesture is, might not be how the student.

Michelle Robinson: Inferring it, because we all do things, we're all have our own idiosyncrasies. So just thinking how to answer this. So right, let's start from the beginning. So firstly, and you, because you also mentioned that teachers have so much responsibility on them and I would argue that especially the teachers you are working with, they really care about their students achieving and making the most of their potential, in terms of the themselves as singers.

Michelle Robinson: So you, I know you talk about the singer in the room, so I would challenge you, and there, there is a theme in what I'm talking about. But I would challenge you to take that further and change it to the human in the room,

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Love it.

Michelle Robinson: or even, it's not as catchy, but the two humans in the room.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michelle Robinson: Really it, it, teachers and students aren't aware of how much the student can shape the studio.

Michelle Robinson: And that's not a, that's not a judgment, that's just culture. Teachers, as I said before, teachers are trained to be like the consummate professional, the stable expert. And students are taught, particularly in our education system, to be passive and to get on with doing what they're told. That good student is the one that kind of gets their head down, gets on does what they're told brilliantly.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Mm-hmm.

Michelle Robinson: But as you talk about, studios are like responsive ecosystems, you know, and a confident student can come in with all these ideas and that draws out that teacher's playfulness and creativity. They, that where they spark off each other. That's this bit I talk about in the middle.

Michelle Robinson: Then an anxious student can come in and that can trigger this idea of a teacher's rescuing or need to control,

Michelle Robinson: When they're that oh, this person isn't all right, I've gotta make them all right. Gosh, what responsibility? Whereas a student who you can encourage and it's not easy to encourage, to advocate for their own needs and express their thoughts about anything that you are doing with them or any repertoire or any kind of feeling with their voice.

Michelle Robinson: They give you such insights. They give you such clues into how to work with them and also what wonderful discussion and collaboration. And what's interesting, again, from my research, what I'm finding is the teachers are so passionate about wanting to help their students achieve. In their voice or in their instrument.

Michelle Robinson: The students, they want to be just seen as people, that whole person, not just themselves as a musician.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Ooh, that's interesting.

Michelle Robinson: Yeah.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Yeah. But it, if you think about what voice is, we can't separate voice from the person. We give voice to feelings, beliefs it's all those of us who are verbal and able to use the physiological instrument of the voice for speaking or singing. It's a core aspect of human expression. There is, there's a very interesting dichotomy then that goes on, which is if, and I want to come to the role of the singing teacher, what's the job? And obviously the job changes every time a new student walks in, but there is a general job, which is that you need to improve something to do with voice or something to do with performance or something to do with you.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Basically what you have to do is identify goals or allow them to enjoy themselves. Yeah. Yes. I think what's so interesting then is that you have a problem if you like, which is, am I going to do something to help improve the voice? Am I gonna do something to improve the context that voice is working in?

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Or am I gonna do something to improve that person's connection with their own being? This is then they're all very different. For me. Those are different. Look at her face. Look at her face.

Michelle Robinson: I, no, I'm just it's my thinking face. I don't think they are different.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Okay.

Michelle Robinson: So if we go with the. Idea that a relationship, you said in the introduction it, the relationship is foundational.

Michelle Robinson: It's a mechanism by which to do the things you need to do as a teacher. So in, in that relationship you are creating together, and I keep coming back. It's the responsibility of the teacher and the student.

Michelle Robinson: You are creating an environment which feels safe, which feels open. Both respect the other, this is the ideal. Both trust each other. By focusing on that and by, and by making that relationship foundational, you are then creating an environment by which to do all the things you need to try and do to improve the voice or to improve the performance.

Michelle Robinson: By creating that relationship or focusing on that relationship, you've made sure that you are both on the same page. That you are both sharing the same goals. That you know why that teacher is why you as a teacher are doing something. The student knows the point of it. It's that idea of do this, no, that's wrong, as a opposed to, let's try this to see if we can achieve this. How does that feel? What does that feel like to you? What is it reminding you of what you know that, that kind of thing. So I feel like those conversations are the things that build the relationship, it's that openness. And I wonder if, and I wonder if now's a good time to bring in the definition that I'm using of relationship?

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Sure. 

Michelle Robinson: yeah.

Michelle Robinson: This is what I think is missing certainly in the literature. And is this idea, this real understanding of what a relationship is. And you've mentioned rapport and that is, that is one part of it. But what I'm wanting to bring, which is from sports psychology, a fantastic researcher called Sophia Jowett, who has spent 25 years looking at the coach-athlete relationship and has interviewed hundreds of coaches and athletes and surveyed thousands of them.

Michelle Robinson: And there is. Huge amounts of research now that is showing that a high quality coach-athlete relationship positively impacts on performance and wellbeing.

