Policies Summary

I have thoroughly enjoyed our discussions about studio policies. To recap, we've talked about the importance of having policies, communication, our testimony through our policies, how to cover cancelations, and looked at some great policies from some great teachers out there!

To close out our discussion, I thought I would leave you with these words from the Proverbs:

Proverbs 22:29

“Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.”

Lets be diligent in our business and what God has called us to do!

Studio Policies: Cancelations

I am thoroughly enjoying this discussion about studio policies! Some of you have left some great comments and more ideas for me to think about. If you haven’t been already, be sure to read the comments that have been left on these posts. All together they are a compilation of some great ideas!

Here’s one more aspect of our policies to discuss: the matter of cancelations. There. I said it. The dreaded word. I think if you look up “cancelation” in the dictionary, you will find that the definition reads, “A piano teachers nightmare.”

If you teach anything, then it has happened to you. Cancelations are a common part of our studios. You spend time planning for a student’s lesson, only to have them call and cancel. Just when you were hyped about their lesson!

This matter should be covered in your policies for several reasons.

One, Paying for that lesson

Depending on how you handle payment, that student may have already payed for his lesson. You have to decide if you will reimburse for missed lessons, or if you will try to make up that lesson. Another option is giving the student a time limit. If they give you 24 hours notice, you will reimburse them. But if they give only a couple hours (or minutes :S) notice, no reimbursement. ( I think that having your students pay monthly at the beginning of the month keeps them from canceling more than is absolutely necessary...but thats another topic. :)

Two, make up lessons

Do you have time to offer your student a make up lesson? Can you move their lesson to later in the week? Yes, I think it is good to be able to offer another time-slot. But do not sacrifice responsibilities in other areas.

For this season of my teaching, the Lord has allowed me to be able to be as flexible as a slinky. Many weeks we move lessons around because of work or school schedules. The day may come when I have more students and not so much time to spare, but for now I am glad to be able to move things around for them. We have a policy in place that works well for us.

Three, weather

No matter how well you plan ahead, there comes a day when you wake up and realize you are living in a world gone white. Snow day! Gotta love ‘em, but they sure mess you up if you have to reschedule all those lessons. One day we were in a small blizzard, and our power was out, so I could not even call my students to cancel their lessons! Thankfully it was pretty obvious. :) Your issue may not be snow, it may be hurricanes or earthquakes, I don’t know. (what do you do in the case of an earthquake, anyway?) Whatever the case, forsee those potential problems that are out of your control, and plan ahead.

What do you, as the teacher, do about cancelations? Are there any areas that I have overlooked?

What about you as a student? How do cancelation policies look from your end of the spectrum?

A Matter of Testimony

My topic today, still along the lines of our policies, may be a little different. My purpose is not to make anyone feel guilty, but just to share with you my thoughts on the matter, and how I have decided to handle it.

If you have read my policies, you may have read the following:

For male students, a parent is required to sit in on every lesson if the student is over 13 years of age. If the parent is not able to sit in, please speak to me and other arrangements will be made. This is not because I foresee any problems, but simply to maintain a Christ-honoring testimony.

Did this make you wonder? Do you think I’m weird? (Don’t answer that! :) “Why on earth did she include that?” you may be wondering.

Well, I would love to tell you why. For me, its a matter of my testimony.

For my teaching situation right now, I give lessons at my church. I also happen to be the pastor’s daughter. For these two reasons in particular, I want to make sure that my testimony before my family, church family, and student’s families is clear on this matter. To me it is just the safest thing for me to do.

I Thessalonians 5:22 “Abstain from all appearance of evil.”

So thats what I am going to do in this situation. For me, having a third person nearby helps me to abstain from all appearance of evil.

It may sound hard to do, but for me its quite easy, because I have plenty of siblings to help out. :) Sometimes my brother is outside shoveling, or my sister is emailing in the other room. Thats all it takes. No biggie.

As I said before, I don’t want this topic to make you feel guilty or like you are going against the Bible because you don’t do this. That is not the case. Everyone’s situation is different and unique, and that includes mine. Because of my situations right now, I feel this is the way the Lord would have me follow I Thessalonians 5:22. You may teach in your home or in a studio or in an office and there may be other students coming in and out or whatever. The important thing is that you do what God wants YOU to do in this situation. You are not required or expected to do what God wants me to do.

“Boy she’s legalistic,” you may be thinking (or saying out loud to whoever happens to be close enough to listen). Thats ok, I don’t mind. I am not concerned what you think about me, but that you do what God wants you to do.

If you have any questions for me about this, I would love to answer them. Just leave me a comment. Or if you would like to constructively give your thoughts about this matter, we would enjoy hearing those as well. :)

Above all, lets do God's will for us and our studios.

