Tip #1:  How to find the invoicing function.

Invoicing functions are found under the Billing tab, where you can select Invoicing and view Invoice History, Create Invoice(s), or work with Automatic Invoicing.

Tip #2:  Preview everything.

Any time you make use of invoicing, first preview your invoice(s) by clicking the “Preview or Print” button. You need to see what the student will be seeing – does the invoice show the right dates, the right events, and does it add up to what you expect? If not, see Tip #4. Also, make sure only the invoices you want to create are showing – if there’s more than one invoice, there will be more than one page to preview.

Once you take a look at the preview, click “Go Back to Invoicing Creation” at the top of the page, so you can either revise the invoice or send/print/record it. But beware! When you go back to the Invoicing Creation page, all the boxes you checked are still checked. This includes all students boxes, which might not all be visible if you have more than 5 students. This means that if you preview one student’s invoice and then go back to check out another student’s invoice, you have to make sure to uncheck the first student or else you’ll be creating an invoice for him/her again.

Tip #3: Invoice vs Statement.

Know the difference between an invoice and a statement. The system is set up by default to create an invoice, which is a bill for services – only what the student owes during the time period selected (by default, the current month). But if you check off the right boxes, it can be set up to display a statement, which is a record of everything the student did financially during that time period – how much they owed at the beginning of the period, what they are being charged, how much they’ve paid, and what they currently owe as a result of all this.

An invoice will show what the student owes, but not what they’ve paid. This is easily remedied, if you wish – just check off the box “Show Payments.” If you want to show how much they owed at the beginning of the period, check off the box “Show Previous Balance and Date Range.” You really have to check off this box if the student owes something, or has a credit, going into the current month (or the time period you’ve selected); otherwise the invoice will only show what they owe this month regardless of any previous balance. All the option boxes that you can check off in creating an invoice are explained in the Help section’s Knowledge Base at this link.

But remember Tip #2! If you check off boxes, be sure to preview before sending the invoice!

If you send invoices to all of your students, you will probably want to set up the invoice as a statement, including the previous balance, and all payments and charges. Unless you check off the box “Create invoices/statements even if amount due is zero”, the only invoices that will be created are the ones where a student owes you, or has a credit.

Tip #4:  Accuracy counts.

Be sure the invoice shows the correct events and amounts. A student’s invoice will display all of that student’s lessons/classes for the month (or other time period selected). Make sure you entered them all! The invoice is not just for asking for money but also for displaying what the student is paying for. It can serve to confirm the lessons that have been scheduled. Make sure those lessons are entered with the correct amount due for each one – each lesson and amount owed will show up under “Lesson Charges” on the invoice. Or perhaps you charge a flat rate for the month – this shows up above “Lesson Charges” in the “Fees and Credits” section. Both these options come from the profile of the student, where you can choose to set either a flat rate or a per-lesson charge.

If after previewing the invoice, you find some errors in events, whether in amounts charged or in the descriptions or dates of the events, just go back to the calendar and fix those entries, and try again. No harm done (unless you clicked “Do it!” to save the invoice (or email it to the student). If you hit “Do it!” by accident, see Tip #5.

Tip #5: Viewing/deleting Invoices.

When you click “Do it!” your invoice(s) will be saved and if you checked off the radio button to email it to your student, that will be done as well. To look at the invoice, or to see if it was made, go to Billing tab, Invoicing, Invoice History. Here you can see what invoices you created, when, and when they were sent to the student. You’ll want to click the “View” link to see the invoice, and that’s when you can delete the invoice if you need to, by using the Options box to the right.

Tip #6: Invoice everyone or only as needed?

If you send invoices/statements to all your students every month, you probably will want to set this up to happen automatically. I personally only use automatic invoicing for a few students who have a flat monthly rate and requested the invoices so they can pay online (the “Make Payment” link at the bottom right of the invoice makes this easy and accurate). I send manual invoices to students who have missed a payment or are confused about charges.

