Practice with Purpose: Creative Ways to Motivate and Engage Your Music Students

Practicing is the cornerstone of musical progress, but let’s face it: keeping students motivated to practice can sometimes feel like an uphill battle. As educators, it’s our job to make practicing not only effective but also fun and engaging. When students practice with purpose and enthusiasm, they make meaningful progress while developing a lifelong love for music. Let’s explore some creative ways to incentivize practice and keep your students inspired!

1. Gamify the Practice Experience

Transform practice into a game to keep it exciting and rewarding:

• Practice Challenges: Create weekly or monthly challenges, like mastering a tricky passage or playing a piece flawlessly three times in a row. Offer small rewards, like stickers, certificates, or even virtual badges.

• Progress Charts: Use charts or apps where students can track their practice time or accomplishments. Seeing their progress visually can be highly motivating.

• Practice Bingo: Design a bingo card with different practice tasks (e.g., “Play with perfect dynamics” or “Practice for 20 minutes without stopping”). Completing a bingo earns students a reward.

2. Personalize the Journey

Every student is unique, so tailor their practice experience to match their interests and goals:

• Repertoire Selection: Choose pieces that resonate with their musical tastes or connect to their favorite artists. Personal passion fuels motivation.

• Creative Assignments: Encourage them to compose their own short pieces or create variations on a song they love.

• Student-Driven Goals: Let them set their own practice goals, whether it’s learning a specific piece, mastering a technique, or preparing for a performance.

3. Incorporate Technology

Leverage digital tools to modernize and enhance the practice experience:

• Apps for Practice: Apps like Tonara, Piano Maestro, or Simply Piano make practice interactive and fun by providing feedback, tracking progress, and offering rewards.

• Recording Sessions: Have students record themselves during practice. Listening back not only helps them identify areas for improvement but also lets them celebrate how far they’ve come.

• Virtual Duets: Pair students with you or other students for online collaborative performances. Technology allows for creative engagement, even outside the lesson room.

4. Celebrate Achievements

Recognition can go a long way in motivating students:

• Practice Awards: Hand out awards for consistency, improvement, or creative effort during practice sessions.

• Showcase Talent: Create opportunities for students to share what they’ve learned. Recitals, studio showcases, or even sharing videos online can be a great way to acknowledge their progress.

• Highlight Milestones: Celebrate when they reach a significant milestone, like completing a challenging piece or mastering a new technique.

5. Foster a Growth Mindset

Encourage students to view practice as an opportunity for growth rather than a chore:

• Celebrate Effort, Not Just Results: Praise their dedication and improvement, even if they don’t get it perfect right away.

• Teach Problem-Solving: Show them how to break down difficult sections into manageable parts. This empowers them to approach challenges with confidence.

• Focus on Fun: Remind them that music is about joy and expression. A light-hearted approach helps create a positive association with practice.

6. Get Families Involved

Parents and guardians play a key role in encouraging practice:

• Parent-Student Practice Sessions: Encourage parents to participate in practice time, even if it’s just as an audience.

• Practice Logs: Provide logs where parents can leave encouraging notes or observations about practice sessions.

• Family Recitals: Organize informal performances at home, fostering a supportive environment where students feel proud to share their progress.

Final Thoughts

Engaging students in practice doesn’t have to be a struggle. By incorporating creativity, personalization, and a sense of fun, you can transform practice into a purposeful and enjoyable part of their musical journey. Remember, the ultimate goal is to help students build a lifelong connection with music—one that inspires passion, perseverance, and joy.

Now it’s time to take these ideas and start inspiring! How will you make practicing purposeful and fun for your students today? 🎶

Happy Teaching!

5 Secrets to Skyrocket Student Retention in Your Music Lessons

Keeping students engaged and excited about lessons and practicing is one of the challenges teachers face in retention for lessons. If the student isn’t having fun, they won’t want to practice; lessons become challenging because you, the teacher, have to reteach the previous lesson, and you can’t accomplish what needs to be done in the lesson and the student doesn’t make the progress they are hoping for. To help combat this cycle, here are 5 secrets to Skyrocket your Student Retention.

1) Give A Little: Have a fun studio atmosphere. Be a little less formal than the teachers were a couple of decades ago. Play music online for them. Have them bring in the music they want to do. Talk about their favorite music and see if you can find sheet music just for that as a “fun song”.

