Simpedia

Susan M., Washington

I had a 79-year-old lady who is a traditional teacher, sign up for lessons with me so that she could learn herself and then go home and teach her grandkids using this method.  Her 89-year-old friend also signed up, and I put them together in a Shared Lesson.

I gave them the Foundation Session and I mentioned the importance of NOT going ahead on the video. I taught them the first song and sent them home to “be wonderful”.

A couple days later I got a call from the 89 year-old who said she wasn’t going to continue. She said she could get what she needed from her friend (the 79-year-old teacher).

I called the 79-year-old lady and she confessed to watching the entire video and learning all the songs quite easily. She wanted me to “just sell her the videos” and let her learn from them alone!  Of course I told her I couldn’t do that.  I mentioned the Learn-at-Home program, but pointed out that after she finished that program, she’d either need to learn with a teacher or take the Teacher Training Program.  I also offered the option of joining another Shared Lesson.

This lady, after only one lesson, got the impression that the video was all she needed and all that there was to Simply Music.  In the future I will be sure to talk about these issues at my Foundation Sessions!  Hopefully I can avoid a similar situation.

She opted to join my lesson in which a 10 year-old girl and an 8 year-old boy have had eight lessons and just finished learning Ode to Joy. These children have also learned all of the Dreams arrangements.

Here is what I did to show her the mistaken assumptions:

She arrived early to the lesson, so I had her play the songs for me.  She couldn’t remember how to start on Dreams. Then she played the LH with the last note falling with the 3rd note of the RH.  She played Storm with the LH pinky not playing every time the LH changed.  She played Jackson Blues perfectly. After that, the others arrived and I began the lesson.

I had the children play their Arrangements, partly because I needed to see how they were doing, but mostly because I wanted to show the lady that everything she would learn from a teacher is not on the video.  It worked wonders! She was all excited and, after each Arrangement, kept saying, “I want to learn that!”.

I also spoke with everyone in the lesson about paying for and beginning the Accompaniment Program. The lady was excited about that and paid me for it right then.

I had the lady stay after the lesson for about 15 minutes so I could “catch her up” on the Arrangements.  I also told her I would be charging a little extra for that extra time. She agreed and gladly paid for the extra time.

I plan to go through all the songs the children have learned so far with this lady to “clean them up” and also to point out to her why she needs to go at the proper speed and not watch the video ahead.

I feel that this problem was successfully solved, so I thought I’d share it with all of you. Hope it is helpful.