Fantastic Guitar Lessons | The Importance of Sticky Notes
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Curtis Music Academy podcast. I hope you’re all having a great day and a good week and getting out to enjoy this wonderful weather. Today I wanted to talk about why sticky notes are useful in the context of lessons and honestly all of the work we do here at Curtis Music Academy, both with students and their fantastic guitar lessons and behind the scenes. One super important aspect sticky notes serve is helping keep administrative work straight. We have such a large population of students here, and we’re getting new students all the time, that sticky notes are a necessity. We strive to customize each student’s fantastic guitar lessons, schedule, and all aspects of their experience as much as possible to give each of our students the best possible experience.
And because we have a staff of multiple people, sticky notes are important to keep track of nuances or any changes that may come up that need to be addressed either by a different person or at a different time. For example, if a student mentions to their instructor that they’d like to change the time of their fantastic guitar lessons in the future, that’s something we can absolutely accommodate, but making that change is a responsibility that will go to the administrative assistant, not the instructor. And of course, the instructor won’t leave their lesson to go pass along that message, and if they don’t write it down there is a chance they may forget by the end of the lesson after getting caught up in teaching their instrument. So that’s one example of sticky notes being used to pass communication between different roles here at Curtis Music Academy.
They’re also very useful when the person who needs to receive the message or notification is not currently in the studio (all of our instructors and staff have different schedules), sticky notes serve as a written voicemail to pass along information even when people don’t have the right schedules to meet in person. Sticky notes are also useful for reminding oneself about things they might otherwise forget to do. Our staff have a lot of various duties, and our instructors all have multiple students, so there’s a lot of times they can’t immediately accomplish a task they think of or a student mentions to them during their lesson. The usage of sticky notes can help greatly decrease the likelihood that the instructor will forget to address the issue or topic when they finish their lesson and have time to take care of it.
Additionally, the instructor has greater peace of mind knowing that what they need to accomplish is written down and they don’t need to worry about forgetting to do it later. Not having to worry about remembering something for the duration of one or many lessons allows the instructor to fully devote all of their mind power towards their students and their instruments and helping them be as successful as possible, as well as being more open to spending time talking to the student about anything else outside of the fantastic guitar lessons, because they have the free mind space for whatever the student may bring up.
So, sticky notes serve a great purpose by essentially enabling almost all of the secretarial and administrative work of Curtis Music Academy to be smooth, efficient, and consistent. Sticky notes can also help improve students’ lessons themselves. Sticky notes can create a method for portable, visual reminders for students. This can sometimes be related to the actual playing of the instrument. A sticky note can easily be attached to a piano to remind a student of a few measures or notes they have been particularly struggling with. Especially recently, with so many of our lessons online, students being able to attach sticky note reminders to their instruments is helpful because the instructor is not there in person to offer hands on assistance while the student is playing.
Another practical fantastic guitar lessons application of sticky notes is to serve as a way for instructors to provide reminders or information to parents of students, particularly younger ones, and especially if the parent isn’t the one taking the student to and from their lessons. Any and all questions and concerns about practice, instruments, payments, lessons, etc. can be addressed here, even if the parent doesn’t have a schedule conducive to in-person or phone call conversations with their students’ instructors. They can also be useful to a student’s practicing sessions between their lessons. Because lessons are generally only once a week, a lot of the student’s progress is dependent on their willingness and effort during their practice sessions. However, if they are practicing incorrectly when on their own, they are actually undoing the progress that was made in their lessons with their instructor.
So if the instructor, who has observed the student in the fantastic guitar lessons and has a good idea of the student’s weaknesses within the lesson or piece they will be practicing that week, the instructor can provide a few helpful hints in the areas the student struggles in order to prevent them from falling into a rut of continually practicing their instrument incorrectly. Students can also utilize sticky notes themselves in their lives between lessons, such as to remind themselves to get their practice time in that day.
Also, because our instructors all have multiple students, and because we don’t allow instructors to use their personal phone numbers or emails to communicate with students between lessons, any questions, concerns, or interests the students come across while practicing can be stored on a sticky note to ask their instructor that next week. They can also store things their instructor says during their fantastic guitar lessons that they feel would be helpful in addition to what their instructor may choose to write down for them. That is a quick delve into some of the many ways sticky notes are used on a daily basis here at Curtis Music Academy for a variety of purposes. Thank you so much for joining me, and I hope you all have a wonderful day.