2) I Am Not Above Bribery. Candy is sometimes the best incentivizer. I like to have a bowl of candy in eyeshot of the students during their lesson and allow them to pick from AFTER their lesson. They only get the candy at the end. And you better believe they are thinking about what candy they want to pick from the bowl for most of the lesson.

3) Make Practicing and Assignments Fun. Have fun activities for them to work towards. Create a sticker chart where students can earn prizes for practicing or completing assignments in their theory workbook or other outside assignments.

4) Embrace Holidays. Use holidays to decorate your studio space, and special candy or themed activities year after year so students know what to expect and look forward to each year.

5) Get The Whole Studio Together! Offer group classes, or performance classes where students can practice performing for other’s in a safe space, but also allows them to meet other students in the studio. Never hurts to have a short pizza or ice cream party afterward too!

Unleash Your Inner Musician: How Teaching Private Music Lessons Can Take Your Musicianship to the Next Level

There’s one thing to be able to do something, but teaching others, that’s a whole new ball game. I remember when I decided to start teaching, I literally sat down at my piano and thought, “how the heck did I learn how to do this?” Because, I don’t really remember the first few years of learning. It was just something I went to and didn’t become an enjoyable passion until I was in 7/8th grade. By being a teacher you have to internally reflect and always learn changing ways to help students excel.

• You have to learn how to explain musical concepts and techniques clearly to your students. And as it’s an ever growing and learning experience you will develop new techniques over time as you evolve as a teacher. Don’t feel boxed in that you have to teach a specific way. Create what works for you that conveys the proper information.

• Sit at your instrument and work through it. How did I learn to play this? How do I do this? When did I learn scales or other techniques? How do I show someone how to…The list goes on.

• Plus don’t just sit with your instrument thinking, you have to lead by example. Rework your own technique. Sit down and drill out those scales. Revisit some old songs you learned back in the day. How can you improve them now. Or learn a new song or 2. Just start back into your own playing.

• Is there an organization you can participate with? A music club, community ensemble, band, choir, orchestra. Join those groups for the experience of rehearsing and performing on a regular basis.

🎶 Each teacher will have their own style in how they present ideas. Some people refer to “ C” as home note, or the C scale. For my younger kids I teach positions before I teach pentascales or full scales. We call it C Position, “CPOS” or Middle C Position “MCP” (when the thumbs are sharing middle C) and as the student progresses I teach the full meanings terminology. Your goal is to create terms that work best for your students.

Remember, your goal as the teacher is to teach as much as you can in the time you have available. Each student is going to learn differently and you have to lean into that as a teacher. Just keep trying new ways that work for you and your students.

Happy Teaching!

Unlock the Musician Within: How to Incentivize Music Practicing and Boost Your Student's Skills

Practicing, most people don’t like it. I didn’t like it all that much growing up. And I liken the idea of practicing to my adults to “working out”. We know we need to do it to get better but, you have to make time for it to truly make a difference in growth and ability to progress.

With kids, it’s a little easier, because you have the parent there to remind them to get it done. For my own child, who takes lessons from another teacher, has a reminder on our home speaker device to remind him at 3:15 to practice each day. Here are some top tips to help incentivize your students to practice more frequently.

1. Personal Incentivizing. My kid knows that he can’t go out to play with friends until he is done practicing. He has now developed the habit to practice before the reminder goes off because he really wants to go out and play. So he developed his own personal incentivizing. Talk with the parent about how they can figure out or learn what is a personal incentive to practice for their child. Could be anything from watching tv, or playing with friends. Or creating their own little sticker chart at home.

2. Sticker Charts work wonders. Not only does it allow the student to see their stickers increase over time but they are likening the idea of results-based progress. “If I do this, I get better at this.” Each year, we have a 75 Days of Practicing challenge in my studio to help incentivize consistent practicing leading up to our big spring recital.

3. Candy Bowl. It’s as simple as having a bowl with candy for your students to take a piece at the end of each lesson. But, set rules to go with it. Good lesson and practicing the week before they could take an extra piece before they leave.

