Sending group deadlines

To save you time, you can actually send a single deadline to a group of students.

Why does this help? If you have a concert that affects your beginners, you can register the deadline once as being for "beginners", without having to actually separately record the deadline for each of those students.  Your website knows who your beginners are, and will ensure that the deadline appears on the webpages of every beginner in your studio.

All helps to save you time as you keep your students organized.

Encourage your students to add their own

You students will often be the first to find out about new deadlines, but can sometimes be dangerously slow to let you know. Whenever they find out a new deadline - say for example the date of an upcoming  talent quest at school - have them enter it into their Deadline Manager.

Your own webpage will automatically be updated with the information they added.

For all those teachers who don't ever want to be surprised again with "Oh...by the way...I have a concert next week...should I learn a piece for it?..."

Your own personal deadlines

Music teachers have lots more to worry about than just sharps and flats. There are tax returns to submit, insurance details to complete, bills to pay, entry forms to post...and it can be very easy to overlook something important.

Your Deadline Manager allows you to record details for "myself". These deadlines will not be visible on the webpages of any student, and allow you to record any deadline you like, whether it's related to music or not.

Everything from wedding anniversaries to lease payments falling due, you can use your deadline manager to keep track of your obligations in running a small business. (Which is exactly what you are doing).

Use Stepping Stones to prepare

Deadlines can seem daunting to students, particularly if it's a Big Occasion, and they have to play several pieces. You can help ensure that the journey is smooth by breaking the task down into stages, and then recording separate deadlines for each stage.

Our term for this is "stepping stones", and if you look for the "s" icon next to any deadline, you can add a stepping stone for that deadline.

So for example, if a student has to play two pieces at a big end of year Studio Recital, you might set a stepping stone of having both pieces learned by October 1, another to have both pieces memorized by November 2, and then to schedule a mock concert for November 25. Those three mini stages are all stepping stones, and should make the concert itself feel like a more manageable undertaking.

Student Birthdays

It's been suggested elsewhere in this guide that you use either your Message Center or Studio Newsletter to acknowledge student's birthdays.

But how are you going to keep track of them all? (It can be hard enough remembering family birthdays!).

Simple. Record student birthdays in the deadline manager. Not only will it act as a reminder for you, but students love seeing reference to the Big Day - even if it's months away yet - and when you add the reminder, it will also appear on their own webpage.

Defining studio "blitz" dates

A studio "blitz" is a great way to have all your students focusing in-depth on a particular aspect of their playing.

It's up to you to define what the blitz will be targeting - it might be sight reading, or playing from memory, or scales, or general knowledge, or learning pieces quickly... and for a couple of months, your studio will be concentrating heavily on building skills in that area. So if the focus were sightreading, then you would be spending more time than normal in lessons building sightreading skills, together with giving them plenty of sighreading based practice to do. Once the "blitz" period is over, you would move to a new focus.

Because it's up to you to define when each blitz will start and finish, your deadlines manager will be an invaluable tool. Students (and parents) will be able to see the topics for the year ahead, and if they are struggling through the "theory" blitz, at least they'll be able to see that there are only a few weeks to go.

Undertake regular reviews

For big studios in particular, your deadline manager can start to fill up alarmingly quickly (It's not your Practicepage playing tricks! These dates always existed, it's just that you were never able to see them in one place at one time before.)

To help you stay on top of them all, it's useful to start each week with a quick review of all short, medium and long term deadlines, just to make sure haven't overlooked anything.

You should also review deadlines for individual students on a regular basis, so that you can see the same picture they see. (You can do this by selecting their name from the dropdown menu on the right of your screen)

That way you'll be able to help them effectively distribute their practice time - and your valuable lesson time - between their various upcoming commitments.

Encouraging students to be ready early

Much as we don't want students peaking too soon, it is definitely preferable to a performance being undercooked. The student's deadline manager provides a powerful way to ensure that they are ready on time, every time.

As soon as a recital date has been entered, add a stepping stone that takes place several weeks before the Big Day- the stepping stone being a complete dress rehearsal for the recital. If you can arrange an audience for that dress rehearsal, so much the better.

The plan is to have the student walking on stage knowing that they have already successfully given this exact performance once already - and that if anything, this performance will be three weeks of practice better than the first one.

It also helps keep everyone's blood pressure lower in those final weeks (student, teacher AND parents!). Who would have thought that your deadline manager could be good for your health?...