Just a short post that’s as much for me as all of you, my fellow teachers
Like the old saying: “The teacher teaches what he most needs to learn.”
Most of us who teach have a naturally giving personality.
In fact, a career coach I regularly work with, Barbara Deutsch, told me the first time she met with me over ten years ago that my competitive edge in any industry is…giving.
But like any good quality we may have, we always have to be vigilant to make sure we stay in balance.
I’m not great at this sometimes, okay, often…and I’m guessing many of you have your own struggles with it as well.
What are you doing to fill your own tank creatively? Personally? Read more…
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Posted in Financial Business, Professional Development, Studio Management, Teaching Tips
Yes. By all means, YES! Here are 10 reasons why I thoroughly enjoy the opportunity to teach those who are 18 and above and even those who might be considered “chronologically challenged.”
Posing proudly after a No-Worries Workshop
1. Lesson Time: Adults are able to schedule lessons during those hours when most K-12 school students cannot attend.
2. Income: Because adults can come during “off hours” weekly income is expanded.
3. Friendship: Every time a new student enters the door a new relationship is established and inevitably a friend as well.
4. Variety: Each adult student arrives with a unique and distinct musical background and agenda. While some desire to master Mozart, others want to learn note names, while others wish to play current pop hits. Because of time limitations, I have not initiated a Recreational Music Making (RMM) class but this could be a possible option for your studio. This program, that emphasizes recreational and not traditional lessons for adults, continues to grow in popularity. For more information check out the Recreational Music Making Handbook. Read more…
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Posted in Promoting Your Studio, Studio Management, Teaching Tips, Using Music Teacher's Helper
I am completely fascinated with online networking. It’s such a fun way to interact
Are you a social media expert?
with people you know and meet people you don’t. In fact, social media is all the buzz in advertising in today’s market. It’s free, it’s fast, and you can hit a large market. Big companies are even hiring social media experts whose full time job is to tweet you, text you, and message you about hot deals and cool stuff. It’s the next big thing in marketing. But should you use it for your private music teaching studio? I do.
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Posted in Customer Support, Music & Technology, Music News, Press, Promoting Your Studio, Site Announcements, Studio Management, Uncategorized, Using Music Teacher's Helper
Do you use the invoicing in Music Teacher’s Helper? Below are some tips if you do, and a bit of encouragement to try it if you don’t. Managing a studio means running a small business, but who becomes a musician in order to run a business? MTH provides built-in guidance for the business end of a teaching studio, and invoicing can be a big help.
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 Read more…
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Posted in Financial Business, Studio Management, Using Music Teacher's Helper
Especially as singers, we HAVE to think, as that’s the only way to affect our instrument. Questions I ask are: “What was the difference between that time and the time before?” “What are you going to do to try to change XX; How successful was what you tried and why?” “What did you think about that sound?” “What did you do differently?”
Overall, I have banned the words “good” and “bad” because neither tell you what to continue working with and what to try to fix. I also try to always use only positive directives. We’ll identify both what behavior we want to replace and then what we want to happen instead. Focus is then on what we WANT to happen, rather than what we don’t want.
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Posted in Practicing, Studio Management, Teaching Tips, Using Music Teacher's Helper
R&B vocalist Kira Small and her husband, bassist Bryan Beller, was in our area this summer to perform at a house concert that I was hosting. After the concert, Kira was selling CDs at the merch table. She was taking credit card purchases with this tiny white box that plugs into to her iPhone.
She told me about Square, and I decided I would test it out and see how it worked for my teaching studio. At this point all my credit card transactions were happening through PayPal, so it seemed wise to develop some alternatives.
Square has been fantastic so far, a huge step up from Paypal in many respects. The transaction fees are lower (we will look at data shortly), I have the ability to take payments anywhere quickly, I can provide receipts on the spot, and all the money is automatically deposited overnight in my bank account.
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Posted in Financial Business, Music & Technology, Studio Management
It’s the end of the year, and I’ve been thinking about report cards.
Years ago, as a fairly new teacher, I decided that my students would benefit from more parent-teacher communication. I was sure each parent wondered if his or her child was making the kind of progress of which he was capable. Was Rebecca practicing technique effectively? Was Thomas doing his theory consistently? How much time should Annie really be spending reviewing repertoire vs. learning new music? Read more…
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Posted in Studio Management, Teaching Tips
I’ll admit it. I was having a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”* I was tired. And I was cranky. Very cranky. The last thing that I felt like doing was sharing the love of anything with anyone, especially not music and children. I didn’t want to smile, be polite, or encourage. I just wanted to go crawl in a hole and wallow in my [now laugh-able] self-pity. Can you tell this was not one of my finer moments in life? Pity or no, my students were coming in just a few minutes and I had to teach them. My energy was gone, my head was hurting, and I had nothing left to give that day. I’m pretty sure that I was so desperate that I even prayed for the flu. But instead of getting ill, one of my favorite teachers came to mind and I began to think about what she would do in this situation.
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Posted in Professional Development, Studio Management, Teaching Tips
Once upon a time (well, six months ago,) I was hard at work planning the re-opening of my piano studio. I was full of visions of how my studio would be run differently this time around, how I’d attract students with a strong work ethic and passion for music, and how clearly I would lead them to musical nirvana. I reasoned that if I outlined my expectations thoroughly and interviewed prospective students carefully, teaching wouldn’t be tedious and I wouldn’t be stuck with those mind-numbing lessons in which I repeated everything I had taught the week before.
It’s fun to dream, isn’t it?
Five months into reality, I am having a wonderful time teaching. I am enjoying the different personalities of my students and discovering what makes each of them tick. And I’m eating a few of my words, for as it turns out, despite my careful outlining of expectations and interviewing, I have ended up with a student pool with a wide variety of abilities.
Some of my students are well-prepared every week, consistently doing more than I ask and enjoying the quick trajectory of our goals. Some of my students are practicing the required minimum most days of the week, doing most of what I ask, and making decent progress. And a couple of my students can’t consistently remember where middle C, treble G, and bass F are, even after months of drilling, flashcards, computer games, and away from the keyboard games.
The best thing about it? I love them all. Read more…
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Posted in Promoting Your Studio, Studio Management
Google is practically my BFF. Anytime I want to know something
, go somewhere, or learn about someone I hit up Google. It’s fast and it’s easy. Better yet, I can Google at my leisure, whether its first thing in the morning or in the middle of the night. And, I gravitate towards businesses with a web presence because I can learn all about them before I ever set foot on their doorstep. So when I really decided to take my piano teaching studio seriously, I figured out that I needed my own studio website.
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Posted in Promoting Your Studio, Studio Management, Using Music Teacher's Helper
