Eight years ago, I started doing Year-End Evaluations with students and their parents at the last lesson of the spring semester. This has been such a helpful tool! A couple weeks prior to the evaluation, I send home a Student Questionnaire and a Parent Questionnaire. I change the questions a little bit each year based on what we’ve done and any specific feedback that I’d like to receive, but they follow the same basic layout.

In addition to having the student and parent complete their questionnaires, I also complete an evaluation of each student:

Even though it takes a pretty good chunk of time to go through and complete the evaluations, it’s a very helpful process for me in that I have to really think through where the student is at in each area. I usually jot down specific notes related to their progress in each area, as well as circling the appropriate rating. Perhaps the most helpful part, though, is thinking through specific ideas and recommendations for the following year. I know that if I waited to do this until I do my lesson planning for the year (in August) the details for each student would be much more sketchy! Thinking through ideas for future improvement and soliciting the same from the students and parents gives me a great framework to work within when I do my lesson planning and brainstorming for the year’s practice incentive theme.

Feel free to download and use and/or adapt any of these forms for use in your studio!