An invoice serves many purposes: it’s a request for money, an explanation of charges, an easy way for a student to pay you online, and makes it easy for a student to mail you a check, since your name and address is displayed in the upper left.

For manual invoices, I usually send a separate email to the student telling them I sent the invoice and that there is a payment link in the lower right corner.

Tip #7: Automatic invoicing.

This can be found under the Create Invoice(s) option. Once you are familiar with creating invoices, this option is fairly self-explanatory, but be careful to keep in mind the date range you set for your automatic invoices. I had one student who hadn’t paid by mid-month and he normally gets an automatic invoice the first of the month. I realized later that the date range for his automatic invoices had expired!

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You may well have other tips, or comments, or questions – if so, please add a comment below! I look forward to hearing from you.

Although I’ve worked with many styles of music, one style I have specialized in is Scottish music, and having played and studied many of these tunes in historical context, I’m convinced that “Turkey In the Straw” originated as a type of tune called the Scots Measure.

This makes more sense when you realize how many American fiddle tunes came over from Scotland with the massive exodus of Highlanders after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Many traveled to Philadelphia, and from there into the Appalachians and beyond, both north and south. Many Scottish tunes can be found in American old-time tunes, country songs, pioneer tunes (see tune titles in Little Home On The Prairie), cowboy songs. Dvorak used a Scots Gaelic song for the first theme of his New World Symphony, a melody he learned in America.

The Scots Measure was probably a type of dance; there are many old tunes of that type but the form is no longer in use, having been folded into other forms such as hornpipes and reels. Here’s a typical example of a Scots Measure, with the repeated pattern of two eighth-note pickup notes leading to three strong quarter notes — this one is called The White Cockade:

There are many tunes of this type and it is easy to see how the basic tune of Turkey in the Straw fits into this pattern, with a little decoration, which I wrote in as “variations” on the basic tune. Give it a try, and enjoy!

My MTH day begins at 5am the previous day – that’s when my automatic email reminders go out, and when I learn which notifications have been sent to people. (Several times I’ve been asked why I was up at 5am sending those reminders out!)

No matter how long it’s been since a lesson or class, I know students will receive a notice about their appointments the day ahead of time. Not only does this avoid missed lessons and all the hassle or disputes that can go with them, it also serves to put student and teacher on the same page. There have been times when a student and I agreed to change a lesson time, but I failed to change the calendar, or times when a student proposed a change of time but did not follow up on it – in these cases, the reminder prompts the student to get in touch with me and say, “Really? Do we have a lesson scheduled then?” and I can look it up and sort out any misunderstanding before anyone misses a lesson, or before I find myself waiting for a no-show.

If you’re not using automatic reminders, you can set them up by clicking on “Settings” at the top right of the screen, and going to the “Email Notifications” tab. Check off “Remind my students of scheduled
events” and then select which categories send reminders. You can also determine how many days before the event you would like the reminder to go out. My reminders are all sent 1 day in advance.

Don’t forget to edit the way your notifications come across. It’s important to me that the tone of my emails to students are not overly formal, so I have edited the email notifications to my taste. You can do this by looking under the Students tab – hold the mouse over “Email Students” and select “System Email Templates”.

The Lesson Notifications that are sent to me by email tell me which reminders were sent to whom. I hang onto these just to be able to double check if a reminder was sent or not, especially if someone doesn’t show up or claims not to have received a notice – which hasn’t really happened as yet. However, it could also help you do a little detective work – keep in mind that students can turn off their ability to receive reminders at any time, from within their profile.

Here are a few other uses I make of the email reminders. Since I have made a “student” out of myself, with my email address, I can add myself to any event that I might like to receive a reminder for, such as personal rehearsals or events where I’d like a reminder emailed to me the day before. Another use for me has to do with my website, where I offer Tunelearning Pages that people can subscribe to for a period of 4 months. When someone subscribes, I enter them as a student and have a special category for online subscriptions, so that they can be reminded when their subscription is ending – and I add myself to that event so that I am reminded, and can contact them to see if they wish to renew, before ending their subscription.

