I recently received a great question from another music teacher asking for some ideas for Christmas gifts for students. I realize it’s kind of late this year, but I thought it would be great to compile a list of ideas that I could put together in a single file and make available here on the […]
Monday Mailbag – Billing and Payments
How do you deal with payments? I’ve been billing my students on the last week of the month, for the next month. Seems quite backwards, but I’m not sure how to do this! Do you do postdated cheques? Some teachers find that works well, but what if the student misses a lesson? Please just give […]
7 Tips for Enjoyable Recitals
The rehearsal is over and the countdown has begun! Well, actually I started the countdown a week ago, but that’s beside the point. 🙂 Last night was our Christmas Recital rehearsal (thus my excuse for the lack of posting this week!). It took us about an hour and a half to get through the whole […]
Monday Mailbag – What to Wear?
I am 23 years old and have been teaching piano/theory since I was about 17. Back then the students I had were all students I knew for a while, because my mom passed them on to me, but recently I’ve gotten a lot more students that I dont know, and I’m just wondering how I […]
New Discovery for Building Sight-Reading Skills
One of the things that I really wanted to work on this year with my students was building their sight-reading skills. This was a key objective that I took into consideration when planning this year’s practice incentive. With the help of Susan Paradis’ Notes in the Fast Lane worksheets, I am seeing some great improvement […]
Black Key Improvisation
I guess I’m on an improvisation kick this week! As much as I am not a naturally gifted improviser, I have always admired those who were, and I see the value in helping students develop an openness to improvisation. Ever since I started doing student interviews years ago, one of the areas that I include […]
