It’s that time of year where parents and students alike are gearing up for summer. Vacations are being planned, plane tickets booked and everyone looks forward with great anticipation to relaxation and good times.

What most people are not gearing up for are summer music lessons.

I’ve heard many arguments both for and against summer lessons. For some, you’re just going against the grain/trying to reinvent the wheel by staying open regularly during the summer. For others, music can only be studied with constant attention and your brain doesn’t know how to just take a summer break and start again – it just knows how to forget everything you’ve been working on.

At our studio, we choose to stay open for regular hours and keep lessons the same during the summer months. We don’t arrange a special summer schedule, we just continue as though nothing has changed in the school system since we are not, in fact, part of the school system. We fondly call ourselves a “year round studio”. We only close a total of 4 weeks a year (staying open the other 48). In exchange we offer unlimited makeup lessons provided proper notice is given and they are accomplished within 60 days of missing the lesson.

We do allow those who don’t want to be year round students to still study with us when they please; but with a slight difference in their tuition (which goes away after they’ve been with us for a straight year since we feel the purpose has been accomplished at that point).

While most people can come up with dozens of reasons why a year round system is madness, we can offer up several reasons why this is a great plan and we hope this gives other studio owners something to consider when planning for the future.

1)      We are able to give our full time teachers a guaranteed salary and benefits year round. Since we are not under the pressure of losing revenue for 3.5 straight months, we can continue our business practices as usual knowing that our cash flow remains fairly constant. Sure, we see a slight dip in registration, but we bet you’d be surprised to know that we only lose about 5-10 students for the summer out of our 450+. It is definitely a unique opportunity for our teachers to have that kind of security no matter what the season.

2)      Music study is a constant process, not something that can take a summer break. We all know this but sometimes the idea of explaining that concept to a culture so ingrained in the idea that their child’s schooling ceases during the summer is terrifying. We think we avoid this issue at large by offering lessons to all ages including a fairly significant adult population and emphasizing the “community music school” part of our niche; making very clear that we are in no way affiliated with the public school system. We purposefully do not line up our four weeks of closures with the school system or follow their inclement weather closures to make this abundantly clear. The less a parent associates you with the school system, the less they’ll garner expectations that you’ll behave like the school system.

3)      It’s easier to avoid the crazy transition back to school time in your business if you don’t have any changes to adjust. For example, if you do a special summer schedule and set of policies in your studio, come the fall you’ll be faced with all sorts of “I forgot the policies for cancellation during the normal school year” or “I don’t remember what my lesson time was supposed to be for the fall”. Not allowing the opportunity for confusion on this by simply continuing your business practices as usual allows for a much smoother transition in your school at “back to school time” and gives the parents one less thing to adjust to on their end.

4)      It’s easier to retain students if you are not ending their lessons. Ending the “school year” in your studio is a perfect opportunity for music lessons to slide off the proverbial plate. By not breaking your schedule in such a permanent fashion, it’s easier to keep students on your roster, which goes back to the stability part of this equation.

We do recognize that sometimes summer lessons are just not possible, but you would be surprised just how many of our clients go along with the lessons during the summer without breaking a sweat…while still enjoying those summer vacations and plans.

Now back to booking those plane tickets for my vacation…

Kate Powell is the office manager at the Catoctin School of Music and enjoys playing her clarinet (currently doing a 100 days of practice challenge!)

First, allow me to apologize for the delay in getting the invoicing issues completed. However, we have narrowed down the problem with recurring invoices and as such we need to rework the invoicing model. Until that is fixed, please do not edit recurring invoices. This includes adding a new student to the list, changing a package or changing the start date. Instead, create a new recurring invoice, with the same criteria that you need and save it. Then, delete the old one to save time and the possibility of invoices not generating.

Thank you all for your patience during this time and support will notify you as soon as the recurring invoice issue is fixed. Please don’t hesitate to let us know if you encounter any problems. 800-517-2811, option 2 or support@studiohelper.com.

I’ve often blogged ideas and advice for growing your studio, and in the past few years I’ve managed to triple my load of piano students.

You may find it odd that this spring, I’ve actually decided to let go of my private lesson students and move solely to group lesson teaching. Yup — I’m downsizing.

It was a difficult decision because I’ve been teaching private lessons for longer and built a close relationships with my students and their families, but we recently welcomed home our second child through adoption, and it has become clear to me that I need to be at home more to meet the needs of my own children.

And so begins the awkward process of letting go of students.

Read the rest of this entry »

Studio Helper has a new survey!

