Anyone who has been reading here for any length of time knows that I’m a huge fan of Music Teacher’s Helper. It has streamlined my bookkeeping like I never imagined was possible! I posted my first review of it after signing up for the free trial version four years ago. Although I was hesitant to plunk down the money for a monthly plan, it didn’t take long before I was sold on the value of it! I wrote a second review after using it for a year of lessons.

Anyway…if you’ve been thinking about trying Music Teacher’s Helper, but haven’t gotten around to it, I wanted to let you know that they recently announced that they’ll be increasing their pricing on October 1st. However, anyone who signs up for a subscription will be locked into the current pricing plan forever! And of course, if you don’t like it (impossible for me to imagine!), you can cancel at any time. When I first saw that the pricing was increasing, my heart sunk because as much as I love the convenience of MTH, I did not relish the thought of having to pay a higher price (especially since I’m already on the highest priced plan!). So I am thrilled to know that I am forever locked into my current price. That’s a great company for you!

Alright…commercial over. Just thought you all might like to know before it’s too late.

Blog reader Cindy Truman recently alerted me to a fabulous resource that could also be a huge time-saver! Check out this website with pre-designed school calendars that you can download, adapt, and print for use in your studio. I’ve already been manually  doing my own from scratch for so many years now that I have enough to just go into a previous file with matching days and dates and just change the year and the events. But I sure wish I had known about these sooner because it would have saved me a ton of time! Plus, I like a few of these designs better than mine anyway.

I would love it if you would address how you deal with students who consistently forget their assignment books!  I have started keeping large sticky notes on hand to stick right on the front of their book, but it’s very frustrating when this also doesn’t return!  It impedes progress.  My students who always bring their notebooks manage to keep their practicing moving right along and their is no question of what I assigned or where we are!

Honestly, I don’t have any students who consistently forget their assignment books. I think a huge part of this is the fact that I custom design assignment books to correspond to our practice incentive program every year. Their assignment book includes not only the assignment pages, but all of the supporting material and tracking information for earning points, Diligence Dollars, balls, etc. If a student forgets his assignment book, he gets nothing for that week because I have no alternative method of tracking his progress.

Now, this is not to say that all of my students faithfully refer to their assignment book throughout the week, but it does almost always make it to the lesson. In the past, before I started doing my yearly practice incentive programs, I remember hearing a suggestion that I used a couple of times. Write a short note and “embed” it among the other assignments on the page…”If you circle this sentence, I’ll pay you $1.” Or something like that. The student was always mortified if they arrived at their following lesson and discovered that they could have earned $1 just by reading their assignments!

I think the key is to give the students a reason to read and bring their assignment books. Some students are naturally inclined to practice systematically, following each assignment step-by-step. But others are convinced that they can remember everything perfectly and never need to refer to their assignment book. Also, if it’s a serious problem and is affecting the progress of the student, I wouldn’t hesitate to enact a policy that students who forget their assignment book will have to call the parent and ask them to retrieve it for them or will forfeit the lesson. A one-time lapse of memory can be excused, but when it persists from week to week, you have to let them know that you’re serious about the importance of bringing it.

Those are a few of my thoughts. I would love to have some advice from others, though. How do you deal with students who forget to bring their assignment books? Or do you use something else in place of assignment books?

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

We already have a nice collection of studio websites, so I’ve compiled all the links received thus far and put together a page for the  Piano Teacher Website Listing. There is also a link in the right sidebar so that you can easily access the list. I’ve already come across some fabulous ideas just from looking at these websites! (Incidentally, I decided to keep this list to just studio websites since I have another category listing for Music Blogs already.)

I think I got everyone included who either left a comment or sent me an e-mail. If you are not listed, but would like to be included, just send me an e-mail and I’ll update the page to include your site.

Ensembles, I love ‘em! They are hard to coordinate and take a lot of patience during rehearsals. I have done what you do, students split lesson times. But only after each has their part learned fairly well. I always play the other part, up until then so they know what the whole thing should sound like.  I love that you record the part as an mp3. That is a super idea. I haven’t looked but could you give us the run down of what technology you have in your studio and what you need to record and compress into an mp3 for us, please?

Would you believe I searched and asked around for several years before finally figuring out how to record CDs and MP3s in my studio?! And now that I know how easy it is, I can’t believe how difficult it is to get straight answers about how to do it. I know that many other people face the same frustration because the two posts that deal with how to set this up in your studio are two of the most frequently visited posts on this site! Just read over these two posts and you should be set up and ready to record, compress, and either send or burn mp3s in no time at all!

Record Audio CDs in Your Studio

Recording Made Easy

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

Several of my student’s moms commented on how much they liked the timeline that I used for our listening activity last week. This is one of the best timelines I’ve found! I love that it incorporates not only music history, but also little glimpses into other things going on in the world. Surprisingly, the timeline actually came from the back of the Hal Leonard Student Journal. I just tore out the pages and glued them together chronologically, then laminated it for durability. It has served me well for many years!

One thing that I highly value is organization. I don’t function very well when things are cluttered, so I am always looking for better and more efficient systems that will help maintain order with minimal effort. An area where I have not developed a good system is with the variety of flashcards and small paper and game pieces that I use for games and activities. I’m constantly sifting through a stack of flashcards to pull out all the treble clef notes in a certain range, or to separate the sharp from the flat key signatures, etc. So I was absolutely thrilled to come across this brilliant idea in Laura Lowe’s post, 5 Tips for Studio Organization: Storage Pockets! Now why didn’t I ever think of that? That is definitely going on my list for my next studio re-organization day.