Some of my event categories do not send reminders. For example, if I know a student doesn’t like reminders, I can choose a lesson category that does not send them (I can also let them know how to turn reminders off). If a lesson is set up the same day or day before, it’s too late for a reminder to go out, so I use a category without reminder. Also, if I want to enter a new student before they or I have had a chance to collect and enter their profile information, I will create an event with myself as the student, and write in the Event Title the name and phone of the student, and in the Description I can enter any info I may need about that student. If the lesson is to take place more than a day away, I can select the category so that I get an email reminder about this new student’s appointment. When the student does enter profile information, I add their name to the event and remove mine.

One important category that sends no reminders is my “Available” category. This is an event on the calendar which displays times I have available for lessons. This allows me to invite students looking for a lesson time to simply check the online calendar for available slots, instead of engaging in a game of email or phone tag about it. Because I allow someone to register for Available time slots, students can even click on an Available slot and sign up for it. In the description, I’m a little sneaky because a typical entry is “to 5:00, open for lessons” – the reason for this is that MTH displays first the time and then the description. Because I start with the words “to 5:00 …” the resulting description will read something like “4:00pm to 5:00pm” and I write, “open for lessons.”

I have set my Available colors to an aqua text that is legible but does not compete with the solid colors of my regularly scheduled lessons and classes. Any time you create or edit an event on the calendar, you can create or edit categories, including colors, by clicking the link to the right of the box showing the category. Here is also where you can create or edit locations, by using the link to the right of the box displaying the location.

Speaking of colors, I like to have different colors for lessons vs. classes so that they are easy to distinguish at a glance. I use a different colors for events, and for biweekly and specially scheduled lessons as opposed to weekly ones. My daughter has substitute taught for me sometimes when I’m out of town, so I created two categories for her lessons that are of a different color, making them easy to spot. Keep in mind that the calendar is not only for the teacher’s eyes, so the text should be legible on the students’ calendars – I used to have my Availables colors too light for people to easily read, so I had to adjust them after a few complaints alerted me to the problem.

I look forward to hearing from you if you have additional or different approaches to emailed reminders and categories – or if you have questions. Until next post…

Some equipment is important and yet, when you want to make progress in a student’s playing, it can feel hard to take time to address the equipment questions, especially within a half-hour lesson, and you might not have time to engage in a lengthy discussion of it outside of lessons.

Below are 7 approaches to this issue. Read them and please feel free to add a comment at the end about how you handle including musical equipment in your teaching.

1. Include Equipment in the Lesson Plan

Identify all the equipment issues you can and think about when in the course of a student’s progress they start to have an impact on playing and learning. Then make sure that addressing them is a part of your lesson plan. Don’t leave these issues to chance, or they will soak up time you didn’t expect to give.

2.  Make Handouts or Web Pages

Write down your thoughts and recommendations on equipment and purchases of them, such as what to look for in a bow or violin, the different types of keyboards or pianos and ways to buy or rent them, how to use valve oil, what kind of rosin to get, whether you recommend electronic tuners, what kinds of metronomes work well and why. Handing out this information on paper, or placing it on a page of your Music Teachers Helper website can save everyone a lot of wondering, and time.

3.  Equipment as Teaching Aid

Find ways to explore equipment as part of learning to play the instrument. For example, I bring in a case of a dozen bows of various types and prices from a cooperative retailer every fall so that my students, regardless of level of ability, can focus on their violin sound by tuning their ears into the differences between bows. This exploration of essential equipment also makes bowing exercises and bowing awareness fun. The students gain valuable experience with bow weights, feels, and the astonishing difference in sound generated by bows that may otherwise all look the same.

4. Balance Equipment and Learning

Exercise your leadership in choosing when to insist on certain equipment such as a shoulder rest, or a particular size of mouthpiece, and choose when to let things go until the student is ready to understand it, or in some cases, to be able to afford it. But before letting any equipment go by the wayside, be sure you take the time to help the student get used to using it, adjusting it, making it work for them. Don’t let them decide it doesn’t work if they’ve never actually experienced how it’s supposed to feel or to be used. I’ve seen students ready to throw away their shoulder rest without realizing they’ve been putting it on backwards!

