Membership Expired Kat Hunter
Membership ExpiredForum Replies Created
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Although like Ben said it’s difficult if you haven’t set the terms first.
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I would stand my ground. She’s not the kind of person you would have had positive WOM with anyway. Or another idea would be to say that the lessons are not refundable but that they ARE transferrable. Maybe she knows someone who would be a much more willing student. Win win.
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I think you should be fine:) You can always have some back up ideas about activities people can do in groups that brings all of these ideas together. That should keep them busy! Like role-playing or speech-reading or something I don’t know. It will also be interesting to see if the room gets loud with all those projecting voices in different groups talking over each other. Could be another thing to address as you go.
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This sounds great! Some ways I’ve found of simplifying things is to firstly talk about terms people might have heard. Like “voice box” and “adams apple” are familiar to people. So when you start using the term larynx you could explain verrryy simply how these terms relate. Another thing you can do is demonstrate something with an action first and then name it second rather than the other way round. Often people don’t understand why something is important or how it relates until they see it in action. Obviously don’t wear yourself out, but some “bad” vs “good” examples and discussion can help them get past the theory aspect.
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Great question! I think two things I’ve come up with that help retain students are:
1. Performance opportunities – These could be a performance/open mic hosted by your studio or outside opportunities if the student is in a choir, band or musical theatre group. When students have opportunities to perform they have more and more goals to work towards, which gives them more reasons to continue coming back for lessons.
2. Offering some other areas to grow – as teachers we tend to have one or two areas that we stick to and most of us spend a lot of time on vocal technique. But students who don’t have opportunities to work on other things can feel their progress begin to stagnate sometimes. So offering things like song-writing, music theory, performance technique, or simply just singing songs in a different genre to what they’re used to can change things up a bit and keep it interesting. Technology can help too. Recording a student’s rendition of a song they’re working on (even if it’s just on your laptop) and burning to disk, or just having a microphone/PA in the room can make things more exciting!Would love to hear other ideas people have!
