Strategies for Piano Teachers During (and After) COVID-19
Guest post writer, Doug Hanvey, requested to write a blog post about life as a piano teaching in the midst of a pandemic. He offers some bright ideas on how to stay afloat in this unexpected storm. In between paragraphs, I’ve added occasional plugs for resources that coincide with Doug’s ideas.
Thank you Doug for openly sharing your situation and how you are making lightbulb-moment workarounds because of Covid-19 virus and its residuals.
- Leila
It’s a strange new world for piano teachers (and everybody else). As I write this, on Earth Day 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has upended life as we know it around Mother Earth. Most US states and countries around the world have shut down business as normal. We are left in a state of unknowing. We wonder, and pundits argue: How long will this go on? How long can it go on? Will a vaccine be found? Or might the pandemic subside on its own? Or – God forbid – might it continue for a year, or longer? Will “normal life” ever return?
And, uniquely on the minds of piano teachers: will I ever see living humans in my piano studio again?
Yet even if the pandemic does subside soon, conventional wisdom has it that the world – and the economy upon which we depend for a living – may never be quite the same again. Assuming the conventional wisdom is correct, this may be a good time for music teachers to consider various possible futures, strategize about their business model, think outside the box, and make useful proactive changes to their business.
Already, most piano studios – which, unlike restaurants, at least haven’t been forced to shutter their doors – have had to make dramatic changes. The most obvious change, of course, is teaching students virtually via Zoom, Skype, FaceTime etc. If you were old-school (like me) and didn’t previously accept payments via PayPal, Venmo etc., you are probably doing so now. And of course, we’ve all been cramming to learn how to teach productive virtual lessons.
The pandemic may have reduced your student load for reasons such as parents’ tenuous finances or students’ dissatisfaction with virtual instruction. Interest from new, prospective students may have declined (this has happened to me). On the other hand, you may have experienced some positive effects, such as greater interest from prospective students due to the fact that many other common interests, such as sports programs, are non-operational. Not to mention that parents who now have their kids at home 24/7 may be looking for new activities to keep them busy.
Whatever happens, the pandemic is likely to continue having an effect on piano studios for months, or even years. How might piano teachers consider altering their business models to accommodate the new situation?
Virtual vs. In-Person Lessons
If you’re like me, you may be hoping for a return to in-person lessons soon. Yet even when the lockdown ends and live lessons can resume, not all students may be ready to show up at your studio due to health concerns or other reasons.
Some students may have appreciated being able to study from the comfort of home and request to continue indefinitely with virtual lessons – especially since you are now most likely an expert virtual teacher!
Therefore, you may want to consider making virtual lessons an ongoing option.
[Learn more on how here.]
After in-person lessons are once again viable, teachers might also consider instituting the flexible policy of allowing students to take a mix of live and virtual lessons.
Lesson and Curriculum Changes
While individual private lessons are the putative “gold standard” for music instruction, the current situation may warrant offering different kinds of lessons and/or making changes to your curriculum.
For example, if you’ve never taught group lessons, there might never be a better time to start than now. How about teaching a small group of three via Zoom? You can charge less, making lessons more affordable to those with financial burdens, while making the same amount per hour (or more).
Never offered a summer music camp? Perhaps this is the summer to do it. How about a virtual summer camp organized with other teachers in your area?
[Find summer online camp and/or theme resources here.]
Online summer camp for multi-age groups.
The obligatory and intensive use of technology by both teachers and students right now could lead to new and exciting additions to your customary curriculum. For example, how about teaching students to use a music notation program, such as the free and open source MuseScore, via screen sharing?
[My students use Noteflight.com as they create and notate their compositions. Learn more here.]
Or – especially for those who teach popular music – how about learning and then teaching the fundamentals of a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to help students learn the rudiments of composition, as well as how to record and mix tracks? Since there are many such applications available (and many are pricey), choose one that works on all major platforms (i.e. Windows and Macintosh) and that is also free. Bandlab, for example, is a DAW designed as an online collaboration tool – perfect for virtual lessons.
[Let students to explore ways to see popular music chord progression in action here. See how to employ popular chord progressions as improvisation inspiration here.]
Scheduling
Do weekly lessons still make sense in the current situation? From a teaching perspective, I would still argue for them. From a financial perspective, however, it might be worthwhile to offer new options to accommodate changes in students’ schedules and finances.
For example, just after the crisis began, two of my adult students told me they had been laid off and needed to discontinue lessons. Keeping the long term in mind, I offered (admittedly, even begged one of them!) the option of continuing their lessons for whatever they could afford. On their own, both came up with the idea of taking a lesson every other week for nearly the same per-lesson fee.
In the current situation that is so financially stressful for so many, it might be worth offering an alternative such as this to prospective students as well.
It is probably expedient to accommodate students who must temporarily discontinue lessons to focus on business or financial matters. While I don’t typically permit students to take extended breaks from lessons, I have recently done so with a student whose highly-successful company has suffered severe losses and who must now focus all his time on that.
In sum, now is a time to be very flexible with students, and to consider making exceptions to your studio policy that you may not have considered making in the past.
Tuition Alternatives
It may be prudent to consider offering alternatives to your usual tuition rates and policies, with the objective of providing as much flexibility for students who are financially stressed or uncertain about their employment.
Never offered a free first lesson? I haven’t either, but I am now. Since virtual lessons are probably not as appealing as live lessons to most people, this affords the opportunity to try a virtual lesson without any financial obligation.
If you’ve never offered a scholarship program, this might be the time.
How about trading or bartering for lessons? I’ve done this for three years with a licensed massage therapist. (It’s the best trade I can imagine!) Consider all the things you need help with that could be done from the student’s home. Perhaps they could update your website, or write an article for your blog. Or offer you a service that doesn’t compromise recommended social distancing, like gardening.
Tangentially related, this may be a terrific time to explore supplementary music-related income streams, such as starting an affiliate marketing business for musical instruments or technology, or finishing that instructional book you’ve been working on, and then self-publishing it.
The New World of Music Teaching
From learning how to teach virtually overnight, to accommodating our students’ new financial struggles, our world as music teachers has been turned upside down. Yet with an eye towards the future, thinking about what we currently offer and what else we could offer, thinking outside the box, and keeping our business model one step ahead of current events, we are more likely to come out on the other side – and much more likely than not, we will come out the other side! – with a flourishing piano studio.
What steps have you taken so far? What steps are you planning to take?
Doug Hanvey offers online piano lessons for adults from his studio in Portland, Oregon. Doug studied music and education at Indiana University Bloomington. He is the author of the Creative Keyboardist Adult Piano Method and a member of the Oregon Music Teachers Association.