5.  Be Sensitive to the Expense

We all deal with the balance between the money invested in lessons, and money spent on equipment. For some students, extra expenses are difficult, and it’s important not to be too rigid about the need for particular kinds of equipment. Scope out the prices on equipment you think is workable, versus that which you think isn’t worth the money. I like to keep on top of shoulder rest models and appreciate when one comes out that’s adjustable and functional but inexpensive. At the same time, buying something cheap that is also not good quality can end up being more expensive if the student has to go out and buy a different kind to find one that works for them.

6. When Equipment is Essential

When you’ve determined that certain equipment is essential to your style of teaching, you need to hold your ground. A student who invests in lessons can afford to invest in essential equipment; otherwise they’re being pennywise and pound foolish. I had one little girl whose mother kept promising to buy a shoulder rest but didn’t for a month, and it stalled the girl’s progress, so I had to be quite firm.

7. Stay on Top of Developments

Keep educating yourself so you are aware of new makes and models, so that you don’t get into a rut insisting on the same old equipment just because you’ve always done so. Many new types and prices of electronic tuners and metronomes have come out in recent years, so I have to keep reassessing their value. In some areas, teachers can get wrapped up in widely disparate opinions about equipment models such as rosins, or shoulder rests, or get invested in the idea of going without a shoulder rest, and it really is important to tailor your response to each student, and what impact that equipment or that model actually has on that student.

8. But There Were Supposed to be only 7!

Now, I’ve written this post trying to make it apply to as many music teachers and instruments as possible, so I’ve been purposely a little vague about the different types of equipment I’m referring to, except back in the top paragraph.

But you can be specific! Leave a comment that shares some of your own thoughts and stories about the musical equipment you work with! And thanks for participating.

Am I on the student’s side, or on the administrative side?  Most teachers combine the two.  The best teachers know just when the right perspective is needed.  But some veer to one extreme or the other, and are usually not very effective, or burn out.

The administrative side of teaching focuses on lecturing, prodding, judging, and testing.  These activities are an important part of teaching – they involve laying out the road map, giving directions, setting standards, and measuring progress.

But a teacher who is only administrative is concerned primarily with control.  He or she keeps the nose to the grindstone, and sooner or later will have both student and teacher running on empty.  Every task is part of a to-do list and is kept measurable, including minutes practiced, minutes taught, exercises done, pieces learned.  When the student accomplishes something, this kind of teacher only wishes it had been done sooner, and moves straight to the next task.  Discipline in this context is external – students follow directions or suffer consequences.

Being on the side of the student involves collaborating, appreciating, and supporting the student, aiming toward goals that both student and teacher hold in common.  This means having the empathy to understand the student’s experience, to perceive and help remove obstacles to learning, rather than simply demanding that they be overcome.  When a task is accomplished, informed appreciation (as opposed to generic praise) is real nourishment for both student and teacher.  Discipline in this context is internal – students develop a desire to work harder towards their goals.

But a teacher who is only on the student’s side is one who shies away from setting goals and standards, and waits to be directed by the student’s interests, even though the student may not know enough to have a road map in mind.

Increasingly, our schools emphasize the administrative side of education, because the results are more measurable, and make the teacher (and school system) appear to be more clearly in control.

Of course, this brings up interesting questions for music teachers.  Should music teachers cater to what the schools do?  Are we an extension of school or a respite from it?  Is practicing equivalent to homework to be graded, or is it possible to make it a chance to enjoy playing and improving?  Do we demand a predetermined pace of accomplishment through a curriculum, or do we seek steady improvement at a pace to be determined by circumstances?

At every level, whether thinking of our broader purposes and policies, or at specific lessons as we deal with a student who hasn’t practiced, or one who has partially accomplished a task, a most useful question to keep coming back to is:  “Whose side am I on?  Is this a time to provide leadership or support?

