In this episode of Women in Motion, Lee Kantor talks with Sharon Shaheed, founder of Piano Play Music Systems. Sharon discusses her background in music education and the unique approach of her program, which starts teaching children as young as 19 months and involves parents in the learning process. She highlights the importance of patience, the role of technology, and the benefits of music education for children’s development. Sharon also addresses challenges in music programs and emphasizes community support. Her vision aims to empower children through music, fostering self-confidence, teamwork, and essential life skills.
Sharon Shaheed, the visionary Owner and Founder of “Piano Play Music Systems, Inc.,” is a highly qualified professional. She holds a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Xavier University in New Orleans, LA, and a Master in Music Performance degree from Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, LA. Her teaching career began at Southern Louisiana University, where she introduced innovative group piano classes to undergraduate students while pursuing her master’s degree.
After her graduation, Ms. Shaheed made a significant impact as an elementary music teacher in Tampa, Florida. Her contributions were instrumental in the revision of the Hillsborough County Elementary Music curriculum, leaving an indelible mark on the educational landscape.
In 1987, fueled by a passion for music education, she established Piano Play Music Systems, a pioneering business renowned for its educational piano methodology delivered in a classroom setting. In February 2002, Piano Play Music Systems became an S-Corporation residing in Sherman Oaks, California. In 2017, Ms. Shaheed opened a secondary location in Pasadena, California.
Ms. Shaheed, the creative force behind the “Theory-based” method, is the author and designer of the PPMS Books, which are crafted for teaching group piano classes to children as young as 19 months. Her overarching goal is to impart a quality, comprehensive teaching methodology and educational products that make learning music a joyful and nurturing experience for children.
Connect with Sharon on LinkedIn and follow Piano Play Music Systems on X and Facebook.
Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women In Motion and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women In Motion, we have Sharon Shaheed with Piano Play Music Systems. Welcome.
Sharon Shaheed: Hello. How are you guys doing?
Lee Kantor: We are doing great. I am so excited to learn what you’re up to, tell us about Piano Play Music Systems. How are you serving folks?
Sharon Shaheed: Piano Play Music Systems is a music educational program that starts kids on a journey for learning music at the ages of 19 months on up. What makes us kind of different from other music programs, we also start this journey with parents. So, the journey is not just only with kids, but parents along with their kids are also on this journey to learn music.
Lee Kantor: So, what’s your backstory? Have you always been involved in this line of work?
Sharon Shaheed: You know, it kind of comes through family generational learning. Both my parents were music educational people. They worked in the school system. And my grandmother was actually a music teacher as well for the community. So, it’s kind of like in the background of my life, yes.
Lee Kantor: So, what kind of got you focused in on kids?
Sharon Shaheed: Well, when I came out here to California from Florida, I wanted actually to kind of pursue my first love, which is songwriting and trying to pay for bills in California, which is kind of expensive coming from Florida. So, I got involved with a children’s program that taught music, and it kind of fell from there, kind of saw the curriculum of what they were doing and thought of how could I expand that idea to make it a little bit more nurturing and more enjoyable for kids. So, that’s when I decided to use my songwriting background, my music educational background, and kind of discover and write these books that I did for the children that I would use at Piano Play Music Systems now.
Lee Kantor: So, how did you get your first clients?
Sharon Shaheed: Well, luckily, it kind of happened not expectedly. The program that I was with went bankrupt, and so the clients that I had developed through that program, I just kind of integrated to my program. And from there, we just kind of took off. You know, it kind of went from one group studio and then became my studio, so I didn’t really have to advertise, as you would say, but I still do. But word of mouth from those parents kind of helped me develop my program that I have now.
Lee Kantor: Is there anything different about your program than maybe some of the more traditional educational ways people teach piano and music?
Sharon Shaheed: I think so. I really do think so. One of the things I wanted to bring in was cultural learning. Learning of different cultural songs and making sure kids understood that background. Also, I wanted to focus on having kids to understand how important it is not only to learn music, but to build their character, understanding of self-empowerment, to also work with teamwork, how to work with a team of kids, a team of people, problem solving and stuff, problem solving overall in their learning, and how music can be integrated with their studies and how that works.
Sharon Shaheed: So, my program is built on stories. We tell stories and we have stories that are related to the songs. And then from there, they learn how to not only play, they do ear training, we do theory, and we do performances. And of course, as I said before, when I started, parents are also asked to participate, so they’re learning, too, so they understand what kind of challenges that their kids are going through by the challenges that they have to do in learning music. So, I think that’s what puts us over the differences between other schools, parents have to participate and learn as well.
Lee Kantor: Now, do you find that, like, piano, is that something that anybody could learn if they have the right teacher? Or is it just some people are just kind of musically inclined?
Sharon Shaheed: What I want to erase in everybody’s idea is that everyone’s talented. It’s how you basically introduce it to a person. Everyone has certain disabilities when they’re learning, and some people don’t. I mean, certain people have challenges, and certain people have other areas that they don’t have challenges in. But the challenges other people have become something that another person can appreciate. And another person’s challenges can be appreciated and learned by someone else’s.
