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I imagine that, in one way or another, you are caught up in the drama of politics these days. My feelings have been impassioned and vocal around the proposed elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). It is not unusual for me to write when my sensitivities feel challenged, as is cur...
If you have successfully moved from a per-lesson payment system to a tuition-based structure,1 you may still be left with the challenge of parents paying on time. There are many ways to tackle this issue, so choose what works best for your business. Prepay in fullThe most effective means of ensuring that payments come to you on time is prepay...
A studio full of hard-working and well-mannered students is every piano teacher's dream. But few teachers actually have the opportunity to live this dream for their entire careers. The truth is that most teachers have at least one student that they do not enjoy teaching. It might be due to a communication problem, a mismatched energy issue, a behav...
The written critique is the single most important responsibility of an MMTA judge. It provides the student with a tangible record of the audition and it may affect and influence the student's development for years to come. A great critique is nurturingA great critique is always respectful and kind. Set a positive tone by including positive o...
In groups as large, active, and diverse as most state and local music teacher organizations, the task of hiring an evaluator is one that circulates among different members. While I'm aware that the terms adjudicator and/or judge are probably used more often than evaluator, they are all one and the same. My personal preference is evaluator, as I bel...
Teachers should always strive to provide positive and successful music experiences for their students. Within the walls of the teaching studio, it is much easier to create these experiences—the environment and people involved are familiar, and the teacher has more control of outcomes. However, this is not the case when students leave the studi...
I recently had the privilege of attending the Winter meeting of the National Association for Music Merchants (NAMM) in Anaheim, California. This is one of the two biggest music industry trade shows in the world, and it was quite a spectacle.The Anaheim Convention Center covers fifty-three acres, and NAMM occupied every inch. Imagine a main exhibit ...
In Part 1 of "Are your marketing strategies deep enough?" (Jan/Feb 2017), we talked about the first four frequently overlooked principles of marketing: 1. We must know what our clients really want. 2. We must make sure we have a product or service that they want. 3. Regardless of how they hear about you, we must remember that parents of school-age ...
I recently met a passionate young teacher who told me this story: "One of my students came up to me the other day and observed: 'Mrs. L., you either love what you do, or you just can't find another job!' The child, only seven years old, had already intuited society's adage: 'Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.'" We laughed together over this...
Marketing piano lessons is most often used to refer to the process of obtaining new piano students. Consequently, when our studio is full or has a waiting list, it is easy to think that we no longer need to market.But marketing is also about retaining current students, especially since we want the diligent ones to continue in our studio. In a...
