Communications

How much better do you think your students would be if you could give them all 10 extra free lessons each year? How much better would they perform at music competitions with 10 more lessons of preparation? How much more would music program administrators appreciate you for giving 10 extra free lessons to each student each year? How many more compliments would you get from parents who see that other private teachers are not doing this? One of the great truths in life is that the better you utilize your time, the more successful you will be. As a private teacher I know that there is always something that students are excited about and they usually want to share it with me, however, if I'm going to charge a reputable price for my services then I feel obligated to provide a full lesson worth of benefit. If I allow lesson time to be used up doing bookkeeping or waiting for the student to get ready, or even small talk then I am not providing the full service that I have contracted for, and sooner or later it begins to show.

Take, for instance, a student to whom you give 30-minute lessons. The student may show up one or two minutes late, then has to assemble the instrument, and warm up a bit. Meanwhile you may be getting out your ledger and marking down your lesson and payment information, and possibly adding up past amounts due. It would be easy to spend 5 minutes doing this. Add, on top of this some additional small talk during the lesson - even just 3 minutes and you've wasted 8 minutes of the lesson. Multiply this by a school year's worth of lessons - say 36 lessons, and you've wasted a total of almost 5 hours, or ten lessons! Think how much more your student could have learned in 10 more lessons! That's the difference between a mediocre teacher and a really good teacher.

But no one can concentrate for 30 minutes straight you say? That's where a preparation makes you a great teacher. A teacher who is prepared will have alternative learning activities ready to go. If the student's embouchure becomes fatigued, change the topic to something else that will challenge and motivate your student without stressing the embouchure anymore. If the student is losing interest, change the topic to one that will capture your student's attention, sight-reading, range studies, special effects, complex rhythm patterns, etc. There is no reason to lose a single minute during the lesson. Lesson time is short and precious - make the best use of the lesson time and both you and your students will excel.

Don't get me wrong - I don't advocate being a slave driver and acting totally disinterested in your students. In fact I'm advocating just the opposite. You should be so interested in your students that you take the time, beforehand to plan several learning activities just in case you notice fatigue or a lack of focus in your student. Between tonal studies, rhythm studies, articulation studies, finger coordination studies, breath support, embouchure studies, style studies, and all the sub and sub-sub-topics of these studies there is a whole world of activities that you can develop specifically for any single student. I would even dare say that if you changed topics each and every minute you would still not run out of musical training activities at the end of your lesson. Remember, you are not just teaching music as a singular subject, but rather thousands of individual concepts, and to students who have a much shallower grasp of the language than you. In effect, you are amazing them and entrancing them with things you probably take for granted. In this case, variety truly is the spice of the lesson. Use it wisely and you will have your students wishing they could stay longer.

On to our next time management issue: How many times have you witnessed your students waiting outside the practice room sitting on their instrument case waiting for a lesson? Let me make one thing perfectly clear - this should never be allowed! I have an iron-clad rule; my students are to arrive 30 minutes early. This gives them time to assemble the instrument, warm-up and even time for some last minute practicing on their assignment. This also sets the tone for a more relaxed, controlled process whereby I can actually take a short mental break in between lessons and just talk with the student before we start the lesson. I believe this to be so important to a successful lesson that I include it in my private lesson policy document that I give to all new students and their parents at the very beginning of our relationship. (More on a policy document in another section)

Although some music directors are so on-the-ball that they instill this into all of their students who take lessons, ultimately it is up to you to make this policy clear and to enforce it. If students approach their private lessons as a casual or last minute thing, then that attitude is likely to influence the learning and performance level, as well. A memorable musical performance comes from a memorable private instruction experience and neither is accidental.

One last comment about time management; I have been in teaching situations where time was limited by a classroom schedule. You know, where students take lessons during their band period. In this type of situation there is generally very little down time between students. In the beginning, I was forever giving the first student a full lesson at the expense of the second student. Keeping accurate time in this situation is a little more difficult than you might think, especially when you have classes changing at odd times like 11:55 or 12:20. With the confusion of students coming from and going to classes it is sometimes difficult to know exactly which bell is which. And if I give the first student 4 minutes more to get warmed up, then I have to bring the next student in at something like 12:56 to get a full lesson in. And 12:56 usually became a starting time of 1:00, which shorted the second student's time. The final realization for me came one day when a parent complained about her child not getting a full lesson and that I was favoring the first student. I had to face the fact that my time management skills were inadequate for this type of environment. While I always try to give my students a full lesson, I had no control over the end of the second lesson, so if it started late for whatever reason the school bell would cut it short.

At first I tried using a timer but you have to remember to set it for each and every lesson, which didn't always happen. Then I made up a strict schedule that I was to observe minute by the minute. This would have worked except for sometimes in my enthusiasm I forgot to keep an eye on the clock and the schedule. It took a while before I finally hit on the solution and now I'll tell you so you can save yourself a lot of frustration and complaints from both parents and students. My big secret? I now use a software package designed specifically for private teachers. I can now set up my ironclad schedule to any odd minute that I desire and the student timer always starts on time, displays the number of minutes left in the lesson (which is a much easier way to think of it, rather than 12:53 from 1: 09 leaves me 16 minutes left in the lesson). The software not only rings a bell at the beginning and the end of lessons, it also lets me know how much time I have before the next student (which is nice for deciding when to take a break or get a soda), and it also displays the name of next student. In fact I can double-click on the next student's name and all his information comes up, including a history of lessons. That way I'm up to speed on what we worked on in the last lesson and I know what set of activities I'll be using when the student walks in. Besides giving me peace of mind (no more parents coming in complaining about lessons getting cut short) I have found that this software also helps me to focus. As I see the number of minutes in the lesson count down I am always aware of how much time I have left to present my material. I never leave a lesson feeling like I should have used my time differently or that the lesson was too short to accomplish what I had planned.

My recommendation? Find a software program that can capture your private lesson schedule (from any odd minute to any other odd minute) and keep you on schedule without you having to do anything else to it. The one I recommend is PLSoft. Not only does it do exactly this but there are many more built-in features that are perfect for private lessons, hence the name PLSoft (which stands for Private Lesson Software).