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!

Good Things Are Happening

When I started this blog a few weeks ago, I was actually in the midst of personal turmoil about a teaching position I was in.  I was teaching for a music store somewhat out of my area.  I loved my students, but I had lost all but two of them.  A couple of them moved away, others I lost to “the economy.”  And of course, some I lost because they just weren’t into it.  The two remaining students were the first two I started with there, and I didn’t want to “abandon” them.  But for various reasons, it was obvious that no matter what I did, I wouldn’t be able to re-build the studio, and I was essentially losing money traveling there every week for two lessons.  So I resigned.

I was relieved to make the decision, but I had my doubts.  Had I done the wrong thing?  Who was going to replace me with my old students, and would they teach them well?  My resignation wasn’t exactly warmly received, so had I ruined my reputation in that area for other things like my summer camp or workshops I do?

I had my answer pretty quickly.  Within days, I had lined up more new students at my home studio than I had lost.  Things unexpectedly picked up for me at the Music Institute as well, which I’m really happy about.  I finally was able to accomplish some real work towards launching my website www.LessonSpark.com to a wider audience (look out on January 31!).  And, I started this blog!

As tough as it was to decide to make that move to resign from a not-so-great teaching job, it seems to have started good things in motion.  It could just as easily have gone the other way, but I choose to think positively.  I’m going to keep this momentum going.  I choose to believe that I can keep making good things happen, in my teaching and in everything I do!

Where are all the Teaching Jobs? Where are all the Teachers? Part 2

Last week I talked about schools and music stores as potential places to teach music lessons.  So this week I’m going to tackle online referral services and going it alone.

I should start by saying I have never worked for an online service. The services that I am talking about here are where you work for an online company that matches teachers and students.  The students pay the online service, and the teacher then gets a paycheck from the online service.   I’m basing my assessment here on the experience of others and my own research.  I’m not going to name any names, but based on all I’ve learned, I am not a fan. 

The only “pro’s” I’ve been able to identify with these is that they handle all payments from students and to teachers, and they refer students to you.  If you are in a major metropolitan area or new to the business, this may be an okay way to break in. 

The “cons” are big as far as I’m concerned.  Once you are conditionally hired, you may be charged fees to have a background check or for other “paperwork” they have to do to get you on their service.  Sometimes the fees are annual!  Just for the privilege of being listed on their service.  After all of that, you aren’t guaranteed any referrals.  If you do get any students, you may be paid just a small fraction of what the student is paying the service (and you’re not supposed to ask them what they are paying).   Oh, and you may be a contractor, so you’re playing self-employment tax on your small share of the fees.  Not to mention, you will be required to either drive to students’ homes, or provide studio space, and you’ll be required to cover your own expenses on that front as well.

I’m sure there are some folks out there that have had a good experience working with an operation like this, and as a business model, it’s genius!  There aren’t a lot of products out there that you make money coming and going, with such a big profit margin.  That said, I don’t think these services offer enough value to the student to justify the mark-up they pay for the lessons, nor do they provide enough value in the form of referrals for what you lose in lesson fees.  That is why I have chosen to stay away from them.  I’d love to hear from anyone that has had a good experience!

So let’s move on to “Going it alone.”  In every city, town, and village throughout the country, there are all nature of private music teachers teaching out of their home or their car or a rented space.  There are a lot of benefits to starting your own music teaching business.  You decide your own schedule.  You set your own fees (which you get to keep!).  You choose your students.  You decide lesson policies.  You are your own boss.  The drawbacks are that you also assume all the risk and expense.  If you hate dealing with money, are very disorganized, and shy away from confrontation, you may not thrive on your own. 

I’ve maintained some form of independent teaching studio since college, and while I’ve struggled at times, it has been a great experience.  My business is self-determined, so I am able to balance my teaching with performing and with my family and personal life.  It feeds both my need to be teaching and involved in music, and my entrepreneurial spirit to feel like I’m building something uniquely my own.

So if you are looking to break into music teaching, hopefully I’ve given you some ideas of what’s out there.  I’ll be talking more in future weeks about managing your own studio.  There are so many things to think about, from organizing as a business, marketing yourself, designing policies.  That’s all before you even teach a lesson!  Talk to you next time!

