Music Teacher's Helper Blog

Early to mid-September is one of the busiest times of the year for music teachers. In my own studio, I’ve been keeping track of new students, departing students, juggling lesson times, interviewing prospective students, and already thinking ahead to local festivals. As I’ve been madly scheduling my coming teaching year, I’ve been using many Music Teacher’s Helper features over and over again.

As I alternate between emailing students, moving students from Waiting List to Active status, moving others from Active to Former, adding parent and child information, and somehow trying to fit everyone in, I’ve noticed that it might be useful to bookmark specific MTH pages for easy access once I’ve logged in.

Below is a list of commonly used MTH pages with links that will open in a separate tab or window. Once you’ve opened the link, you can simply bookmark the URL for the next time you need that specific page. This will save you the extra time spent going from your landing page to the login page, to the home page, and then to the drop-down menus. Once you’ve logged in once, just clicking on any of these links will take you directly to the page you need.

Note: you won’t be able to access these links unless you have a valid Music Teacher’s Helper account. If you haven’t got an account yet, click here to sign up for a free one.

Home Page – this might be a good idea for your browser’s start page if you do a lot of studio management.
Calendar – important for quick scheduling access (in addition to Google Calendar sync now available)
Add Event – bookmarking this page will save a lot of clicks when you need to quickly add studio events.

Managing Student Lists

• Active Student List
• Parents and Adult Students List
• Add Child Student – note that the parent’s information needs to be set up first.
• Add Student to an Existing Family
• Add Adult Student

Email Students and/or Parents – this is a hugely important link for contacting students, parents, and groups of them, and should occupy pride of place on your bookmarks list.

Payments and Invoicing

• Payments List
• Enter a Payment- this page in particular is used frequently.
• Create an Invoice - another page at the heart of your studio’s financial infrastructure.
• Invoice History
• Invoices by Student
• Automatic Invoicing
• Charge a Fee
• Issue a Credit

View Reports – not so important at the beginning of the year, but gains in importance as the season goes on…

Website Management

• Website Pages – the front door of your studio’s web presence.
• Studio Announcements – whether on your public studio page or in the login-only area, a steady stream of announcements can make for an engaging website and compel your students to login more frequently.

These links are by no means an exhaustive list of MTH features, just the ones that require a lot of repetitive actions and benefit from quicker access. Once you’ve clicked on these links, bookmark them either in your browser or on a start page such as iGoogle or Netvibes.

Best wishes to all the teachers in the Music Teacher’s Helper community for a productive and rewarding year of bringing out the best in our students!