Shannon Coates - Voice & The Art of Teaching

07/29/2026

Current status: SUPER OOO until circa 10 August.

I will not be posting regular updates because you do not need to see 47 pictures of sunsets, beaches, books, beverages, and my feet beside a body of water.




After that: MID-OOO until 25 August.

Which means: available-ish, but still operating on Canadian Summer Rules.

Because it will still be summer here, and summers in Canada are PRECIOUS, my guy.

BUT ALSO! The Summer VoicePed Sale is ongoing with
➡️ $200 off the VoicePed 101 Library Yearly Subscriptions until 15 August (automatically applied at checkout).
➡️ 50% off all VoicePed consults until 31 August (with code SUMMER50)

See you occasionally. Maybe.

07/25/2026

Even if it’s decidedly NOT summer where you are, I’m having a summer sale (because that’s how seasons work on Dolly Parton’s Internet).

Here’s what’s comin’ in HOT:

1️⃣ The VoicePed 101 Library Yearly Subscription Sale
💸 Save $200 on a year-long subscription (PLUS bonus savings if you’re on the mailing list 👀)
📆 Deal ends August 15th
➡️ Discount automatically applied at check out

This deal gets you access to The VoicePed 101 Library for an entire year.

So poke around now if your brain is all LEARN THE THING! Or disappear into the sunshine for three weeks if it isn’t. Come back in October. Binge a course over the winter holidays. Wander in and out whenever something in your teaching makes you go, huh. I would like to know more about THAT.

2️⃣ VoicePed Consults
💸 Save 50% on both 45-minute Quickie Consults and 75-minute Longform Consults
📆 Deal ends August 31st
➡️ Enter the code SUMMER50 at checkout.

Got a voiceped question? A teaching conundrum? A student situation you can’t quite get your head around? Wanna talk vocal function, troubleshoot a tricky moment, rethink your approach, or just have another brain in the room for a bit?

Bring me the thing.

Have a fabulous summer + enjoy these hot VoicePed savings ☀️

Head on over to my website for more info.
🔗Links in comments.

07/23/2026

Ha! ❤️

07/16/2026

Yes. This is the essence of what it means to be an educator. In any context.

A consequence can end an incident. That does not mean it changed anything.

In schools, the real test comes later. What happens the next time the student is angry, embarrassed, impulsive, challenged, or given the same opportunity to make a poor decision?

That is where discipline has to do more than communicate, “Do not do that again.”

Students need to examine what happened, understand the impact, repair what they can, and rehearse a better response for next time. Accountability is not removed from that process. It is the process.

The goal is not a student who behaves only when an adult is watching.

The goal is a student who can eventually make a better decision without us standing there.

07/13/2026

Things the teaching artists you work with say that make you go: 🤨 …and then: 👀

Because: I love me some chaotic descriptions that actually tell me everything I ever wanted to know about how a learner is, well, learning.

Guess what? When we stop telling singers what it should be, we make a BIG OL LEARNING SPACE.

Not for them to tell us what they think we want them to experience
Not for them to explain what they think is happening
… but for paying attention to what is.
And, to take ownership of their own learning.

When we expect (or require) students to replicate our experiences, or to sing the way we perceive science says we should, we miss the opportunity to support singers to become curious observers of and engaged participants in their own learning.

So, resist the temptation to tell students how it should feel or what will happen and when they describe their experiences in ways that make you think, “...well, that’s certainly one way to describe it,”?

Don’t reframe it for “their own good.” Don’t give them the “evidence-informed” description. Do stay with them in the learning. Double-down on that thing so they can take it deeper.

Start by using a student-led transition. Ask them:
Where do you want to have more of that CHAOS in your rep?

Then support them as they scaffold that learning and build on it.
Wanna understand principles of teaching and learning (aka pedagogy) a little better?

➡️ Subscribe to The VoicePed 101 Library, to dig into these discoveries on your own time.
➡️ Sign up for a one-on-one session with me to explore (which: I’ve got a hot 1/2 price summer sale going on right now - DM me for more info).
➡️ And if you’re not already on my mailing list, hop on there to find out when the Community of Practice opens: just a space for voice teachers and coaches to explore teaching and learning practices together, ask better questions, and lovingly retire a few pedagogical goblins (aka the ACTUAL chaos creators) along the way.

(h/t to for the inspo on this post!)

07/11/2026

I’ve been thinking about how often voiceped marketing (of courses, classes, trainings, and allll the programmes) promises to help teachers move beyond “trial-and-error teaching.” And listen: I get the appeal.

Most of us do not want to feel like we’re just tossing exercises at a student and hoping something works.

We want clarity. We want systems. We want frameworks. We want to understand what we’re hearing. We want to make informed teaching choices. WE WANNA FEEL CONFIDENT.

Which: Of course we do.

But friends ... there’s a sneaky little jerk of a trap in our industry that can really mess with our teaching.

We think that knowing how to identify the cause of a “vocal issue” is the same thing as knowing how to teach.

Which (beside my distaste in calling ANYTHING a singer does a “vocal issue” (eewww), understanding anatomy and physiology can be useful in soooo many ways.

But teaching is not simply:
hear an issue ➡️diagnose the problem ➡️ choose the intervention ➡️fix the thing

That? Is problem-solving. Or troubleshooting. Or functional analysis.

And it might even be what our student wants us to do. But when we mistake thorough diagnosis and accurate prescription for effective teaching, we miss the whole effective teaching part.

Because effective teaching (especially when we’re talking about teaching an embodied skill... which is what we’re talking about here, right?) is not measured by whether we correctly identify “the problem” and prescribe the correct exercise to “fix it.”

Effective teaching starts by understanding how learning happens.

And then designing conditions that support it.

You probably don’t need another voiceped course that teaches you how to be a better diagnostician.
You might need support learning how to trust the information you already have, and how to use it to support learning.

That’s the work I do all day, every day with voice teachers juuuust like you.

You can get started in The VoicePed 101 Library with Diagnosis 101 or How We Learn 101.

07/04/2026

Not exactly a July 4th post. Obvs.

But here’s to Michelle Markwart Deveaux, an American who is changing the world one danged, deeply human-centred, SEEING YOU at a time.

This weekend, she is delivering a plenary at the National Association of Teachers of Singing National Conference called:

Building Community Through Small Actions: How Voice Professionals Create Systemic Change

And there’s not a more on-brand presentation from a more well-practiced -ahem- practitioner ON THE PLANET.

So if you are at NATS this weekend, block off Sunday, July 5 at 9:00 AM and be there.

Do it for you, for your pedagogy, for your business, for your family, and for your community.

It’ll change some things.

(And, check out my posts about Canadian culture shifters I put out for Canada Day last week.)