Sharon Shaheed: So, everyone has the ability to learn music. They just have to get the patience. That’s is the hardest thing, learning patience through learning anything. Some things don’t come as easy, but if you learn how to do it differently, for instance, in our classes, you don’t just sit at the piano. We play games, physical games where you have to kind of step on the keyboard on the floor, and kind of learn through body movements, body language.
Sharon Shaheed: Singing, we do a lot of singing in class so kids can learn and parents can learn through singing. A lot of people have good ears. A lot of people have can learn music quicker through the ears, and some people don’t learn through the ears. We incorporate ear training.
Sharon Shaheed: So, we do a variety of learning skills so everyone can take their challenges and make them strengths, and their strengths become other people’s challenges. And so, that’s the kind of balance that we really work towards in our learning and our programs.
Lee Kantor: Now, what kind of is the the reason most kids get into music? Is it the parents are saying, “Hey, this is important. We want you to be part of this”? Or the kid is kind of raising their hand and saying, “Hey, I want to learn how to do this.” Is it driven by the child or is it driven by the parent mostly?
Sharon Shaheed: It’s kind of both sometimes. Times have changed so much in terms of the way we view education. I think parents do see piano as being important or music overall being important in children’s lives, whether they can afford it or not. I think they look at it as being a creative aspect of a child’s development. And children look at it as being “I want to learn piano. I want to learn music because it sounds good.” So, it can be both scenarios, both parents wanting the kid or sometimes the kids wanting it themselves.
Sharon Shaheed: But the overall experience is, is that once they get into it, that’s when the challenges come. Do I still want to learn this information that I thought was fun? Or do I still want my child to be creative when it’s really challenging in terms of it’s not just fun and creative, but it involves time, and that sometimes is not always exciting. It’s not a quick learned activity.
Lee Kantor: So, how long does it take an average person to kind of get good enough that they get kind of hooked?
Sharon Shaheed: You know, everything is based on how much you practice. Everything. How good a driver are you? It depends on how much you drive. And even then, how much you pay attention to details. How good of a business person are you? It depends on how much time are you involved in the business and all the aspects of what you’re learning to be better at that business. So, how much you are involved and how much interest you’re involved in, that makes the timing of how a person’s going to develop. It’s not how talented they are. It’s how much time they put into that information that they want to get out of.
Lee Kantor: So, there’s no shortcut on this. Like, it’s one of those things where if you want to be good at it, you better be investing some time into it.
Sharon Shaheed: Yes. And don’t you want to be invested in anything that you want to be good at? How good the job that you do, how much investment do you do? The more investment you do on your job, the more steady you do on your job, the more open you are to learn about the differences and the things that you can create, that’s how good you are.
Sharon Shaheed: And that’s the whole kind of the process of learning this at such a young age is to get the child to understand that you can be good at anything. It’s just are you willing to sacrifice in terms of getting good at? You know, the time, the mental development, the study, the overall mistakes that you do and finding those mistakes are not really mistakes, but they are just growth intervals in your life. So, yes, I think that’s really very important for kids to understand and parents to understand that it’s not an easy thing.
Lee Kantor: Now, in a lot of schools, they’ve been cutting music and art programs, do you find that in the case in California where you’re at, where this kind of in some ways is an opportunity for firms like yours to really help the parents and the children who want to learn music?
Sharon Shaheed: I think they’re cutting the programs because they’re looking at it as being a creative program. And it is also a creative program, but it’s also helping the child in a lot of areas that they are not really focused on. California is very lucky because we do still have music in the schools, but it’s not necessarily a program that they are pushing for every kid to have.
Sharon Shaheed: And so, the financial burden that most parents have to go to private industries like myself is what I’m hoping to change. I think everyone should have the opportunity to have music or have an ability to study music, not for the creative side, but for the approach of education, of learning certain things like to strengthen their attention spans, to organize their task, how to put things in organizational task learning, how to be not so distracted in learning, being able to focus on a lot of things that school kind of tends to have problems with.
Sharon Shaheed: So, using music as a tool to help balance those certain areas and everybody’s learning, and especially kids when they’re in school, I think that’s what the attention should be on why you should have music in school, not only for the musicality of a child, but to help them to learn the difficulties that a lot of kids are having in learning subjects overall.
Lee Kantor: Right. I think that a lot of times we miss out because you can’t kind of quantify it like you can in a math score. This is more of an intangible, but it helps in a lot of ways that it’s harder to measure maybe directly, but I think there’s a tremendous benefit in having a child learn something like music that can spill over into other aspects of their learning day.
Sharon Shaheed: I totally agree with you, totally agree with you. And the more we get into technology and changing that way of learning, kids aren’t having that hands-on opportunity to develop. You know, everything is spontaneously having to learn. They are forgetting the patience that it takes to learn.
