Have you ever had a happy piano student quit lessons? It happens more often than you might think. One week you have a cheerful, progressing student, and the next week you have a hole in your schedule.
And when it happens, it can be baffling… until we take the time to remember that the student sitting at the bench is not the only person we need to keep happy.
Piano teachers have two clients: a student AND a parent. And if we want to keep our piano studios thriving, we have to remember that parents may have wishes for piano lessons that can extend beyond the simple happiness of their children.
While it sounds a little harsh, as a parent, I am okay with this. When it comes to evaluating extracurricular activities, parents and their children work from an entirely different criteria. We interact with children every week so their criteria is pretty apparent, but we don’t always have regular interactions with parents so their needs can be ignored (or unknown!)
And when this happens… happy students quit.
So today, we’re sharing a 20 Question Parent Information Printable that can be completed by a piano parent in two minutes. Armed with this knowledge you will never again bebafyled by holes in your schedule!
Get To Know Your Piano Parents With These 20 Questions
In the introduction to this post we made it pretty clear that understanding your piano parents lesson criteria is essential to your studio’s success. But this is easier said than done! Parents are busy. Speaking from experience, there are many days when parents cannot even spare an extra five minutes.
So we have created a quick-to-answer questionnaire for piano parents.
In under two minutes, they can complete a simple questionnaire that will give you a wealth of information about their children and their wishes for their children. Any longer than two minutes and your piano parents would be required to take it home and return it the following week (and as you probably have learned from experience, things that go home rarely return!)
You can download the 20 Question Piano Parent Survey by clicking on the image below:
Instead of the question does your family have a piano at home, I would like to know if they have an acoustic piano, a keyboard or a digital piano! So 3 additional questions!
I wonder if it would work to do a Google survey? That way you can text and / or email the link and they can take 20 seconds to answer it from anywhere… what do you think?
Of course you can! Good idea. Just a google form would work.
I really like this option. Plan to use it when Fall session begins. Thank you so much.
I have had many students quit over the years because of their heavy sports commitments. I think I would want to have all other outside commitments listed …including how important that outside activity is to the family.
Sometimes it is heavy parental commitments that lead to a child quitting lessons. I wonder how a person can tactfully inquire about that?? …Sometimes the family just can’t keep all the balls in the air.
Thank you so much for this! I’ll definitely be using this in the Fall.
So glad to hear it, Alison 🙂