Michelle Robinson: Lots and lots of research and there's all sorts of things that affect it. But that's the kind of headline. So if we think and, and so I'm wanting to bring that to music because it's not currently there and I think we actually shy away from talking about relationship.

Michelle Robinson: So if we think of the relationship as something where the teacher's and the student's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are constantly influencing each other over time, then we can break that down. And there are four key areas, 'cause it's called the three plus one Cs. Um, Which is why I think the words are sometimes not, not the most descriptive because they 

Jeremy and Gillyanne: The Cs 

Michelle Robinson: The Cs. So the first one we've got is closeness. So closeness is the emotional side. Do we trust and respect each other? Do we support each other and feel the other genuinely cares about us? And do we like and appreciate each other? Then there's commitment, which is the thinking side.

Michelle Robinson: Are we both invested in this relationship? Do we know the other is invested in this relationship? Are we prepared to stick with it over time even when things are slow or difficult? Because we both believe in what we're working towards. Then you've got complementarity and I think this is an interesting one.

Michelle Robinson: It's the behavioral side. So do we actually work well together in practice? Do we know what our roles are in the room? Do we know that the student is bringing information on themselves that they have to communicate to their teacher, for their teacher to bring the expertise on the voice and on the repertoire?

Michelle Robinson: And that's where the thing in the middle happens. In a singing lesson, like I say, that teacher brings that expertise in technique but the student is bringing the insight into how that it feels, how they learn, what works for them, and then together they work out how to move forward.

Michelle Robinson: So it's not about letting the student choose everything. That's, and again, that could be construed as student centered, but it's about how those roles interact. For example, a structure of a lesson a teacher might do, might structure their lesson in a way that they've always structured their lesson, but does the student understand why they structure it like 

Michelle Robinson: Does it work for the student? Structuring it like that? Doing all the kind of, does the student need to do the, I know you talk about with warmup is that you pull bits out of the, out of the repertoire, but rather than doing all those at the beginning, does a student actually to make it connect, need to do it at the beginning of each repertoire each song? So yeah it's finding that middle ground or that way that it works for both of them. And then the kind of plus one C is co-orientation, and this is about shared understanding. Do we know how that other person feels? Do we have the same goals? And crucially, is that accurate?

Michelle Robinson: To me, if a teacher and student haven't had a really in-depth conversation about why a student is doing this, why are they coming to lessons, I call it their North star, what is their North star? What really floats their boat? And then a teacher really having that in mind all the while that they're working with them.

Michelle Robinson: Is it that somebody wants to go and use their voice in the community? Because actually that's, they get that connection with people and that's really important to them. Or is it that they want to go and perform on the stage and because that, that having that impact as a performer is what it means to them.

Michelle Robinson: Do we re because then when we dig into that, we really start to get to know them.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. I love this and I will say, I'm gonna stand up in public online and say that's what we get our teachers to do. Yeah. Because sometimes, we get to a point towards the end of the 12 month training where we talk about values. Values of the teacher and how those show up in the lesson. And then we ask the teachers to analyze their current student intake. In terms of, we're looking at, people maybe want to improve a bit. They're high flyers, they just want to come and have fun. That's, we just framed it very simply. And then the teachers look at that and then we say, okay, are these people that you really wanna work with? Because if you don't, there are other teachers out there for them. And actually this really impacts on our business models, I have to say, because a lot of teachers feel they've got to teach every comer. And not every teacher wants to work with someone who, for example, just wants to go and have fun in karaoke and do their best there, which is a perfectly viable goal. I am going to I have, you're gonna do devil's advocate? I can see it a little bit, yes.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Okay. So the first thing is, and this is in a way, it's a positive because what you are describing is a marriage. It's like good marriages have all of those things.

Michelle Robinson: What I'm describing is a relationship

Michelle Robinson: and a relationship takes many forms

Michelle Robinson: and I get a little bit prickly when you say the word

Michelle Robinson: marriage.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Good. Yep.

Michelle Robinson: Because what concerns me is given the history of our profession and the the abuse cases that we are all aware of,

Michelle Robinson: I, I just feel like we need to be quite clear that you can have a working relationship that involves these things that is different to a relationship that is about love and trust and something deeper.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Good. I'm glad you said that because that was where I was going next. So in a way, it almost feels like there's a hidden bit, which is about boundaries.

Michelle Robinson: Mm-hmm.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Because I'm hearing you and I put a lot of what you're talking about into practice with my own people anyway. And there is a thing about boundaries, which is there are boundaries that you do not cross.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. And there are boundaries that your student does not cross, and you don't allow your student to cross them. And so with that caveat, I'm fully with you. And here's a thought, Michelle, because obviously you've raised the flag about cases of abuse and it's not necessarily a case of, what would be considered criminal abuse, 

Jeremy and Gillyanne: but, instances of perhaps teachers being cruel,

Jeremy and Gillyanne: unfair, abusive in the way that they speak to their students which is actually still going on according to the press. But where was I going with this?