Sharon Shaheed: And the good thing about music, you’re not graded on how great you are. You’re pretty much graded on the mistakes that you can learn to fix. That’s how you become good. Like you take a score in math, if you make a mistake in math, that’s your grade. But if you make a mistake in music, the most important thing is how can you fix that mistake and learn from that mistake. So, you’re not necessarily graded on the mistakes you made, but you’re graded on how you can improve those mistakes that you made.
Sharon Shaheed: And I think that’s one of the things that has to be kind of looked upon as being important, building a child’s self-confidence and self-empowerment, not through the mistakes that they make, but generating the idea that mistakes can be good because it’s a learning opportunity to figure out what you did wrong, or how to improve that learning aspect of what you’re trying to do.
Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned technology a little earlier, is there a way that you can leverage technology when you’re teaching the piano?
Sharon Shaheed: Oh, totally. Piano engages in all kind of aspects of defining the strategies, how to depict strategies and understand certain ways of communicating that strategy into making it creative and stuff. We’re working on changing the subject a little bit, but we’re trying to use our music program to change it into an app for kids to learn how to play music through an app. So, which might be a little cheaper and more advantageous for parents to be involved in if they can’t physically come to your location or physically pay for a lot of the things that tends to be a lot of problems.
Sharon Shaheed: But using technology to discover music through an application of an e-learning program that they can kind of at least get started in learning. So, trying to use our program to kind of gear out to try to work certain things that both the kids can use at home or maybe in the school system. So, that’s one of our biggest goals that we’re working on right now, technology, how technology can be used to help kids creatively learn and still have this opportunity to work through their education process.
Lee Kantor: Now, why was it important for you to become part of the WBEC-West community? What were you hoping to get out of it and what have you gotten out of it?
Sharon Shaheed: You know, I tend to be kind of not engaged in learning socially what’s happening with other community businesses and stuff, so being a part of the program now has allowed me to not only get my program out into other communities, other businesses, but to also see how their businesses are being challenged too.
Sharon Shaheed: I think through COVID, I mean, there was a lot of growth in learning about my business and also seeing other businesses struggle, and what are they doing to do to change their businesses and improve their businesses’ awareness. And so, I think that has been the biggest thing, reaching out to the community of businesses run by women, run by different areas in the businesses, different types of businesses, and try to find out their challenges and kind of figure out what their challenges could do to help me improve my problems, too, as well.
Lee Kantor: Now, your business has grown to be one of the largest, I think, privately owned music schools in Southern California. Has there been anything that you can look back to and say, “You know what? That was super rewarding. I know I’m making an impact.”
Sharon Shaheed: You know, when you see your students graduate from high school and go to college and do really well in college and come back and start giving back into the community, I think that’s one of the biggest things that I feel honored to have been a part of. Seeing the changes in the child. Seeing children progress from not knowing how to empower themselves to seeing them empowering themselves, I think that’s one of the biggest reasons why I’m still doing this is because of the fact that I see a lot of good that we do with our programs at Piano Play.
Lee Kantor: So, what do you need more of? How can we help you? Do you need more students? Do you need more school systems to talk to? What could we be doing to help you?
Sharon Shaheed: We always need more students in terms of helping our business financially to grow. But I think the biggest thing is trying to change the mindset of our community to see why music is important, to change it and to have them understand that it’s not only about being creative and talented, because we are all talented in different areas, and to study music is not to develop the creativity of a musicality mentality, but to develop the empowerment of who that person is and how they can use what they have learned in music, and use it and to diverse themselves into anything that they love to do. I think that is the message that I want to bring to the community, that music is very important.
Sharon Shaheed: My program that I teach at Piano Play is possibly the most important program because it starts at such a young age, at 19 months, and that it involves, again, the parents learning that child’s ability to develop while they’re developing with their child, and I think that’s what makes us different.
Sharon Shaheed: So, to get the word out about my program and how it can help the child as well as the parent in learning the importance of their growth, not necessarily the musical growth, that’s going to happen anyway, but just how the child is going to be empowered, feel successful in making mistakes, learning how to work with other kids, being team players, being creative in their own little ways, finding who they are through the process of learning music. So, yeah, I think that’s one of the biggest messages I would like to send out to the community.
Lee Kantor: Now, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what is the website? What’s the best way to connect? Maybe social media?
Sharon Shaheed: Okay. So, we have a website at www.pianoplaymusic.com. You also can email us at info, I-N-F-O, @pianoplaymusic.com. We have a Facebook page at Piano Play Music Facebook page. And you can kind of reach out to get us there, our direct number at our business is 818-789-6110.
Sharon Shaheed: We have a great team of teachers. We have six teachers on staff, including myself, and we have two office managers, and we’ve been in business for over 37 years, so we are pretty well-developed in the community and willing to open our hearts to help anyone to figure out where directions that they would like to go with their child in a music educational setting.
Lee Kantor: Well, Sharon, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Sharon Shaheed: Well, thank you, Lee Kantor, for having me here. Without you, I wouldn’t be able to express myself on how much I love what I do.
Lee Kantor: Well, it definitely comes across. Thank you again.
Sharon Shaheed: Thank you. Thank you, sir.
Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor, we’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.