Your thoughts are always welcome!  Please join the discussion and leave a comment below!

She was right.  It’s an amazingly thought-provoking book for musicians and music teachers.  Ernst Bacon (1898-1990) was an American composer and pianist.  Below, I have selected a number of quotes that might be of interest to you.  There is more discussion of each in the book, and also many more topics and ideas.  I heartily recommend the book itself.   Here’s a link to getting a used copy via Amazon.

The book begins with the author’s suggestion that the book is “to be nibbled” – opened and read here and there and anywhere.  Here are some snippets allowing you to do just that.

Ernst Bacon on Teaching Music

“The superior teacher…invites rather than compels the student…he is pleased by the emergence of differences.”

“A teacher’s hardest lesson is to limit his explanation to the minimum.”

“The teacher should introduce conscious devices only when they are needed, just as the doctor prescribes medicines only when the body cannot take care of itself.”

“Too much American teaching is by encouragement, too little by provocation.”

“A great deal of the best teaching is achieved by nonencouragement, even sometimes by outright obstruction.”  If schools and teachers are too tolerant, they leave “to resistant minds no academic crimes to commit…. A good talent needs some sturdy rules upon which to sharpen its claws.”

“I would rather instill in my amateur students love, than knowledge, of music.  Left with only knowledge, they will at the end close their books and consign the course to forgetfulness.  But if they have learned to love but the smallest part of the art, they are likely to pursue some phase of it the rest of their lives.”

“The proper time to begin music is when it attracts you enough to begin…when trying is more satisfying than not trying.  And who but yourself can measure that?”

“Not the least part of gaining facility is removing resistance.”

“The hand teaches the body, the ear teaches the hand, the heart teaches the ear.”

“The uninformed think that art is a continuous harvest, rather than ninety percent cultivation.”

“Whenever I hear someone called perfectionist, I conclude he must be that, and nothing more.”

“The only tradition that stays alive is that which adjusts to time and place.”

“The conflicts of art are mostly between truth and formality.”

Ernst Bacon on Playing Music

“How you begin a piece is everything.”

“The way you hold the interest in your hearers reveals how you hold it within yourself.”

“Energy is needed for restraint as well as for effort.”

“Power is an effect, and not a fact; an impression and not simply force.”

Why playing more forcefully does not mean playing faster:  “In all speech, increasing emphasis calls for added deliberation.”  A “relaxation of mood” brings more ease – and a tempo increase.

“I know of no such thing as a correct tempo…..The old indications, andante, largo, allegro, are descriptive more of character than of tempo….A proper tempo is one that is appropriate to every element of a performance” by which he means the work, the player’s personality and technique, acoustics, place, occasion, the audience, and even the time of day.

“Music mostly combines song with the dance, therefore the beat must be modified in accordance with the flow of the melody.”

“Music is all proportion.”  Two adjacent chords are proportionate to each other, rhythm is about proportion, as are two notes of a melody, the sounds within a chord, and every color, cadence and dynamic.

“Good diction is clarity and musicality both, and yet it must not be so marked as to injure melody through overemphasis.”

“What is warmth in music that is all warm?  What is dissonance in a bed of discord?  What is light without shadow?”

Ernst Bacon on Practicing Music

“The purpose of practice not to reduce consciousness but to heighten it.”

“No task is too great provided you find its appropriate tempo.”

“The superior artist is not always the one with the largest capacity; he is usually one who has realized what has been given him to the fullest.”

“Any success, untempered with some failure, has little chance of lasting”

“How fast can you assimilate what is to be done without losing spirit and control?  Ultimately, the quickest road is to take your time.  Not another’s, but your own time.”

“All exercises should be done in rhythm…this encourages the development of an inner pulse, and exploits the driving force of rhythm in promoting dexterity… Toward this end, the metronome is less than useless…rhythm is a human and not a mechanical thing…note values are ever an approximation.”

“Practice unmakes perfection when carried too far.”

“Stiffness accompanies anxiety and relaxation comes with assurance.”

