Studio Management
Recital Space Size
I’m in the process of planning my first real recital. Can anyone share with me typical attendance / audience size you’ve experienced based on your student body size? I have no real idea what size venue to pick based on how many students I have.…
Recital Cost
Greetings all – how do you cover the costs of your recitals (I am primarily thinking of facility rental costs)? As a parent, we have had a music teacher who asked parents of students participating in the recital to contribute $10 as well as snacks,…
Pay Rate for Employed Teacher
I’m planning on having some of my traditional teachers who work for me go through the SM program, and can’t seem to come up with the best way to pay them. I know Neil talks about starting them at $XX/hr and I’ve heard others start…
Handling it When Students Leave
For various reasons, I have only been available to teach a fairly small number of students one-on-one (an average of about eight) since beginning teaching Simply Music just over a year ago. Fortunately it has been enough to become experienced which has been great. I…
Attrition Questions and Solutions
We are concerned about reported high attrition rates and we would like to hear from experienced teachers on this issue so that we can identify patterns and issues and then develop strategies to reduce attrition. We’re referring to yearly attrition rates, not monthly. Here are…
Attrition Woes and The Economy
From talking with teachers across the country, Simply Music and others, many are experiencing the same thing. I blame the economy and the stress many are feeling a year after the economic downturn for much of it. I have talked to people who didn’t believe…
Email and Text Ending Lessons
Text & email…the easy way out of personal/uncomfortable conversations? First off I love email, texting & all the benefits and ease it has given me. What are your thoughts on parents that send a text or email withdrawal? I have a policy sheet, which I…
Summer Schedule- Weekly Lessons
I’m a newly licensed Simply Music teacher in CO and am working through how best to launch my studio. I’ve been reading the forum conversation entitled “Summer Dropouts” and am now feeling perplexed as to how to start teaching when it seems that there’s so…
Summer Lessons
What do most of you do in the summer regarding lessons? For my first two Summers, I pretty much just let my general policies hold. Originally, I had a policy of letting people get tuition credit for any absences they told me about in advance,…
Territory and Teaching Experience
I had an interesting conversation with a student today and I wonder if anyone has any thoughts… It started because I had a comment on an evaluation form that Simply Music lessons are overpriced. I realized that the student hadn’t attended an FIS and thus…