4. Have the student perform regularly. You can create monthly or bi-monthly performance classes for your students to perform for each other. That way they are always working towards something to showcase, which means, if they are going to perform it, they have to practice it to be ready. If the student isn’t at a specific level of performance for a piece they can’t perform. It’s harsh but it keeps the kids at a certain level of expectance in their practice habits.

Which tip would have helped you most when you were a kid learning your instrument? Be sure to leave a comment and let me know!

Happy Teaching!

Successful Music Studio Bookkeeping -- NOW AVAILABLE!

Ready to get your books in order, literally? I’m an organizing guru with my books for my studio and I’m sharing all my secrets and in this mini course. Get access to the same templates I’ve been using for years that are easily customizable and duplicatable, year after year and student after student.

What you get:

I walk you through how to organize your studio folder right from the get go!

Lesson Summary (What I call invoices) for single and multiple students, and how to print and send it to your students (Set for every month of the year)

Payment Receipt (with attendance log) (for every month of the year and a yearly summary)

Total Money Earned sheet so you can see in one place, how much you’re earning, gross and net each month and for the whole year across your entire studio (Along with a year by year summary to watch your business grow!)

Tax Expense report

Inventory Acquisition, Lending library, Sale log

Plus 2 bonus!

Each sheet is designed to look simple yet professional, good enough to send to any student, and to be used as official documents come tax season. All formulas included, so all you have to do is just enter in the appropriate information and it’s done.

Tutorial videos included for every sheet on how to customize, use, save and print.

Templates for both Apple iOS Numbers and Windows EXCEL.

Happy Teaching!

Successful Music Studio Bookkeeping Mini Course

It's time to get excited! With covid, and 3 kids at home (feels like forever), development, of this course has been delayed...But no more! Kids are finally back in school and I'm hard at work again! 

Because it's been so long, I've decided to drop a new mini course soon. The one I've been asked for the most...

Successful Music Studio BOOKKEEPING! It’s my next mini course with access to the bookkeeping templates I've been using for since I started teaching (improved along the way!). 
 

In this mini course you’ll get access to the templates I created to help make my bookkeeping simple and duplicatable year after year and student after student.

Templates Included in both iOS and Windows compatible:

• Monthly Lesson Summary, for single and multi-student families (including completed formulas)

• Payment Receipts used for each student with Attendance tracking log (including formulas)

• Tax Expense Report

• Gross and Net Yearly Income Tracking Sheet

• Studio Inventory Tracking Sheet

BONUS:

• Gig Earnings Log (to track additional income)

• Business Childcare Log (because being a mom with 3 kids, my own business, sometimes we need to have help!)

Each template includes a tutorial video to walk you through how to customize the template to fit your studio and needs.

Are you excited for this? Is this something you need? Drop a comment and let me know! Also be sure to get on the mailing list so you’re in the know when this course launches HERE!

For now, you can continue to browse the site! You can get your studio started on the right foot with our Customizable Private Music Studio Policies. Check out more blog posts Successful Private Music Studio Secrets Blog, or head back to HOME.

Happy Teaching!

Revamp Your Business Model: Unleashing The Power Of Innovation

Your business, your way! Teaching private music lessons is already an atypical job, but you can take it further and truly mold your business to fit your life best. If you haven’t already, check out this post about 7 Strategies for Building a Music Studio Business Model that sets you apart from the Competition to get started on developing your business model. But lets talk about how you can be more innovated!

1) Offer online private lessons. Online lessons are more common now, because of the recent events that have taken place in our wold. But many teachers have opted to only teach online because it worked for them. Check out the 5 tips I share here on How To Transition To Online Teaching to get you started.

2) Offer group lessons. This is perfect for guitar, piano and violin, but really there is no limit on which instrument you can do this with. Just to give an idea of how it would work, group lesson held weekly for a class of 5 at $100/month per student, is $500 for just one 30-60 minute lesson a week. If you can teach 3 days a week for a total of 6 hours a week (6 - 1 hour lessons), I’ll let you do the math. The goal would be to find enough students to fill each class slot. (🎶 homeschoolers)

3) Offer online studies. This is kind of taking group lessons online, but really, you record a lesson a week and create a website for people interested to subscribe to weekly lessons or tutorials. (🎶 like Patreon) Classes would be like: how to read treble clef, and another for how to read bass clef. Basic lessons but provided weekly to wide range of people.

