Membership Expired Josh Burke
Membership ExpiredForum Replies Created
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Hi Nina,
On the Zoom settings side of things, I always make sure to get students to disable the ‘Suppress intermittent background noise’ and another similar background noise setting that I can’t remember the name of right now. This should stop Zoom from cutting out any music students are playing/singing along to. I also get them to tick the checkbox which shows the option to ‘enable original sound’ or something like that, as this should stop all of Zoom’s audio processing, but has to be enabled at the start of each lesson. (Unfortunately these options aren’t available on tablets/phones, so while teaching students who are using these devices is possible, I’d recommend trying to ensure they use a computer whenever possible, and would also highly recommend that you use a computer to make sure your students get the best quality possible).
On the backing track side of things, I take songs that students will be using and put a click track over the top, initially just to help students who weren’t so confident with keeping in time, but it has the added benefit of even when Zoom isn’t playing ball and the music is hard to hear, the click usually cuts through fine, so it’s easy for me to tell if students are in time. (If it wasn’t something you’d already thought of, I send the songs to students to playback on their end, eliminating any delay between either end of the call)
Hope these ideas help you with figuring out your setup, and if you have any others I’m sure myself and many other teachers would love to hear them!
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So I say to all my students that I can take cash at the end of the lesson, pay by card via my card reader (more on that later) or by BACS, but only as a last resort for the latter. And I’ll be honest, I don’t really know how to write a check… never had to (I know, I’m young millennial type, whatever!).
The card reader and service I use is called iZettle, which I’ve so far found to be incredibly useful. Last month I took in £615 in card payments, which came out with a fee of £16.95. Some may think this is £15 that they could have in their pocket instead, but for the simplicity it offers, and the fact that I don’t have to chase people for money as often, I find it’s really worth it.
My business head also tells me that making the payment process quick and simple (especially with contactless) will lessen the likelihood of students questioning if their lessons are worth handing over however much cash a week.
I also run all my cash payments through the app that the card reader uses, which will then add it all up and can be viewed either in the app, online, or exported to excel, which is mighty handy.
Anyway, long story short, anyone thinking about going down the card reader route, I highly recommend it!
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That is a very valid point. Apparently I try to make things more complicated than they need to be… Thanks for helping me realise that though!
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Hi everyone! I’m pretty new here but am very interested in this as I’ve just had my first enquiry asking about christmas vouchers and I have no Idea what to do! I like all the ideas mentioned above, but I am intrigued to know what you do with the issue of actually arranging the lessons.
My worry is for example, that the person who receives my gift voucher as a present decides to get in touch, but then our schedules clash and we can’t actually arrange any lessons. I guess I would have to try my best to alter my schedule to fit them in if they’ve already payed however much, but I can just see it being hard to manage.
Also on a side note, people may have already thought of this but to me it makes sense so I thought I’d share. I would prefer to send people my vouchers by email because I’m one of these new age millennial types who doesn’t believe in paper or the post office. However, this obviously could make it really easy to print of multiple vouchers. So to make things easier when dealing with multiple people wanting vouchers, I would put a unique code on each voucher somewhere, then keep a text or excel file somewhere with a list of all the codes I’ve given out, then when it’s been redeemed I’d check it off in the file as ‘redeemed’, meaning that I know that I’ve only seen the same voucher once.
This might not even be an issue that anyone has faced, but the cynical side of me assumes that someone out there would get one voucher then print off another for a friend or something.
Anyway, nice to meet you all for the first time!
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Yes I have had two new students start, and both of them went pretty smoothly. They both had some experience with other instruments before though, so I’m sure that did help things. I’ve mainly just found myself getting a lot better at describing things – like ‘where to position your hand on a the guitar’ for a certain chord or something – so if anything, moving to online has probably helped me to become a better teacher!
