request vs requirement
Webinar Series: 10/24/2017 – Piano – Developing Strong Communication Skills
Neil discusses some the components of powerful communication in this webinar. Learn how you can ensure that your studio requirements are clearly understood and met by your students and coaches, thus maximizing your success as a teacher and your students’ success with their lessons. Topics…
Non-compliant teenagers
I’m going to be real. I feel like firing two teenage students that never do what they’re told despite both parent and method coach enforcement every single week. Mom’s committed. We have had the talk for a couple months and I’m on my last rope.…
Non-compliant student
I have a student who comes with his grandmother as coach. She pays for his lessons, but he lives with mom and stepdad. Mom was coming as coach at first, but now it’s grandma. At first this worked fine, and he was making progress. Lately…
Teacher burnout
I’m in a valley, that’s for sure. I’m tired of starting work at 5pm while everyone else is starting to prepare their dinner. And I’m tired of talking to the students constantly about their playlists, tired of hearing them say they practice all their songs…
Playlist management
The biggest struggle I have with my students is the playlist. Most of them are not interested in using it, forget, or just don’t do it despite my best efforts. Keeping their songs instantly playable is an ongoing problem and uses more lesson time than…
Teacher frustration
Frustrated with students! Not using their playlist, forgetting their songs, sulking if something looks too hard before giving it a go. Still using the toilet even when I send a message to the parent an hour before every lesson to say please go to the…
Requirement/Non-requirement based studios
I would like to ask a more philosophical, yet altogether practical question. At what point does a studio become a requirement or, non-requirement based studio. Where is the line? I would imagine every teacher would have their own set of requirements – many would be…
Private Lessons
Okay, so I finally quoted $150/month for private lessons. This is a girl who I have moved three times and seems not to fit with any other students. By default she has been in private but I told the mom today, that after August she…
Request vs Requirement Based Studios
December 2006 Neil came over to Australia for a series of workshops and spoke about the difference between Require and Request. This was a rather large insight for me. Although I knew where Neil was coming from and could appreciate it, I did wonder how…
Talking to moms about behavior issues
I am trying to figure out how to better handle this issue in the future. I do shared lessons with 2 kids at a time. One kid has been with me for 1.5 years. He was with his brother, and his behavior was so poor…