The Story of VoiceProEd
Getting ready to teach our first course together!
Maurice’s Side
After walking one and a half miles from the nearest metro stop, I had just arrived to my new voice teacher’s studio soaking wet. Soaked head to toe, but especially toe, as I knocked on Anna’s door. I didn’t know fully what to expect but knew that at this point in my life and career, I was hoping for a teacher who could understand and make sense my “vocal past” and current struggles.
The details of our early relationship are difficult for me to recall at this point. But there are a few moments that stand out as highlights in the reel. While I hadn’t known Anna prior to booking my first session, I remember feeling immediately safe, comfortable, and welcome. While Anna did not know much about me prior to our first session, Anna created the space for ALL my wild expressions of self, which were many, during our early sessions. Anna allowed me to explore genre, style, sound, techniques, frustrations, questions - all with a deep understanding of voice technique, pedagogy, and a considerate approach.
Over the next few years, I came to depend on Anna’s ear and experience to help shape and guide my voice technique, which as an SLP and working professional singer was an important role in my life. Thankfully our relationship did not reach its limits at Student & Teacher.
Throughout our sessions I realized Anna and I had a similar passion (and complete geeky obsession) with HOW the voice worked. We had a similar passion for evidence-based approaches while continuing to hold space for the many, many things we have yet to learn about the voice. We agreed that all professionals who work with the voice desire to do good and are often let down or cut off from the systems and sources of the knowledge that is critical to producing good work!
As an SLP who works in voice disorders myself, I felt like I had one of the greatest clinical resources in my back pocket! Hint: this resource didn’t come from the SLP world. It came from Anna! There was so much to learn about singing, and artistry, and music, and performance that we do not get the opportunity to learn in graduate SLP school. I knew we had to share this with the masses. Our first joint venture together was SVSLP, Singing Voice for Speech Language Pathologists.
Since that summer course in 2021, we have developed this little passion and dream into a business. VoiceProEd is not only a passion project, but also a tool for all SLPs seeking advanced knowledge in the areas of singing and performance voice. It was born out of friendship and respect and continues to reflect that in the work we produce today.
Singing together with the Houston Symphony Chorus
Anna’s Side
One fateful and dreary evening in early January of 2019, Maurice Goodwin showed up dripping wet on my doorstep for his first voice lesson with me. That wasn't his fault, of course--"winter" in Houston was a mild but nasty season of forty-degree temperature swings and excessive humidity, with inconvenient public transportation to boot. As he boldly announced his predicament, I chuckled to myself (and got him a towel, I hope!), knowing already that this was my kind of human being.
I won't lie--I was having a little bit of impostor syndrome before our lesson. I knew that Maurice was the new SLP at the Texas Voice Center, which is the clinic I visited when I myself needed a vocal check-up. I had to remind myself of something I say to my clients all the time--voice teachers (and SLPs!) need teachers too. It was and is an honor to be the external eyes and ears of someone who has such deep knowledge of the voice already, whose brainwaves so easily synced with mine.
Plus, working with Maurice was just plain FUN! Every week during our physical warmup, Maurice would show off his increased flexibility and stability in his squat. I'm not sure the ultimate goal of the squatting (gym prowess, I suppose) but watching Maurice wobble around my living room is a core memory of our lesson time. Together we explored nearly every aspect of the voice you can imagine--tenor high notes, onsets, belting, dynamics and vocal closure--and genres from opera to gospel to art song to Broadway.
And now, we squat!
Working with Maurice helped me to level up my own teaching because of his own experience level and knowledge of the voice. I quickly became comfortable with saying, "I don't know, let me research that and get back to you," and "Hear me out--what if we tried this?" Together we created a space of vulnerability not only as singers, but also as clinicians and human beings. We shared the vision that creating spaces for vulnerability and play, for learning and growth, should become a necessity for clinicians in the SLP and voice teaching worlds.
Singing Voice for the SLP was born out of this desire for connection and communication between our fields. As we poured a glass of wine, cringed, and hit launch in the spring of 2021, I'm not sure either of us imagined where this could take us.
On Friday, August 25, 2023, Maurice and I had a phone call, and he officially extended me the invitation to be his business partner. Since then, we have enjoyed near-weekly meetings, co-working sessions, business coachings, and hours of brainstorming to bring VoiceProEd into existence. I'm ever grateful to work with someone who can pick up my thoughts when I trail off and who is invested in making our fields better for clients and clinicians alike. I'm looking forward to sharing our knowledge with other voice nerds and voice nerds-to-be in the coming years, and I'm looking forward to learning what they have to teach us, too.