Most of us teach because we love playing music, we love working with students, and/or we just love teaching. Few of us run studios because we just love doing recordkeeping, filing taxes, and handling other aspects on the business-side of things. I will confess, however, that I love the challenge of strategizing and coming up with good systems to set in place to streamline business operations. If you have a good system in place, staying organized is easy! Here are a few organizational systems that help me maintain some semblance of sanity.

1. Music Teacher’s Helper – If you’ve been reading here for any length of time at all, you know that I am a HUGE fan of Music Teacher’s Helper! Even though I haven’t even tapped into every feature that it offers, this has streamlined my bookkeeping and makes it a breeze. I love the way it keeps my finances organized and presents a professional image for my families since each of them have an account to receive automatic invoices, check records, pay on-line, and more. I’m in the highest cost bracket at $24.95/month, but it is so worth it for me!

2. Managing Receipts – This is a very simple binder system, but it’s essential for record-keeping and tax time! I have one binder for each of my businesses that serves to collect the receipts for the whole year according to the month in which the purchase was made. And then I archive the receipts for three years, so I have two other binders (again, one for each business) that each contain the monthly sheet protectors filled with receipts from the previous three years.

3. Student Worksheets – There are so many great resources on-line, but I needed a way to have just the right worksheet available at the tip of my fingers when I ascertained that it would be beneficial to a particular student. This binder system is what I developed for that purpose and it has served me well for several years now. I have a similar, but separate, binder set-up just for the sight-reading drills that we’re using this year.

4. Printed Music – When it comes to music books and sheet music, we’re all familiar with the Overflowing Piano Bench Syndrome and the impossible-to-keep-organized bookshelves, right? These file cabinets have been incredible for keeping music organized! Plus, with items like this that students will be accessing, it’s important to have a system in place that makes sense to them and is easy for them to utilize as well.

Those are some of the key areas that I’ve worked on over the past several years. This year, I’m hoping to come up with a better system for listing music books that I need to purchase for students and a way to keep track of what books/pieces students have used/learned. Any suggestions?

Most of us music teachers have advanced well beyond the stage of OPBS (Overflowing Piano Bench Syndrome) into OBSS (Overflowing Book Shelf Syndrome). Books and sheet music are piled onto shelf after shelf, and it is a well-kept secret as to which book or piece is in which stack. I just received an e-mail this week from a teacher wanting suggestions on how to organize all that music in a more efficient manner. So, I thought I would post some pictures of one way that I’ve come up with of organizing music. All you need is a file cabinet, or perhaps I should say several file cabinets if you have as much music as I’ve managed to accumulate!

FILE CABINET ONE – a wonderful 4-drawer lateral file that I couldn’t live without!

Drawer One (Top)

Method Books arranged by level – Primer Off-Staff, Primer On-Staff, Level One, Level Two, etc.; Supplemental Technique Books; Supplemental Theory Books; Sight-reading resources.

Drawer Two

Repertoire arranged according to Time Period – Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Late Romantic/Impressionistic, 20th Century. Within each of the categories, the books and sheets are placed alphabetically according to the last name of the composer. Following the chronologically arranged files are anthologies according to level – intermediate, advanced (I just had to move the elementary level anthologies to the next drawer down because this one was getting too full).

Drawer Three

Supplemental books and sheets arranged according to level – beginner, elementary, late elementary, early intermediate, intermediate, late intermediate, advanced. Each category contains file folders with sheet music first followed by file folders with books. Following those are folders for Arrangements & Transcriptions, Concertos, and Elementary Classical Repertoire Anthologies.

Drawer Four

Miscellaneous categories – seasonal music (mostly patriotic music), movie music, wedding music, songs; I also have a section for my Duds – books or sheets I don’t want anymore and want to send on the next time I receive the Duds Box.

FILE CABINET TWO – a 5-drawer standard sized cabinet (just make sure you get the kind where the drawers pull all the way out!)

Drawer One and Two – still empty, or just a storage for some hymnals, old studio assignment books, etc.

Drawer Three

Duet and Ensemble Music – Elementary 1P4H, Intermediate 1P4H, Advanced 1P4H, Teacher/Student Duets, 1P6H, 2P4H, 2P8H, Other Ensemble (P=Piano, H=Hand)

Drawer Four

Christmas Music – Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced, Piano Duet, Piano Trio, Other Ensemble

Drawer Five

Sacred Music – Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced, Piano Duet, Other Ensemble

This has proved to be an easy-to-maintain system for my studio. Not only can I find and pull any given piece of music in a matter of seconds, but my students also know where to look for certain music. All of my music is a part of the studio lending library. Students are permitted to look through the file cabinets at any time and check out music to take home with them. And now that I use the handy Lending Library feature on Music Teacher’s Helper, I’m much less likely to permanently lose books and pieces of sheet music!

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve instituted a rather informal computer lab option in my studio this semester. Students can opt to sign up for an additional 15 minutes in the computer lab either before or after their lesson time. This is a simple, generic form I created for the students to sign up on at our kick-off event for the year. You can download and use it in your studio by clicking the image below.