Goal-Setting for 2026: Wisdom From Our 2025 Teachers of the Year

Goal-Setting for 2026: Wisdom From Our 2025 Teachers of the Year

As we kick off 2026, goal-setting naturally comes into focus. Yet across disciplines, our 2025 Teachers of the Year remind us that meaningful goals are not rigid checklists or pressure-filled benchmarks. Instead, they are personal, flexible, and deeply connected to growth, curiosity, and joy in learning. Their voices, shared here in their own words, offer a powerful reframe for how students can approach goals in the year ahead.

Growth Over Perfection

“For goal-setting, my biggest guidance whether for my TOTY subject or in general is to focus on goals that are specific, achievable, and rooted in growth rather than perfection.
I encourage students to:

Identify one or two skills they truly want to strengthen.

Break those into small, manageable steps.

Track progress regularly.

Celebrate improvement, not just completion.

Ultimately, I want students to understand that meaningful goals aren’t about being the ‘best’, they’re about becoming better than they were yesterday.”

- 2025 Lessonface Italian Teacher of the Year, Luisa Ardigò

Luisa’s approach captures a recurring theme among our teachers: goals should be motivating, not intimidating. Progress matters more than comparison, and improvement deserves celebration at every stage.

Transferable Skills and Long-Term Engagement

“I encourage students to set goals that are grounded in transferable skills rather than narrowly defined outcomes. Musical theatre training naturally supports this approach because it emphasizes communication, adaptability, and storytelling. I guide students to set goals around consistency, expressive clarity, stylistic understanding, and healthy technique — goals that apply whether they are preparing a role, exploring a new genre, or singing simply for enjoyment. This kind of goal-setting fosters long-term growth and keeps students engaged and motivated across their musical lives.”

- 2025 Lessonface Musical Theatre & Singing Teacher of the Year, Louise Gast

Louise highlights how goals rooted in adaptable skills continue to serve students long after a single performance or project is complete.

Personal, Realistic, and Flexible

“I’ve found that effective goal-setting for double bass students works best when it’s personal, realistic, and intentionally flexible. The bass is a demanding instrument—physically, mentally, and musically—so the goals we set need to support growth without creating pressure that drains the joy out of learning.”

- 2025 Lessonface Double Bass Teacher of the Year, David Jerkovic

David’s insight reinforces the importance of protecting students’ relationship with learning itself, especially when the work is challenging.

Specificity, Habits, and Celebration

“Yes—my advice is to set specific, achievable, and measurable goals. For language learners, that might mean ‘I will hold a 5-minute conversation in Russian by the end of the month’ rather than a vague ‘I want to be fluent.’ I also emphasize building consistent habits over perfection—short, daily practice often leads to more progress than sporadic long sessions. And finally, I encourage students to celebrate every milestone, no matter how small, because progress in language learning is cumulative and incredibly motivating.”

- 2025 Lessonface Russian Teacher of the Year, Helen M.

Here, specificity and consistency become tools for confidence and momentum rather than pressure.

Letting the Journey Lead

“I am not usually a time framed goal oriented teacher as I feel that actually limits creativity and the focus becomes on how fast one can get there instead of enjoying the journey. I feel it is better to identify and work with each student on their goals and let it develop organically according to their ability and passion to learn and play the accordion.

Sometimes, however, this does involve a time frame. A highlight of my teaching career is one student whose primary purpose to learn accordion was so that he could play it at his wedding within a year of starting. He worked hard, did it, and he later told me afterward that ‘Everything went great last night at my debut. The crowd absolutely loved it, and said I killed it! It was the one time of the night everyone was on the dance floor…Everyone was caught up in the moment…One of the greatest days of my life. Thanks for everything. The lessons, the jokes, but most importantly, our friendship. Looking forward to where the future takes us with this wonderful instrument!’

I have noticed though that my students often progress faster than average and I wonder sometimes if my approach to enjoying the process of learning actually speeds up the process of learning because it frees the student to go at their own pace instead of always trying to keep up with a goal.”