Policy Links

Here are some of the links I have received to some of my reader's policies:

Emily's

Sarah's (Scroll down and click on "studio policy")

Mandy's

I encourage you to read through these, especially if you are in the process of writing your own policies. Reading through someone else's is a great place to start! Of course, there may be certain circumstances special to your teaching environment that you need to address in your policies. Just adapt to fit your needs!

Here are links to a couple others that I referred to to write my own policies:

Natalie's

Jen's

I hope that this information is helpful to you. If you would still like to link up with your policies, feel free! And if you are working on writing your own and would like me to read over them, I'd love to! I am not saying I have all the answers, but I'd do my best!

Studio Policies: Communication

Can I just say, GO PIANO TEACHERS! So far I have received a couple of links to some great studio policies! I greatly enjoyed reading through them and thinking about the different aspects of my policies. I will share those links for you to read through them later in the week. If you want your policies to be included, send me the link or email them to me.

In examining my policies, and thinking about the importance of them, I started thinking about the importance of communicating with my students and their parents. There are many areas of teaching that need to be communicated, but for this post I’m speaking about the area of our policies and what we expect overall in lessons. I have never been the parent in this situation, but I have been the student, and I appreciate the time my teachers took to explain to me what they expected. Knowing exactly what they wanted me to bring to my lesson, how I was to approach a lesson, how long the lesson would last, etc, all helped me to be a little less nervous as I headed to a lesson. At least slightly less nervous. :)

One area that is always touchy is the area of finances and payments. Parents want to know what is expected, without paying more than necessary. Teachers have a rate they want to be payed, but are cautious about how they approach parents with that desire. This is one area where communication is at best, awkward, and at worst, left “un-communicated.” (I definitely think I just made up a word) Your policies can help with this communication breakdown. If what you expect is detailed in your policies, then there shouldn't be any questions or misunderstandings from anyone. Just be sure to cover missed payments!

Those are a few of the thoughts I've had about this area of communication and policies. I know we all realize the importance of this, but what are some of your thoughts?

Studio Policies

Lets focus for a bit on our studio policies, shall we? I believe that it is very, very important to have policies. I hope that if you teach anything, that you have policies written up. If you don't, let me encourage you to begin!

I wrote mine up last year when I began teaching here in Canada. I did not write them because I felt my students were going to be nothing but trouble and I was going to need them. (If any of my students are reading this...you aren’t trouble! Thank you!) Right now, I teach mostly people from my church or one of their family members. When I first began giving out my policies and requiring my students, or prospective students, to read them, I felt bad. I felt like they were going to perceive me to be a big meany-pants because I have lots of “rules.” And who wants lots of rules?

I don’t feel that way anymore. For one thing, my policies are not rules. (Well, mostly.)They ARE guidelines for me, my students, and their parents to follow so that my students can get the most from piano lessons. I usually hand them to my student or his parent, and say something to the affect of, "Here are my studio policies, which I *lovingly* refer to as my "corner-of-the-church" policies. I don't forsee any problems, but these are to protect myself should any complicated situation arise. Just read through them to get an idea of what I do and what I expect, and let me know if you have any questions." Recently I had a mom thank me numerous times for having my policies written up. She really appreciated that she could read through them.

While I don’t foresee any problems with my current students, in the future I may be able to take on more students from the community. In today’s day and age, it is very easy to get in trouble with authorities because of disgruntled students and parents. This can be avoided by having potential problems covered in your policies so that you can say, “This is how I have chosen to handle this situation, and you agreed to it when you read my policies and signed the dotted line.”

There is a general outline to follow when you write up your policies. Here is the rough outline of things I came up with to include in my policies (Which, by the way, you can read for yourself by clicking here.)

Lesson requirements for student and teacher

Practice requirements for student and parent

Payment

Canceled lessons

Dismissal :-(

If you read my policies, you know that I expounded on these points quite a bit. :) Thats because I can’t say anything in just a few words. But these are the basic things I felt I needed to cover. I also read several other people’s policies to come up with these things and decide what I needed to include.

Lets make this a little teacher-to-teacher discussion! You may not teach piano, it may be some other instrument or even voice, still feel free to join! If you have written studio policies, we would love to read them and get fresh ideas. If your policies are posted on a blog or website, leave your link in the comments below. If they are not posted, but you would like to get into this discussion, go ahead and email them to me. And let us know...why do you include the things you have in your policies? What is your opinion on studio policies?

Info Sheet for New Students

I have had people ask in the past, and someone asked me recently, about the information sheet I use for my new students. So I decided to write a post about it for you all!

