Help for First Workshop
Found in: Free Introductory Session, Marketing & Advertising
Kathleen C., Australia
I am thinking of running some workshops to grow my studio and wonder if anyone can share their experience. I noted in Simpedia that Mark M. had posted detailed 8-week lesson plan which is very useful. I wonder if anyone else ran their workshops over more or less number of weeks and found them effective also?
- How many students would you have in a group and how long is each lesson? Do you apply the same principle as for normal foundation lessons?
- How do you charge? Would you charge the same rate as your normal lessons or charge a cheaper rate?
- Do you normally run a FIS to enroll for the workshop or do you incorporate the FIS conversations in the workshop?
- How much time would you generally allow between running your first ad for the workshop, and the 1st lesson?
- In fact, how would you compare recruiting via workshops and recruiting via FIS? Is one or the other more effective for certain audience, e.g. children vs adults?
Although I have been teaching SM for over a year now (and traditional for over 10 years) this is the first time I am actively growing my studio so any advice is greatly appreciated.
Mark M., New York
Since the topic of my older info came up, I thought I’d reply with an update, since I’ve revised my outline several times over the years. I don’t have a good easy-to-interpret single handout that shows how I break things down now, but here’s a summary:
–I felt a need to more strongly contextualize the workshop as an introduction to piano lessons, a sampling of what it would be like to take piano lessons plus added information to help let them know what it would be like.
–I stopped doing 8 weeks and for quite some time now have done 6 instead.
–I integrated more intro session content into the first and last classes, and more general “learning process” discussion throughout.
–More and more as I revised, I pushed toward breaking the projects down so I’d be covering multiple main projects at a time, each spread out over several weeks — much more like how I integrate the streams in general in regular lessons. It produces better results and gives students a better sense of what lessons would be like.
–I no longer cover the Basics in their entirety, instead integrating only the barest minimum at appropriate points in the context of teaching the songs themselves.
–I hardly ever now teach any of the variations/arrangements or refer to extra accompaniments, instead just demonstrating some of the arrangements in the last class as a way to show some of the places we take these pieces in the future. For most students, the foundation was never solid enough for them to really take this away successfully.
I still teach this mostly through continuing education programs. They tend to be anywhere from 5-12 students, almost always hour-long sessions, which is often too much time, so I just use that time to more thoroughly process things or provide deeper explanation about the overall method/approach. The programs charge the students and then pay me an hourly fee, so I earn much less than if I were offering the workshops directly, but to me it’s good to get paid at all for what is essentially a recruitment and marketing activity, things that would otherwise cost me money and time. These days I tend to get $40/hour from both main programs where I teach. And you know, really, when it comes down to it, that’s an awfully good wage.