A New Way to Get Paid

Lately, I’ve been having problems getting paid for lessons.  I have a pretty clear policy that all my students’ parents signed agreeing that monthly tuition is due at or before the first lesson of the month.  But lately, I’ve had to chase some folks down to get paid.  Up until now, I’ve only accepted cash or check.   I HATE chasing after people for money.   Look, I’m not greedy I just want to get paid so I can focus on teaching my students.

Charging a late fee doesn’t seem to be much of a deterrent.  When I do finally get paid, they forget to pay the late fee and I end up having to chase to collect that fee so I gave that up a long time ago.  I don’t encourage post-dated checks for a year or semester to maintain the flexibility to upsell to longer or more frequent lessons.  I’ve also not had much success with directing them to PayPal, because once the lesson is over, they forget and I’m back to repeating my request for payment again.

A package came in the mail the other day, and I’m hoping it will be the solution to my problem.  It contained a little tiny credit card reader from Square that attaches to my Android phone.  I've heard good things about it from friends who've used it for other things like craft shows.  I have a personal account set up so now when someone says “I forgot my checkbook” I can swipe a credit card.  The device is free and processing fees are minimal.  Most everyone I know carries around a credit card or has a debit card with a Visa or Mastercard logo on it.  And if this doesn’t work, I’m going to change my parent/student contract next year to require everyone to keep a credit card on file with me that I can charge automatically if payment is late.

I’ll keep you posted on how this goes.  I suspect I may have some students that just opt to pay by credit card rather than check.  Once I’ve tested it with my current students, I plan to market my studio as accepting credit cards.  It may attract some new students.  At the very least, I’ll hopefully get paid on time with more consistency and without having ruffle feathers by “hounding” my students or their parents for payment.  I can keep the lessons for learning!

If you’re interested in learning more about Square for yourself, you can check them out at https://Squareup.com.  You just need an Android or iPhone to get started.

More on Ending Discomfort in Playing

Let's talk about relaxation.  How often have you been told, or even told a student to “relax!”  What exactly does it mean to “relax.”  I’m a big believer that you have to be able to explain anything you instruct a student to do, and instructing them to relax is no exception. 

Being able to physically relax, and relax in a way that is appropriate for your instrument (or voice) is a skill that can be learned.  For the purposes of playing a musical instrument, it comes down to understanding a little bit about how muscles work.  Muscles work in pairs or in groups.  The easiest example is to flex your bicep.  When it is flexed, the tricep on the back of your arm is loose, but when you straighten your arm, your tricep flexes, and your bicep gets loose.  If you keep your arm straight for an extended period of time, your tricep fatigues, but your bicep feels nothing.  Relaxing your arm is finding a balance between the two muscles so that neither is working harder than the other.

I can’t begin to tell you exactly what muscles are affected for every instrument.  My best advice if you are having specific muscle pain is to visit a physical therapist or medical massage therapist and show them what you are doing when you feel it.  Ask them to explain to you which muscles are overworking, and which muscles will balance them out.  When you're playing an instrument you're inevitably going to be out of balance with some muscle group or another, the key is not going more out of balance than necessary.  Overall fitness helps as well.  If your body is in good physical shape, it can handle more stress and strain.   If you’ve got the time, you can also do some research on anatomy to learn more for yourself how muscles work together.  Something I’ve done with good success is to just close my eyes and be aware of what muscles are working.  I’m someone that carries tension in my shoulders, so when I work on a tough piece of music, my shoulders sometimes head for the sky.  By focusing on the muscles that I feel when I lower my shoulders, it helps me to relax.   Since I’ve learned about this, I no longer feel like I’ve been in a wrestling match after a long practice or rehearsal.  Even more than myself, by being aware of this with my students, I can actually see habits that could be causing them discomfort or will in the future and help them change those habits early.