Jeremy and Gillyanne: I'm gonna come back to, 'cause I wanna help you out here. Thank you. I'm gonna come back to what's a teacher's job, and I am with you on everything that you've said and there is still the job of the teacher because ultimately in most circumstances, not all the teacher is still the person with more knowledge than the student.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Mm-hmm. And therefore, with knowledge comes responsibility. So the teacher has more responsibility to guide the relationship than the student does. So there, I think what he's saying is there is an inherent power dynamic. I know some people won't like to hear this, but there is an inherent power dynamic. Thank you Kim Burwell, for being the person who pointed this out. Yep. In the educative process, so Yeah. 

Michelle Robinson: There absolutely is a power dynamic. And the teacher what, and actually it's not about getting rid of that in inverted commas power because yes, the teacher generally is the guide and has the knowledge on the voice and performance and what have you. Absolutely.

Michelle Robinson: It's how you manage that power.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Yeah. 

Michelle Robinson: And I think this is one of the most important questions that, that I can give an answer to. A high quality relationship is never abusive. It never takes advantage of the power a teacher inadvertently has. Okay. Closeness is about genuinely caring for that student and their wellbeing and their success.

Michelle Robinson: And also for them genuinely caring for you as a teacher, because we know that they do, you make a difference to them, you impact their lives. We know that. The minute a teacher behaves in a way that is detrimental to that student, there is no relationship.

Michelle Robinson: There is a situation of abuse to a greater or lesser extent as you suggest, and it must not be allowed to continue.

Michelle Robinson: But as I say, we know that the student is so influenced by their one-to-one teacher. It is far safer to bring out the idea of closeness into the open, to understand what it looks like. To understand where the boundaries are. And what good practice of closeness looks like than to pretend it doesn't really happen. And this is where safeguarding, as important and necessary as safeguarding, is it can be interpreted in a way of, I must not ask any personal questions of my student because I am overstepping a mark and I mustn't know what's going on in, in their lives or at home, or. Really, so a student turns up having not done what they said they were going down really struggling.

Michelle Robinson: And you think that's just gonna be to do with not practicing enough or not understanding of something. No, of course it's not. It's to do with something that's going on with them that they're really struggling with because they, as a singer you can't sing to the best of your ability while you've got stuff happening.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: And students will come into the room telling you what's been going on this week. They will. And you have to handle that to, to listen, to hold the space for them. And just as you were saying earlier, find a way then, because that can take over a whole lesson in some cases, if you allow it to. To find a way then just to divert and just uplift, to find something, to just move them into a different space.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: I mean, sometimes what I do with someone who's very stressed is I'll say, should we just do a bit of bubbling in water and we just bubble in water, we bubble, and then we go, whew.

Michelle Robinson: Yeah.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Are you ready? Are you ready? to sing now?

Michelle Robinson: yeah. And I think this is where the responsibility on the teachers is so high.

Michelle Robinson: Because as we said earlier, the teachers aren't therapists. And whilst I do think there is an element where you are cre, you are having to and should create a safe space and therefore they will talk to you about things that they might not talk to somebody else about

Michelle Robinson: It It then, and this is where the safeguarding comes in, it then is knowing what you do with that information when it becomes something that's too big for you.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Okay.

Michelle Robinson: And I think in terms of boundaries, that's a really key one.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: Good. So being able to signal on where appropriate or if necessary from what you are telling me, particularly when people are working with minors, maybe there's something going on that actually needs to be raised with a different entity.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: I think there's something that's very interesting about this because it's like you create a safe space that if I, if big emotions happen, they have a space, a safe space to happen in, and you are not phased by them.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: But I think the difference is that you don't deal with them.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: You allow them to happen and then you move on.

Michelle Robinson: Yeah. I think that's right. And I'll be honest, this is the point I've, I've not got to in my research, which is, and that I hope to have by the end is how can you develop that relationship? And there's ideas from sport, but I, but actually I think it's really important to, to make them bespoke to music. And it's what are the things that you can do and how can you work with your student to, to create this high quality relationship. There's a big piece of the jigsaw missing at the minute. But I do think, yeah that, that, that is key.

Michelle Robinson: And, And I think it's, it's another piece of work that we need to do and is starting to happen is what do musicians do when they're not in a good place? Where do they go? And I think as a teacher, having that knowledge and being up to date with that knowledge is really important.

Jeremy and Gillyanne: I am loving having this conversation, but we have to stop 'cause we wanna keep you there. We wanna invite you back so we are gonna invite you back and come and do the next episode with us.

Michelle Robinson: Lovely. 

Jeremy and Gillyanne: We, We'll see you soon. Bye. This is a Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.