Business Articles for the Piano Teacher – Dollarhide follow-up

I’ve just finished presenting both sessions of the “Stress-free Business Practices for Your Studio” workshop at Dollarhide’s Music, a wonderful music store in Pensacola, Florida. I love the staff there and they have been so easy to work with! If you are anywhere near that area, I’d recommend paying then a visit as they can help you find just about anything related to piano teaching.

I told all of the fabulous teachers that attended that I would write a post so that they could simply click on the many links to articles with further information. There are lots more articles about this and other pedagogy topics in the queue, so don’t forget to sign up for the email newsletter to have these ideas delivered to your email every 2 weeks or so. Here are the links that you found in your handout and others that you might find helpful:

Stress Free Business Practices for Your Music Studio DollarhideFollow-up

Tuition

Free Tuition Brochure

More on Sample Tuition Plans

Dealing with Students Staring Mid-year

Yearly Price Increases

CPI Index Calculator from U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics

Should I Raise My Rates This Year?

How to Increase Tuition (or make any policy change) Without a Revolt

Wording for your policy:

“Families should expect a yearly increase in tuition appropriate to cost of living increases, expenses, and services offered.”

Flex Weeks

How to Institute Flex Weeks

More on Taking Unscheduled Time Off (this includes examples of how to do this if you use the school year + summer plan or the semester + summer plan)

Here’s wording for when you use your flex weeks:

“I will be taking this week off as one of my vacation weeks. You will not be paying for this week since I will still schedule myself to teach 40 weeks in the year as stated in my policy. Tuition will be the same for this month.”

Makeup Lessons

Top 5 Reasons You SHOULD Give Makeup Lessons (in case you want to chuckle again)

To Give or Not To Give Makeup Lessons (lists a number of options and the pros and cons of each)

How to Move to a No Make Ups Policy

Longer Lessons

A Guide to Moving Students to Longer Lessons Step-by-step guide to help you make this happen.

Here are suggested wordings about lesson lengths for your policy:

“As a student advances, they will need to move to 45 minute lessons.”

“Thirty minute lessons are only available for students in year 1 of piano. Students in year 2 or beyond will be enrolled in forty-five minute lessons.”

“Students may enroll in 45 or 60 minute lessons. Thirty minute lessons are only offered to beginning students and at the teacher’s discretion.”

Communicating

How to Increase Tuition (or make policy changes) Without a Revolt

Rhythm Session

Rhythm Menagerie

Rhythm Manipulations

Rhythm Manipulations Challenge

Rhythm Cup Explorations 

Tips for using Rhythm Menagerie, Manipulations, or Cup Explorations (including Zip and Unzippable binder clips that I recommended for adding units to your students rhythm book):
I love using the GBC ProClick P50 Desktop Binding Machine  for Rhythm Menagerie, Rhythm Manipulations, and other camps and resources I make for my students.

My Favorite Teaching Tools

We didn’t talk about these, but I like to include them anyway in case you are interested!

Pilot Frixion Erasable Highlighters

Pilot Frixion Erasable Gel Pens

Certificates of Artistry

30 Piece Challenge

Diane Hidy’s Blog

Did you forget to sign up for the newsletter?


More…

All Dollars and Sense Posts (all kinds of info here including marketing and more!)

Got Enough Money? (Kristin Yost’s take on these issues)

Policy tips from Daycare (An interesting idea on late payments)

And You Thought My Makeup Lessons Policy was Severe (Everyone does this differently, so here’s another take)

Business Plans (a thought and link to one of my favorite bloggers and her helpful business plan resource)

Marketing 101Marketing 102: Moving to a New CommunityMarketing to Homeschool Students

Some Favorite Blogs I Referenced

Leila Viss
Diane Hidy
Elissa Milne

And finally…

If you want to hear this again, want to recommend this to a friend, or missed it and want to attend, check out the upcoming webinar containing all this info and more!

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