If you or your student has an injury, please see a doctor.  I’m a musician, sharing what works for me.  I tend to be drawn to the minutia of how things work and this is what has worked for me.  I think that relaxing appropriately for your instrument or voice is a skill, and mastering it can give you many more hours of practice and play without discomfort.  Hope that helps!

Practicing, Teaching, and Performing – Without Pain or Discomfort

Playing any instrument or singing is an incredibly physical endeavor.  I don't know a musician that hasn't struggled with some ache or pain that stems from what we do.  For those of you that don’t know, right now, I’m six months pregnant with our second daughter.  We couldn’t be more excited!  But anyone that has been pregnant knows that it comes with certain discomforts.  So I find myself now more than ever concerned with issues of practicing and playing with discomfort or even pain.  Sitting through two hour rehearsals or three or four hours of back to back lessons can be stressful when you aren’t making a person! 

I consider one of my key responsibilities as a music teacher is to teach good posture and technique, not just because my students will play better if they do, but also because they will be healthier for it.  In the short term good technique and posture will give students more stamina to stick with practicing for longer periods without tiring.  In the long term, using good posture and technique can help stave off repetitive stress injuries or carpal tunnel (which runs in my family – ugh).  Let me make clear:  I am not a doctor, or medical practitioner of any kind.  I am not giving medical advice.  By taking care of ourselves and our students in small ways we can encourage and help them to practice in a more healthy way.

Mr. Miyagi had the answer all along!  It’s all about balance and it starts with overall full body balance.  If you’re standing to play, your feet need to be apart directly under your shoulders, with your knees and hips loose.  If you are sitting, your weight should be centered over your two derriere bones.  If you play an instrument you pick up, bring the instrument to you, don’t lean into the instrument.  Try lifting the instrument with your eyes closed and see if it makes a difference in your posture. You just can’t ever be lazy about good balance, or you’ll feel it!

Here’s a balancing exercise I use:

1.       Roll your head forward to backward, chin down to chin up.  You want to feel the stretch, but don’t push to the point it hurts.  Do this a few times, then bring your head back to center.

2.       Now turn your head from side to side, looking over your right shoulder, then your left shoulder.  Do this a few times, then bring your head back to center.

That’s it.  I usually feel taller after this, and I feel balanced and everything is aligned.

There are lots of paths to help you get to balance – Yoga, Alexander Technique, Feldenkreis, physical therapy, and others.  I tend to think the more simple you can keep it, the easier it is to stick to.  Full-body balance is just one component.  Next, I’ll talk about some other things you can do to prevent pain and discomfort in practice!

YouTube as a Lesson Tool

What an invention!  A place where you can post video and audio of just about anything in the world.  I find myself using it with increasing frequency with my students.  Gone are the days when our students' ability to listen to good examples of their instruments or voice are limited by proximity and cost.  I wore out the few tapes and CD’s I had growing up.  I eventually learned every song on them and would play along.  But I wasn’t rich, and lived in the boonies, so getting new quality recordings wasn't easy.  How great is it to have a tool on the internet where you can find examples of just about anything you or your students would want to play?  Here are some ways I’ve found to use YouTube in lessons.

·         Practice – I think it’s really important for my students to listen to examples of good players, especially examples of things they are working on.  As many good performances as there are, there are also some that aren’t great, so it’s important to screen the videos you recommend.  I post recommended links in their online lesson notes for that day. 

·         Confidence – I have found that when a student runs up against a mental block about playing a piece, finding a video of someone like them who was able to accomplish the same piece shows them they can too.  For those of you that aren’t Suzuki teachers, it is customary to have a student perform a graduation recital after mastering each book.  There are many YouTube videos of these graduations, children and adults.  I think it’s helpful for my students to see others their own age succeeding at the same things they are working on, especially when they become discouraged.

·         Inspiration – I encourage my students to look around and try out new things.  If they find a composer they like, they can find examples on YouTube of pieces they’ve written.  Perhaps there is a style of music they want to learn.  Once they have some ideas, we can order music, work on skills and learn pieces that the students are excited to learn. 