“It is manifestly impossible to learn to play rapidly by playing only slowly.  Slowness gives the feel; rapidity the gesture.”

“Ask yourself if you do a certain passage with pleasure, and you will know whether you have, or are on the way to have, learned it.”

“Melody involves a study of its accompaniment…. The more thought has gone into the accompaniment, the freer then is the thought for the melody.”

“Weakness and strength must be equalized, or else utilized for unequal ends.”

“Good technique obliterates itself.”

What about you?  Would you consider giving kids in school an idea of what it’s like to choose music as a career?

In this post, I’d like to share with you some information and observations about the arts as a work choice in America.  Did you know there are more people (2 million) working in the arts in America than there are lawyers or doctors?  Did you know artists as a group earn about $70 billion a year?  That the median income of artists is higher than the overall median income of American workers?

And yet, we have a disconnect in our society.  A good, or maybe I should say a very sad, example of this was when the head of my local school board explained why it wasn’t so bad that 25 teachers were laid off last year:  He said it wasn’t as bad as it sounds because only 16 of them were teachers; the others were just in music and the arts!

Go to your local schools and offer to tell students about working as a musician and music teacher.  Display Music Teachers Helper and show them how being a musician involves many skills:  computer programs, internet, marketing, negotiating, accounting, teaching, performing.  If your school is big on sports but not on the arts, maybe you can find out how many graduates of the school became professional athletes, if any.   And by comparison, how many went into music, or art, design, photography, film, writing, architecture and other arts.

Ask kids to think about how long they — or anyone else, for that matter — ever go without hearing music, or seeing a professional photograph or drawing, or seeing a product that was designed by a graphic artist, or a TV show filmed, written, and performed by artists.  It is a wonder that people can imagine that the arts are not essential to our society.

Although I’m discussing the idea of speaking with kids in a school setting, I’m focusing here on the arts as a work choice in the “real world”.  The benefits of the arts in education is another story entirely, and you can read my earlier post for some more ideas and information about that, if you like.

Here are a few more facts about artists, drawn from statistics in 2003-5 (it takes a while for people to compile statistics!):

• About 2 million Americans work in the arts as their primary job; another 300,000 work in the arts as a second job.  By comparison, there are 2.2 million active-duty and reserve personnel in the U.S. military.

• Two-thirds of all artists work full-time.  This is about the same as the percentage of full-time workers in the general work force.  About 1/4 of artists work less than 35 hours a week, a higher percentage of part-time workers than the general work force.

• About 10% of all workers are self-employed; 35% of artists are self-employed.

This information is taken from a 2008 research report by the National Endowment for the Arts.  The economy has changed dramatically since 2007 but the numbers are still relevant, since everybody has been affected across the board, though it would be interesting to see how events since 2007 have affected the arts.  I personally have seen artists needed as much or more in hard times than before.

I welcome your comments below, and when I do make a presentation to the kids, I’ll tell about it in comments below as well.

The teacher explained that the focus was just on the notes, not the bowings.  But this brings up a question all music teachers deal with.  What are we actually teaching when we teach a piece of music?  Is it really just one note after another in the right order?  Do we add musical ideas only after notes are learned?

Painting by Neil Macpherson

Strangely enough, many students learn music that way, and yet we would never think of learning to speak in that way.  Think about how you might learn a line if you were performing in a play — say, for example, the first line of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Being an experienced English speaker, you probably would have no trouble remembering that line:  “If music be the food of love, play on.”  Not only does this line flow easily, but you’ve probably heard it many times before.  A line of music could be easy to learn for the same reasons.

But supposing you found that line difficult to remember, you might break the line up into parts, for example:  “if music”, “be the food of love”, and “play on.”  This is comparable to learning each of the phrases of a piece of music.  Once you feel you know the phrases you would string them together and remember the whole line.

If that still was too difficult, you might even try to memorize the line one word at a time:  “if”, “music”, “be”, and so on.