As always, Studio Helper is interested in your feedback. We strive to make Studio Helper as user friendly as possible and we want our customers happy. Please take a moment of your time and complete the survey by following the link below. Thank you for participating!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X82ZK8Z

Spring is here and the phone is ringing! As I respond to the many phone calls I have received about studying piano, I was inspired to do a little research on how to best handle the phone interview. Even though many of my first contacts come through email, I always make a phone call before scheduling a live interview. This spring, I have had more phone calls than emails, which is an unexpected trend. I wonder if it has to do with the many fraud emails that are now out there. Be wary of any emails that ask for your bank account information to transfer funds. I delete them immediately!

At any rate, Joanne Haroutounian in her book Fourth Finger on B-Flat recommends having a fact sheet of information close to your phone that includes pertinent information that you would like to share with prospective clients about your studio. This can include your tuition rates, lesson length, philosophy, available times, and offerings beyond lessons.
Read the rest of this entry »

A few years back, I was invited to join my local chapter of the Illinois Federation of Music Clubs. At first, I was completely intimidated. Most of the members had been teaching piano, voice, and other instruments for many years — some even longer than I’ve been alive! I was relatively new to teaching, since it was something I did in addition to providing music therapy.

But it was nice to be part of a group, and I’ve become more and more involved since joining. I’ve learned so much about music education from my fellow members, and yesterday, I had the opportunity to give back by presenting on a topic that is close to my heart: teaching music to children with special needs.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is wonderful to have the cold winter behind us and to look forward to warmer weather including a sense of rebirth in the air!

We have had a lot of compliments about how lightning fast Studio Helper is. That is wonderful news that at the end of the day, through the rough spots, the upgrade was a huge success! A big thank you to the programmers, developers who helped us through this transition.

Speaking of programmers, they will be working on many new features that have been requested through uservoice. The first to be implemented will be the way you are charged for students. You will now not be charged for former students. Once you move a student to the former status, all future events on the calendar will be deleted since they won’t be active.

This way it also solves your dilemma of keeping students names in your studio in case they come back again. If they decide to resume classes, you can move them back to active. Please note, that if you simply add them to the calendar that will also automatically make them active. Some of the fixes that have been applied include, event reminder emails, inventory counts, PDF reports and tasks on the overview page.

Don’t forget our Distributor Program, where you can earn money referring other studios to Studio Helper.

 Check out our blog. Interesting articles and announcements are on the blog for your review. It’s a great way to keep up with Studio Helper News. Also, like us on Facebook!

 You can submit an idea, or vote on features you would like to see implemented on Studio Helper by going to https://studiohelper.uservoice.com/. You can also email our support team with questions and concerns and also search our Studio Helper Knowledgebase, which contains many answers to frequently asked questions.

 We look forward to your comments and success stories, and will post your comments, stories and suggestions on the Studio Helper Facebook and Twitter page as well.

Apple has made some changes that has directly affected the way you can download or export from SH.

Please read the following links on how to download from Safari

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3659597?start=0&tstart=0

support.apple.com/kb/TA24293

In my years of experience as a piano teacher, I can honestly say that the most challenging part of the recital isn’t the recital itself — it’s the preparation for it. Getting students to practice efficiently and well in preparation for a recital can seriously do me in. Here’s a few things I include as part of my students’ preparation for an upcoming performance:

-Technique: I try to include technique exercises that will enhance their recital piece. If a student is learning a sonatina filled with scales and trills, her warm-up exercises each week will emphasize building strength to play these scales and trills quickly, accurately, clearly and confidently. Read the rest of this entry »

March winds bring April Showers! March winds were a little rough the latter part of March but April is going to be a great time at Studio Helper!

Our team continues to improve Studio Helper. The recent upgrade in March included a new framework and bigger servers. This will increase the loading times for the studios, which is great news! There are a few new features and fixes already in place.

New Features

• Birthday lists are now on the overview page.
• Studio Availability is now featured. It is located under the settings tab and then down to studio availability. You can now set the operating hours of your studio. Instructions are in blue so please read those prior to selecting the availability times.
• In the recurring invoice list, there is now a next button in the bottom right and a drop down arrow to filter how many invoices you want to see on a page.
• There is now a view or print receipt link on the right hand side of the screen while viewing an invoice.

Fixes

• Fixed Remote Registration Page
  
• Fixed Notes Section In Invoices
• Fixed The View In People List
• Fixed Calendar View
• Fixed PDF View
• Fixed Email Feature In Payments

We will continue to roll out new features with the most popular features being implemented first.