4) Workshop/Masterclass Clinician/Group teacher. Reach out to the local schools and let the music teacher know that you are available to host a masterclass for your specific instrument to help their students. Or host a workshop at a senior center to help them learn a new instrument. You’ll have to work out details or your hourly rate with whomever you work with but this is a different approach.

Happy Teaching!

xo, Becky

10 Proven Strategies to Keep Your Music Teaching Business Running Successfully

As a music teacher and entrepreneur, you know that running a successful teaching business can be challenging, but also incredibly rewarding. Whether you are just starting or have been in the industry for years, there are always new strategies and techniques to learn and implement to grow your business and keep it running successfully. In this article, we will explore 10 proven strategies that will help you keep your music teaching business running smoothly and successfully. From creating a solid business plan to leveraging social media and building strong relationships with your students and their families, you will discover practical tips and insights that will help you take your teaching business to the next level. So, whether you are looking to attract more students, increase your revenue, or simply improve the quality of your teaching, read on to discover how you can achieve your goals and build a thriving music-teaching business.

1. Develop those long-term friendships with your student. Make lessons fun, and have a candy bowl. When your student is super excited to come to lessons or practice at home, the parents will see that and will love that they don’t have to work as hard to get their kid into lessons. They will thank you for it and will tell their friends all about you and your business and referrals are GOLD as a small business.

2. Offer a referral incentive. This goes right along with #1. The more your students bring, the more in demand you become. Make sure you have a stipulation, that only 1 benefit is awarded monthly. For my studio, the students will receive 1 free month of lessons once a referral student starts. You can stipulate, max 2 referrals a semester, or good for any month of their choosing. But this is something to have added to your Studio Policy!

3. Create a Lesson Agreement that new students have to continue lessons for 4-6 months (you decide the length) to allow enough time for the student to fully get the basics learned and if music is right for them. This shows the parent you are worth investing in for at least a determined amount of time.

4. Create a solid business plan of a set teaching schedule and even make up lesson frequency, and stick with it. When you treat your business like a business, you will be regarded as a business, not just the neighborhood piano teacher that is doing this in their spare time.

5. Word of Mouth! Referrals are GOLD, but you still have to tell people that you are a teacher/offer music lessons. ADVERTISING is necessary for any business. People won’t know unless you tell them about it. Get business cards made and carry some with you everywhere you go. Hang one up on community boards when you see one. Leave it on a counter at a business where other cards are being left.

6. Think outside of the box in what you can offer. Offer to record music and splice recordings together, be an accompanist, offer songwriting workshops, theory workshops…The list can go on and on! You can check out more ideas in this post about innovative teaching opportunities!

7. Don’t feel like you have to cater to the masses. Limit your studio to what you can realistically handle. And price your tuition at what you are truly worth, not what others think you are worth. Teaching can take a lot out of you, especially if you are teaching in small pockets during the week or weekend after working another job during the day.

8. Build a waitlist. While it’s hard to say, “I have no room right now” when you "might “ be able to add an extra lesson day in to accommodate every student that comes calling, you will be making sacrifices somewhere else. For me, I teach 3 days a week almost right as soon as school gets out and often finish teaching when it’s my kid’s bedtime. I dedicate 2 days that I don’t teach so I can help my own kids with after-school studies and have time with them. If I gave that time up for more lessons, I miss more time with my kids.

9. Value your time. Don’t be the teacher that always goes over lessons and makes another student wait. Just like going to a doctor’s office, no one likes having to wait beyond their specified time. If a student is late, there is no make-up time at the end of lessons. When you respect your time, the families will too. And things happen, but when it becomes a constant problem, address it with the parent as “Is there another time in the week that works better for your family.”

10. Incentives work wonders for kids and families. When you have a challenge for your kids to work towards with BIG REWARDS. Believe it or not, candy does the trick, especially when they get to pick what candy they are getting. Be very clear about how the student earns the reward. I usually send an email out to families with the challenge rules. And check in weekly with either a practice chart/sticker chart or have some way to track progress over time so they can see their progress.

When you use these proven strategies, your studio will not only be in demand but will prosper the test of time with loyal families that come back year after year and you will be able to continue to grow your business on your terms and make it a fun place for your students!

Happy Teaching!