Where are the teaching jobs? Where are all the teachers? Part 1

This week, I’ll begin discussing the various types of teaching opportunities and their benefits and pitfalls.  Hopefully those of you starting out or looking to make a change can benefit from my experience because I’ve tried just about everything – sometimes successfully and sometimes not.  I’ll share those insights as well as some things I’ve learned from friends in the business.  Part 1 will deal with music schools and music stores.

For me, teaching in a music program at a school has been a positive experience.  I’ve taught through a high school program at a private school and also at a college (my alma mater).  I like having a well defined program, and it’s someone else’s responsibility to handle lesson scheduling and payments, and I get paid no matter what.  Well established programs will have a constant stream of students coming in based on the reputation of the program.  A quality program will have teaching facilities, pianists for accompaniment, group practice rooms, and recital facilities.  Also the potential for collaboration between teachers is great for your own development.

But there are potential drawbacks to this type of arrangement, depending on your personality.  The first is the potential for a competitive environment.  You may not be the only teacher of your discipline in the program, so you may be competing for students with other more established teachers at the outset.  Also working within the confines of a well defined program might not work for everyone.  Perhaps the school will have policies you find unreasonable, or perhaps you will be required to follow a particular teaching method that you find restrictive.  These are things you will have to weigh in evaluating a school where you might plant your teaching roots.

Music stores provide another potential opportunity. Most communities have stores that offer lessons in conjunction with the sale of instruments.  The work environment is tougher to judge from the outside, and where a music school program is usually defined, a music store often takes on the personality of its ownership.  I’ve had both very good and very bad experiences teaching in music stores.  Here are some things you will want to consider when you evaluate a music store as a potential employer:

·         What is the focus of the store and what are they selling?  If you are a classical flute/piano teacher like me, and you walk into a store covered in Kiss and Metallica posters, guitars and amps, chances are your talents might not be well appreciated or sought after there.  Also, take a look at the quality of the merchandise they sell or rent.  Students will quit if their instruments are in poor condition.  I once had a first-time student have her rental instrument fall apart during the lesson.  Good quality instruments increase the likelihood of success and returning students.

·         What is their visible market presence?  This is probably your most important concern because your success will depend on the store’s ability to attract students.  It’s not enough to be in a good location. How easy are they to find on the Web?  Have your non-musician friends heard of the place?  What is its reputation? I knew an owner who didn’t believe in “free” advertising on the web, and built his own Website to save money.  There was no potential for growth because competitors were splashed across Craigslist and Google, and the website he built himself didn’t even feature the phone number on every page.  Conversely, I worked in a store on a side street without even an exterior sign, and business was fantastic because of its reputation.

·         What are their lesson policies? Do they balance respect for your time with meeting the needs of the student?  If you lose pay because their students cancel, run away. If you are there ready to reach, you should be paid for your time.

·         What are their teacher policies?  Will you have a contract and is it reasonable?  Things like a non-compete clause (an agreement not to teach in a direct competitive situation after separation, which are in most cases unenforceable), or responsibilities to be done on your own time without pay should send up a red flag.  Another thing to watch out for is “contract employee” status, which gets them out of paying payroll taxes on you, and makes you have to pay higher taxes as self-employed.  Lots of stores do this, and it will more be a problem for them than you because the IRS will get their money eventually one way or another.

Once you start working at a music store, pay close attention to the owner’s attitude toward teachers and students. One store I worked at held student events and teacher show-cases several times a year.  They had clear policies, and did everything they could to help me grow my studio.  At times I had a waiting list and the environment was great.  At another, the owner overcharged for sub-par instruments and wasn’t good at keeping his word. Once when he was unable to accommodate a student’s schedule, he told the parent that I was being inflexible – when I hadn’t even been consulted. If the environment is bad, you might find yourself (as I once did) staying longer than you should out of loyalty to the kids.  But keeping yourself and your students in a bad teaching environment doesn’t do anybody any favors.

Next week, I’ll talk about online referral services and teaching on your own.