A Little About Jordan

Hello!

I'm so excited that you've chosen to start your musical journey here with us, and I'm honored that you would trust me to be your guide as you learn to play the piano. I started this website with the intentions of making piano lessons more accessible to busy adults who always had a musical itch but never the time or money to sign up with a formal teacher. I want you to get as much value out of this space and its content as possible! But perhaps you may like to know a little more about who I am, so let me introduce myself.

Hi! I'm Jordan. At the time of writing this post, my last name is McLaughlin (pronounced mic-LAWF-lin), however in a few short months I will be marrying my fiancé and taking the last name Thomas. We live in Denver, Colorado, and some of my favorite things in the world are music, coffee, and dogs.

Real quick, meet our husky-collie mix (who looks a little like a fox), Kaner. Even at 8 years old he still has lots of energy and talks back whenever he wants to complain about literally anything. While I could easily write this entire post gushing over how much I love my dog (or coffee, for that matter), I'm limiting myself to just a few sentences.

Of course, if you're interested in the short version of my professional resume, you can look at the "Meet the Teacher" page (tab up at the top). But here are some of the specifics to how I got where I am today.

My love for music probably started with my dad. He was a guitar player, and I'm told that before I was old enough to even walk he would lay me down next to him while he strummed his guitar and sang to me. I guess you could say I have had music surrounding me my entire life.

Now what's interesting is that he never put me in guitar lessons as a child. Instead, he decided to start me with piano lessons when I was 7. I still remember as a child I would spend every Saturday morning at 10am in the basement of a local Music Loft with Rosie, the charming old lady who taught my brothers before me.

I stuck with piano lessons for years until I was a freshman in high school when I got curious about other ways to get involved with music. I joined the band and was quickly recruited to the drumline. I discovered the joys of singing in a choir, and the excitement behind performing on stage in both musicals and competitive show choirs.

Even though I had stopped taking piano lessons with Rosie during high school, I never stopped learning new music on my own. Some of my favorite things to play back then were ragtime pieces by Scott Joplin. They were fun, energetic, and almost always played too fast!

After high school, I knew I had to continue with music at a professional level, but the reality of needing an income and marketable skills soon came into focus. College was too expensive for my family to afford, so I started small by studying music at a local community college in Iowa called Kirkwood. At the time, I had no idea Kirkwood had such a respected music program among not only community colleges but 4-year universities the world over.

I began studying both the piano and vocal music while there. I wasn't sure who would hire me to play the piano, so the plan was to become a high school choir teacher and give my future students the same incredible experience I had as a teenager.

After finishing my first two years at Kirkwood I auditioned for a scholarship to transfer to a 4-year college. There was a lot of competition for this scholarship because it was for a full-ride to any student pursuing a Bachelor of Music. I had no Plan B if I didn't get the scholarship and even state universities were too expensive for me to continue school. But fate must have been shining down on me because I was fortunate enough to be awarded that scholarship and finish my degree. This was not only the validation I needed to know I was doing the right thing at the right time in my life, but it allowed me to pursue music at a high level.

I followed my plan to a T. I was hired on at Bettendorf High School to teach choir to a large program already established before me. Now don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed my years teaching at that high school. I had some incredible students, and I learned a lot about how to be a good educator. Believe it or not, most of what I learned to become a good teacher didn't come from any class in college, but instead came from hundreds of hours in a classroom with teenagers whom I was only a little older than at the time.

But I soon realized that public education wasn't a good fit for me. Teaching in a public school is draining hard work. It wasn't unusual for me to work 60+ hours each week lesson planning, engaging students, rehearsing, grading, and competing with my groups around the state. Just trust me when I say that teachers aren't paid enough for their level of commitment.

After two short years, I was burnt out of music. Public education has a way of making it easy to forget why you started in the first place. I knew I couldn't keep burning the candle at both ends and I had to make a change. So I took a complete 180 in my life. I resigned as a teacher, moved to another state with my boyfriend, got my Commercial Driver's License, and started driving a beer truck around Central Nebraska for 3 years.

While Nebraska wasn't my favorite place to live, I appreciate the years I spent living there. I learned a lot about who I am and what's important to me. After a short hiatus from teaching music, I began teaching piano lessons locally in addition to my job driving a truck. It was an interesting combination to juggle for sure.

Of course then the pandemic shut most everything down for a while. And while Nebraska wasn't affected much for too long, we saw an interesting shift to online communities. Now online communities have been a thing since I was a child during the infancy of internet forums and the boom of social media. However now we could see technology catching up with modern ideas to communicate, share ideas, and even have fun. This was important for me to see in my own journey towards building this website.

I should have mentioned earlier that I'm an avid gamer. When I'm trying to relax and disconnect from my professional life as a music teaching truck driver, you can expect to find me tending the flowers on my Animal Crossing island, or saving Hyrule from Calamity Ganon.

During the pandemic shutdown, I spent a lot of time gaming with friends on Twitch. For those who are unfamiliar with the site, Twitch is a streaming platform for professional gamers who build communities around their content. Think of it like watching someone else play video games on the internet with a bunch of other people and a chat box where everyone can interact with the person playing. It's a unique and fun corner of the internet.

I figured if I was already going to spend my free time playing video games, why not stream myself for a while and make some new friends as well? While I never made it big on the saturated platform, I did learn a lot about video content and creating online communities.

As the pandemic was beginning to calm down, we moved to Denver to start a new chapter of our lives. I decided I was ready to jump back into teaching music full-time again and drop the big-rig lifestyle. But I wasn't willing to return to public education unless I wanted to burn myself out again. I wanted to teach music on my own terms.

The piano was my first instrument, and was the thing I felt most passionate about when making music. I knew I wanted to share my love for the instrument with others, and so I began advertising myself all over as a new piano teacher in the area. My schedule quickly filled up, and surprisingly it looked nothing like I expected.

I spent time advertising my services to the local Denver suburbs, anticipating students to come to my home. But people across the US caught wind of me and began asking for online lessons over Zoom! I had never considered what online lessons could look like, but if there was a demand, I was willing to give it a try!

Using the equipment and skills I had acquired from streaming video games on Twitch in combination with my experience and knowledge of teaching the piano, I began selling myself as an online piano teacher servicing anyone in the US. After the pandemic, people were more willing than ever to move online for services like this!

I had figured out how to share my love and passions with other people with little restrictions besides how much time I had in one day. And so I began asking myself, how can I reach even more people? And then the idea of pre-recorded video lessons came to mind. A library where others could access my knowledge and experience regardless of the number of hours in a day. Of course, this would require a self-guided approach, but then I realized how perfect that could be for people who are on a busy schedule!

I began recording the lessons I was already teaching, brushed up my editing skills, learned the basics of web development, and began construction. And now here we are, with more video lessons being recorded each week and a little musical online community which continues to grow every day.

I hope you got the chance to learn a little more about me in this post, and no doubt you'll continue to get to know me better as you go through your own musical journey either with booked lessons over Zoom, in the video library recordings, through weekly blog posts like this, on social media, and eventually the forums to come!

Now I'd like to get to know YOU! Feel free to comment with an introduction of who you are, where you are in the world, things you love, and why you joined this community to learn the piano. And of course, if you have any questions about my own background (or my dog), feel free to ask!

Happy playing!