·         Performance – I invite my students whenever I perform somewhere they can go, and I recommend the free concerts of the ensembles and the junior and senior solo recitals at Moravian so they can see “music in action.”  And some go, but often it doesn’t work with schedules or other siblings’ activities, or just family downtime.  YouTube is the next best alternative to live performances.  You can review do’s and don’ts.  You can show good examples and bad examples.  Knowing what to expect on stage can help with stage fright for recitals or other performances, and can help them feel polished in their own performance.

I know others that use YouTube tutorials for some of their students.  I’ll be honest, I feel like it’s my responsibility to do the teaching.  I’ve had students try out tutorials on their own, and learn bad habits.  It isn’t even that the videos they watched were bad, but because the learning was one-way they thought they were doing what was instructed when they weren’t.  That said, if I found something that was really worthwhile, I wouldn’t rule out using it.

All that said, I think YouTube is a great tool in support of lessons.  I use it myself to find examples of pieces I’m working on or identify new pieces I might want to do.  I think it's great that students today have such a resource that can help them learn and help keep them excited to learn more.  They can be exposed to so many good and bad examples and with guidance, they can learn from what they find there.

3 Keys to Evaluating Your Success as a Teacher

Or: How to keep your students coming back....

Running a teaching studio is a business.  It takes time and money to attract new students.  It is far more cost-efficient to just keep the good students that you have.  In addition, having a high rate of turn-over in students may mean that there is a disconnect between you and your students.  Here are three ways I evaluate my teaching to make sure I’m focused on keeping students engaged and to keep them coming back.

My students know what I expect of them:  I start with general practice guidelines, how long and how often.  I post their practice assignments online so they always have access.  I set the expectation that they will post a message or call me if they can’t remember how to do something.  I use a reward system for my younger students when they keep their online diaries updated and come to lessons prepared.  I’m a firm believer that people will rise to the level of expectation that is set for them; an exceptional few will set their own standards higher.

My students feel like they have input into their lessons:   I ask young students simple things like “Do you want to tap the rhythm or read the note names first?”  For older students, instead of assigning a piece I give a choice of two or three things in the style of or by a specific composer, and then let them choose the one they connect with.  I encourage them to bring in pieces they want to do in addition to their regular assignments.  I’m still providing the skills and repertoire they must learn, but they have some control over what they are doing as well.

My students are able to recognize their own success:  I very rarely give my opinion on a student’s performance until they’ve self-critiqued.  First I ask what they think they did well, then what they wish they had done better.  We work on what they’ve identified as problematic before I throw in any other critique of my own.  Six days a week they have to self-critique when they practice, and they can be more productive if they know how to evaluate their own performance.  I give lots of positive feedback but if the student can’t recognize their own success, they won’t feel the long term satisfaction that comes with knowing you are good and getting better at something. 

Notice that all three of these things are about empowering students with control over their own success.  It requires them to be active learners, not just passively absorbing the information and skills you teach. If students know what is expected, feel confident to offer input, and can evaluate their own success, they can better manage the learning that happens between lessons.  Regardless of what books you teach from, methods you use, or rewards you give, I think if you are hitting on these three points, you are setting your students up for success.  Students that do well keep coming back and will tell their friends about you! 

5 Things you can do now to attract more students

I live in Bethlehem, PA, a small city of around 75,000 people at the heart of the Lehigh Valley.  We have a really great arts community here.  It has attracted a lot of really talented people, which is great.  But having all these great musicians makes attracting students competitive.  I’m not an expert, but here are 5 things that you can try that have helped me to attract new students, even in a highly competitive environment….

1.       Advertise the old fashioned way – Hang up flyers in places where your target student is likely to see it.  Libraries, schools, churches, community centers, and music stores are great places to hang signs or put out business cards.  Don’t discount the old methods, they still can work.

2.       Specialize – Go after a niche group.  For me at the Music Institute, it’s Suzuki flute.  I’m specifically trying to attract very young students.  You have to go out of town to find another teacher who is active with the Suzuki Association of America so I’ve set myself apart from other local teachers in this way.