But you would never learn that first line of Twelfth Night the way my student was being taught at the music camp–note by note, in sequence.  That would be like learning the line, “i f m u s i c b e t h e f o o d o f l o v e p l a y o n”.  And what if you tried five notes at a time instead of the whole line?  That would be like learning “i f m u s” and then “i c b e t” and then “h e f o o” — doesn’t make much sense, does it?  And yet you could eventually, with a lot of work, learn that line.

But if you really thought that was the only way to learn the words, you’d probably break into a sweat about how in the world you were going to learn the rest of your lines, much less recite them as if they made sense!  You might also generalize (and this might ring a bell for music teachers) and feel that you will always have to drill the notes over and over until you finally remember them.  But learning those notes may not actually be that difficult.  It may just be you are trying to learn them in an inefficient way.  As teachers, we not only give the notes but also try to find the most efficient way for each student to learn them.

If the notes of music are like the letters of the words, then bowing, tonguing, breathing, squeezing — whatever your instrument requires for articulation — is how we group those notes into meaningful groups or into phrases, just as we group letters into words, and words into phrases.  It is essential to learn those musical ways of articulation right along with learning the notes.  Otherwise you might find yourself trying to memorize one note at a time, as if learning words one letter at a time.

Ultimately, our goal is to make the music come alive.  Just as the lines of a play have to spoken as if the character just thought of them, music comes alive when it breathes, when the phrases hold together, and when the musical lines are delivered, not just note after note, but phrase answering phrase, the way they were conceived.

Making musical sense is all about grouping notes into phrases, and we use bowing, breathing, and so on, as techniques to hold phrases together.  These techniques may seem like extra, or even advanced, tasks, but actually they make it easier for students at all levels to learn and retain music–and to play it better.

It requires flexibility and resourcefulness for teachers to build musical ideas into teaching right from the beginning.  We have to avoid giving students more than they can handle, but that shouldn’t mean breaking music into dry, prepackaged technical building blocks.  To grow a musical student, musical ideas and articulation have to be part and parcel of learning, to make the music live and breathe right from the start.

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Learning about how other teachers see and do things can be inspiring, informative, surprising, or reassuring — and can make us think afresh about our own approaches.  I’d like to offer some posts that allow teachers to describe themselves, starting with those of us who use Music Teachers Helper.

Join me by answering as many of the questions below as you like, and/or by suggesting other questions that you’d like to read answers to — I can incorporate new questions into the list.

I will also be interviewing, by email, some music teachers I know, and hope to present their views in future posts.  If you prefer to communicate privately rather than by adding a comment below, feel free to answer the questions privately to my email (mth@edpearlman.net) and I will present your answers in future posts.  I have high hopes for an interesting series of teacher profiles here, but only if you write in!  Thanks in advance to those who respond, for sharing your views and ideas with all of us.

Remember, you can answer whichever questions you feel comfortable with, but the more the better.  It will be more interesting the fuller profile we get.  But be fairly concise, there are lots of questions here!

Here are the questions:

1. Your name (or remain anonymous).  You can use a pseudonym if you like, or email your answers to me (mth@edpearlman.net) if you want an anonymous listing.  You can also choose to list your name or even your web page and email.  As you wish!

2. Instrument(s) taught and/or voice?

3. Years of teaching experience?  Your age?

4. Did you have formal teacher training?

5. Typical high and low numbers of students during the year?  Approximate number of hours spent teaching each week?

6. Do you perform?  If so, roughly what percentage of your musical income/time is spent performing vs. teaching?

7. Do you teach music privately or are you an employee of a school (or both)?  If teaching privately, do you use a home studio or rent elsewhere?  If a school, what kind?

8. Do you have paid work other than music teaching?  If so, What do you do?  How much time do you spend teaching music compared with other work?  Is this by necessity or preference?