Now you'll know my secret...I actually use these files from Natalie over at Music Matters Blog. I have thought about making my own that suit my needs, but for now these are working great. There is one for the student, one for the parent, and some activities to determine where the student is musically. She also has a similar file for transfer students.

What I usually do is highlight the questions I want the student or parent to answer. For each new student it has been different. For instance, some of my students are adults, and so they don't bring their parents to the lessons. No kidding, right? :) So in this case, I highlight things from the student sheet and the parent sheet for them to fill out.

Another thing that makes a difference is how well I know the student. I may not need to know some things about them, like their parents names. Just depending on the circumstance. Highlighting seems to work well. Maybe one of these days I will write out my own sheets, but I think these ones work great!

Do you have a method you use that you would like to share??

New Years Organization

Its that time of year...the time for Christmas clean-up, a few more parties, and New Year’s resolutions.

Yuck, I said the “r” word.

Whether or not we like making resolutions, it is something that almost everyone does - maybe not on paper, or engraved in stone, but as a new year approaches, we all have things we want to change, accomplish, or improve as we start a new year of our lives.

In the area of piano teaching, it should be no different. We all have areas we want to improve in, and things about our teaching that we want to improve. And for many of us, I think that improvement finds its way into one common area - organization.

Now I must admit, when it comes to organization, I am a bit OCD. . . ok, very OCD. I love organizing, and almost everything thing in my room is arranged in alphabetical, numerical, chronological, or color-coded order. My books are on my shelves first by content, then by height. (I worked in a library way too long!)

But despite my mad organizational skills, I always feel I need improvement in this area when it comes to my teaching. Why? Because I want to do what will work for me best. And because when I need something I want to know exactly where it is, and I want that place to be convenient. Oh yeah, and I want my students to think I have it all together. (Ha ha, do I have them fooled!) Most of all, I want to glorify God in everything I do. I Corinthians 14:40 says, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” I believe that the Lord is glorified in something as “little” as organizing!

Part of the reason my teaching materials always need a better organizational method is because I keep most of my teaching materials at home, but I give lessons at the church. So my things must not only be organized but also portable. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve had to turn around and go back to the house for something I forgot. Its a good thing its only one tenth of a mile away!

Here is a peek into my organization for the coming semester of teaching:

This is my everything file. I have a file in here for each of my students. (And you will notice they are in alphabetical order!) In this file I keep books they will soon need, the information sheet they fill out when they begin to take lessons, the worksheets/activities we have completed and those we will do in the near future. I keep everything we’ve done, so that I don’t repeat myself and so I can see what things need more work.

Behind those files are other files for staff paper. I have several different kinds of staff paper, from really large grand staffs to viola clefs. Because I use viola clefs so often.

Next is a recently added file for Christmas music and activities. That way next year it will be easy to browse through in plenty of time to use with my students.

The next file is copies of frequently uses worksheets. I began this part of my file in college when I took Piano Pedagogy class. I use a lot of the material that I gathered in that class, and will probably tell you more about that soon! I also have some of these worksheets saved on my computer, so I can either copy them or print them off when I need them.

The last few files are just bits of random things that I either collected through college or only use once in a while. I have some of my college notes in there as well, so I can refer to them from time to time.

Besides this box, I have 3 expanding files with all my games, activities, flashcards, etc. in another box with some of my other teaching materials. (metronome, stickers, pens, white board, markers, clipboard, and fly swatters. Yes, I said fly swatters.) This box thankfully can stay in a closet at church, because I never need these things at home, and they are easy accessible.

I also keep a binder with a tab for each of my students (in alphabetical order, mind you) where I write down what we work on each week, or what I want to go over next time. This helps me prepare for each weeks lesson without getting my students confused.

And last but not least are the small stacks of arrangement and method books to look through that I keep conveniently under my dresser. Well, they are out of the way at least! But you see what I mean about needing to improve my organization...

Now that I have explained my organization to you, I want to hear how you do it! Are you already very organized? Then what works for you? Are you improving your organization? Then how are you doing it? Or maybe you have a different resolution for this coming year. Whatever the case, I hope you will share it with the rest of us! You can by doing one of the following:

1. Comment on this post

2. Email or Facebook me, and I will post your ideas in another post. (you can remain anonymous if you prefer)

3. Write about your resolution on your own blog or website, and send me the link. I will post the link in another post.

And in case you need a little direction in the area of organization, here is what some other teachers have to say about it:

Here is one way Susan keeps her games organized. Here is a way to keep flashcards organized.

Jen keeps her students organized here.

Here is how Natalie organizes her research online and other web-stuff. Here is her experience organizing last semester. And here are some new years resolutions that she posted.

Hope these are a help! Don't forget to give us your two cents worth about organizing!