3.       Leverage – What is going on in your area that you could provide coaching for?  Is there an audition coming up?  Maybe there is a musical that young vocalists will be auditioning for, or a scholarship competition for young musicians.  Every year when District Band/Chorus audition materials are announced, I immediately start advertising specifically for audition preparation and I always get at least one if not two or three students this way. 

4.       Get out there – Find places to perform where there will be a lot of potential students then talk to them.  Offer to go to a school and do a workshop with the kids studying your instrument or voice.  Perform at a church then hang around to talk to people after to attract students. 

5.       Get all over the web –Build yourself a website, it doesn’t have to be fancy.  If you have high speed internet, you may already have web space and web building tools available to you.  Get in the Yellow Pages online (prices start at free!).  Get yourself on Craigslist - some people are against it for advertising music lessons, but for some people it is the first place they go whenever they need anything, so don’t miss out.  Get yourself on a teacher listing website.  I just started one of these:  www.lessonspark.com, (which also has other studio management tools).  Don’t be afraid to pay a little bit for some listings, the return will be worth it.  The more places and ways you get yourself listed, the more likely you’ll be to eventually show up at the top of a Google search. But make sure whatever you do, link it back to your own site.  Having your own site creates a sense of an established business.   At the very least your site should include your bio and a way to get in contact with you.  All of my ads direct students to my studio website, so most of my inquiries come from the “contact me” form I have on the site.

The key is to be consistent and methodical about getting your studio out there.  I do a monthly review to see if I need to re-word anything, change or renew an ad, or add a promotion related to some new change in the community music scene.  Persistence pays off!

The Big Launch

Hello Friends!  Today is Launch Day! Today is the day I open up my website http://www.lessonspark.com/ to the world.  Many of my friends already know about it, and some of you have tried it (thanks!).  So what is this all about?

One of the things I’ve noticed in the years I’ve been teaching is how much more technologically savvy kids are these days.  Kids play virtual guitars instead of real ones, they talk to friends online that they may or may not have ever met in person.  And yet, they come to their lessons with notebooks (unless they forgot, again!), and they report to us what they did since the last time we saw them.  I thought there must be a better way!  I tried several existing online resources, and found they were overpriced and generally didn’t do much to improve over a lesson notebook. 

I had a vision of what I wanted, so it hit me - I should create it myself. The idea was to create an online tool that was easy to use and help students and teachers stay better engaged. I started with an effective if poorly executed database I created myself.  I built lists, queries, and forms, trying to figure out exactly what I wanted.  If I couldn’t program a function myself, I drew schematics for it. 

Once I had the basic ideas down, I engaged a great group of developers to help me build it, and http://www.lessonspark.com/ is the result.  It accomplishes all of the basic things I set out to do.  It provides teachers with recruiting and studio management.  With it, I can provide my students with more thorough and up to the minute feedback, and they have ownership of tracking their practice. It has a repertoire tracker with archiving capability so they can easily find and refer to prior accomplishments.  The best thing it does is improve communication between the student and the teacher.  Some of my students’ parents said that their children seemed more engaged, and they felt like they were getting more from their lessons.  I don’t have to spend a lot of time monitoring, but it does a great deal for my students’ confidence to get a note from me helping with a problem or congratulating them on good practice.

So to celebrate the launch, and because of my confidence in the site, I am running a promotion from now until March 31, 2011.  In addition to the free 30 day trial, anyone that signs up during this period will lock in the current subscription rate for life!  As long as you remain a member, your subscription rates will never increase.  Right now, the monthly rates are less than the cost of a sandwich at a fast food restaurant and you get a discount for annual membership, so what do you have to lose?  This goes for students or teachers, and there is no limit on the number of people that can sign up so tell your friends too!  Go to the site, take the tour and sign up for a free 30 day membership to try it out.   I’m available for questions or comments, so I hope you like it!