9. What are your rates?  If you don’t mind, indicate the range of your monthly income from teaching music.

10. Do you limit what students you work with in terms of level, age, gender, style of music, etc.?

11. Do you have student recitals?  If so, how often?  Are they encouraged or required of students?

12. Do you prepare students for competitions or auditions?

13. Do you teach private students or classes or both?

14. Do you coach ensembles?  If so, how large?

15. Do you teach at music camps?

16. Best experience(s) with students?

17. Worst experience that comes to mind?

18. Funniest experience?

19. What is most rewarding to you about teaching?

20. What is most challenging?

21. Have you ever felt burnt out at any time, and if so, what did you do about it?

22. Are you a member of a professional organization?

23. Do you attend conferences, workshops, lessons or classes for your own professional development?

24. When teaching, do you use published materials, your own materials, or both?

25. Do you use recordings in teaching?

26. Do you advertise?

27. Please feel free to elaborate briefly on any of your answers to questions above, and tell us a little about your views on those subjects.  Feel free also to add a few comments not covered by the questions.

THANK YOU!

Before we discuss some of these questions, let’s talk about time.  Do  you have a clock in the studio?  Or do you check your watch for time?  If you have a clock, is it in a place where your students can see it?

It’s possible that some students might stay on task if they are aware of the time, but more likely, they’ll just watch the clock.  The best lessons are when a student says, “is it over already?”  I think a clock placed behind the student is a good idea, and I’ve occasionally used a small clock on a table where only I can see it, but to be honest, I mostly just use my watch.

Lessons usually have a certain rhythm, and they feel complete when a student has had a chance to show what they’ve worked on, get some new insight into technique or musicality, and receive something new to work on, whether it’s music that’s new to them or new ideas to apply to the same piece they’ve been working on.  It’s hard to wrap up a lesson if it’s gone unexpectedly slowly, without having a feeling of progress.  At such times, I sometimes still offer them something new, if appropriate, by having them download it from the File Area in Music Teachers Helper.  This way, even if we run out of time, the student can still look forward to a new exercise, sheet, or recording to work with, without my having to find a handout or make a copy of something.  When I reconcile the lesson, I first make sure the file they need is made available to them in the File Area, and then I mention this in the Lesson Notes that are emailed to the student.

Ideally a lesson can be paced so there are a few minutes left for a bit of chat or discussion of the lesson, or of upcoming events.  Teaching right up to the final minute makes it difficult to wind down and allow the student to leave gracefully.  You can’t kick someone out, and if you’re too brusque, it doesn’t leave a good feeling for either teacher or student.

Still, there are times when the student really needs to play something through one last time, or needs the extra few minutes to understand something so they don’t go away empty handed, and this can send the lesson into overtime.  Generally my students are very forgiving if they have to start a little late, perhaps because they know I try to give them their full time and finish a little late for them as well.  To avoid the domino effect, it’s always doable to chip away at the overtime and get back on track fairly soon.

If a student is very talkative and slow about putting the instrument back in the case, I may ask them to take the case into the hall or waiting area to put their instrument back so that I can let the next student get started.  No one seems to mind this on the odd occasion that it’s necessary.  Are there any of you who schedule time between lessons, so as not to run late with the “domino” effect?

If there is no student waiting, it can be tempting for some students to hang on longer, though most students know when their time is up and don’t expect extra time.  In a few cases, though, some students enjoy chatting and figure out that I have a bit of free time after their lesson.  They seem to feel that the lesson is over, so this extra chatting doesn’t “count”.  This can get a little tiresome if it happens too often, and I have had to resort to leaving with them for an errand, or just walking them to the door.  Sometimes it’s hard to do, though, and there is a balance to be struck–the good will from enjoying a little  conversation can go a long way.  Still, if I can see this happening too often with a particular student, I try to schedule them back to back with another, removing the temptation to stay on.

In some cases, with adults especially, they really need a little extra time for talking, understanding, going over things, and if this is a regular problem, I might simply recommend that they pay for a longer lesson.  In fact, for adult beginners, I’ve learned to recommend from the start that they sign up for longer lessons at least for the first three or four lessons.

Your turn!  What do you do to wrap up lessons on time without the lesson’s end feeling abrupt or incomplete?  Add a comment below — we will all appreciate your thoughts.