Workshop – Overlapping Music & Intro Session
Found in: Free Introductory Session
Lynn S., Illinois
I’m just filling out paperwork now to hold a free Intro program to Simply Music at our community house.
Here’s my question. If people sign up for a 4- or 6-week workshop and receive the four songs in the materials, won’t they feel like the Foundation 1 materials overlaps with the workshop material?
Does that cause any problem? Do you still have the students play Night Storm, Jackson Blues, Amazing Grace and Ode To Joy – but using a different arrangement?
Elaine F., South Carolina
Since there are 4 songs that are the same in Level 1, I give them a 40% discount on the Level 1 materials. I want to create the perception of value and fairness at all times.
Mark M., New York
I’ve incorporated much but not all Intro Session material when I do the Workshop 1 program. I wonder about possibly doing a full Intro Session as the first class, assigning only watching each song’s video chapter 1 demo and possibly very little else, on the notion that the con of not giving much or any piano content for the 1st week may be made up for by the added benefit of getting the full Intro Session impact up front. Thoughts, especially from those teachers who may already do a full Intro Session as some part of delivering Workshop 1?
Laurie Richards, Nebraska
I have tried several different formats with the workshop. I’ve settled on doing a 4-week workshop but requiring participants to attend a regular FIS prior to beginning the workshop. We usually hold 3 or 4 per month anyway, so they just join one that’s already scheduled.
I think it’s really important that they get that information, or you run the risk of unmet expectations if they didn’t know anything about Simply Music already.
Mark M., New York
These follow-up questions would be irrelevant if people were attending a regular FIS w/others who weren’t doing the workshop, and I’m hesitant to abridge or change the tried-and-true FIS format in any case, but I wonder about a couple of possible tweaks when doing an FIS with only people who were about to do the workshop:
–Would you consider eliminating the Ode To Joy teaching demo or switching it to some song outside the W1 materials? It seems like demo’ing OTJ might confuse the actual teaching of the song so soon afterward, but there does seem benefit in having some kind of demo. Then again maybe it’d be great that they’d have a head start on OTJ, making it that much easier to squeeze the rest of the material in the few short lessons afterward…?
–Would you consider eliminating the lesson/fee details section that wraps up the FIS, or perhaps only doing it at the very end of the workshop? I find that most people take the workshop with no or little or only tentative interest in considering ongoing lessons, and it strikes me that giving this info up front risks turning people off as too hard a sell.