- 2025 Lessonface Accordion Teacher of the Year, Jason Fawks

Jason’s reflection underscores a powerful paradox: when pressure is removed, progress often accelerates.

Small, Daily Creative Acts

“The secret to composing a lot of music isn't in spending several hours a day doing it, but in writing for just a few seconds each day.”

- 2025 Lessonface Classical Composition Teacher of the Year, Antonio Gervasoni

This reminder reframes productivity as consistency rather than intensity.

Curiosity and Celebration

“My advice for goal-setting is simple: focus on small, consistent steps, celebrate progress, and always stay curious. The journey is just as important as the outcome.”

- 2025 Lessonface R&B Voice Teacher of the Year, Julieta Pizarro

Julieta’s words echo across disciplines: curiosity sustains motivation long after external rewards fade.

Playing What You Love

“There’s one main goal I have always given my students, and that is to learn an instrument well enough so that you are able to play the songs you enjoy and love.”

- 2025 Lessonface Mountain Dulcimer & Gospel Piano Teacher of the Year, Rhonda Clark

At its heart, goal-setting should reconnect students with why they started in the first place.

Mastery Through Small Tasks

“I think goals for students should be to accomplish the small tasks that your teacher gives you to master. Every time you conquer a task, you've elevated your playing. Over time these elevations turn into really nice playing. It's the mastery of the small steps that is important. That being said, in my studio we keep a running theory checklist for each student, where we circulate through scales, chords and exercises, and keep track of what we've done.”

- 2025 Lessonface Jazz Piano, Piano Composition, and Keyboard Teacher of the Year, Beverly Cashin

Incremental mastery, tracked over time, builds both skill and confidence.

Goals Shaped by Individual Ambition

“Goals depend on each student’s ambitions. For those pursuing singing as a potential career, I encourage challenging, performance-oriented goals where pressure and competition help build skill and resilience. For students singing primarily for personal growth or enjoyment, smaller milestones — like awards for participation or mastering a piece — can be just as meaningful. In all cases, the focus is on consistent practice, musical development, and personal fulfillment, tailored to the individual.”

- 2025 Lessonface Opera and Classical Voice Teacher of the Year, Denise Bayraktar

Denise reminds us that one size never fits all when it comes to goals.

Goals as Invitations, Not Constraints

“I encourage students to think of goals as invitations rather than pressure, and to stay oriented toward process rather than outcomes. Writing regularly can be helpful, not as a way of tracking progress, but as a way of keeping the creative channel open and familiar.

I’ve also come to hold the idea of ‘finishing’ much more lightly. I’ve revisited songs I once considered complete and discovered there was still more they wanted to say, or a different way they wanted to land. Treating songs as living works — more like wet clay than sealed containers — keeps the process flexible and alive. Each return to the work becomes another chance to listen, respond, and let the song continue to reveal itself.

Where things tend to go off track is when creativity gets pulled into frameworks that emphasize measurement, comparison, or constant evaluation. Those approaches can be useful in some contexts, but they often miss the mark in songwriting, where curiosity, responsiveness, and imaginative openness are what actually keep the work alive. For me, the most useful ‘goals’ are the ones that open things up rather than trying to contain or measure them. When goals are approached in that spirit, they’re more likely to nurture progress than trigger frustration or a sense of failure.”

- 2025 Lessonface Songwriting Teacher of the Year, Sean Shea

Sean’s perspective offers a fitting close: goals are most powerful when they create space rather than limits.

Looking Ahead to 2026

Together, these voices paint a clear picture for 2026. Effective goal-setting is not about speed, comparison, or perfection. It’s about consistency, curiosity, personalization, and joy. Whether goals are concrete or open-ended, time-bound or organic, they work best when they support the learner as a whole, and keep the love of learning alive.

Wherever your goals take you in 2026, Lessonface is here to support the journey. Start learning today and build skills at your own pace with expert teachers who care about how you grow.