Guitar Lessons Tulsa | When a Student May Be Ready to Quit
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Now, I’m going to talk about, one of the things that we’re starting to institute here at Curtis Music Academy and that is what we do if we feel like a student is starting to get burnt out. So when you’re learning something incredibly difficult like music, whether that’s guitar, piano, or vocal, like when you’re taking music lessons, if any sort, there’s bound to be a time when you start to forget why you started taking lessons and you just get burnt out. Meaning you don’t really want to practice anymore, you’re not that interested. There’s a million reasons why someone might be ready to quit an instrument. And so our job is to figure out why and how we can make it better for them.
So for a lot of students, I know that they are younger and their parents probably started them on it without much choice. So I know one family and they used to tell me that the mom got to pick one activity for the students and the kids got to pick another activity for themselves. So it was kind of 50 50 each of them got to pick something. But there comes a point in a child’s life. Maybe they’re in middle school or high school and they might not want to take lessons anymore. Maybe they’re just tired of it or whatever their response might be, but you can kind of get the sense when a student starts to feel less interested than they want to work and you think they might be wanting to quit soon.
One of our things that we can do at Curtis Music Academy is we can come up with some things to do if we feel like that is happening. So I’ve actually been working on today a list of things we can do if we think a student is ready to quit lessons. The first thing on this list is talk to them about what their goals are, why they are continually learning their instrument. Once we get them to go back to the beginning, why they started taking lessons in the first place, it often will lead them to be more motivated because they can remember why. Think when we lose sight of our purpose and what we’re doing in lessons, we often are at less interested in them. To begin with. So we kind of can bring them back to their original goals.
And then once we’ve remember what they are, we can continually remind the student of those goals and why they’re doing it. Because we’re human and we forget. So one of the things we can do as instructors at Curtis Music Academy is teach the students, or I should say, remind the students of what their goals are in taking music lessons. The next thing that we can do is propose some crazy ideas. So some things that might be slightly off the wall but could be really interesting and make it more exciting to them.
So a couple of those things are, we could ask them, hey student, have you ever thought about writing your own music? Or have you ever thought about producing your own music? Have you ever considered performing live? Putting these thoughts into their head might make music a little more realistic for them. A little bit more fun and exciting because it’s one thing to take piano lessons once a week and play the same little songs and an entirely another thing to start creating your own music. Or performing in front other people. These live performances could be a major motivating factor for someone who might just be nervous or feel like they’re not ready and then they start to shut down.
So I think that showing them that there are other things that they can do with the music besides just taking guitar lessons Tulsa, showing them that there’s more to it than that can really, really get them excited again for taking lessons. The next thing that we can do is say, hey student, what would make these lessons even better? So in a perfect world, what would your guitar lessons Tulsa look like? How can we improve ourselves? Because at Curtis Music Academy, I think that we do a lot of things right and I think we’re really good at what we do. But obviously we’re all human here and so there’s obviously things that we could improve on.
We’re always working to improve through a variety of different ways, but just leveling with the student and talking to them about what could make our guitar lessons Tulsa even better might help them, you know, get inside their own head and they might be able to tell us what we can do better. Therefore make the guitar lessons Tulsa more exciting for them so that they no longer want to quit. Another thing we can do is at the end of all of our guitar lessons Tulsa we can just say, hey man, how are you feeling about this? Do you feel like you have a good grasp on it? Are you enjoying what you’re doing? Just getting inside their head and talking to them one on one.
Maybe you might get them to open up a little bit about why they’re feeling this way, et cetera. Another thing we can do is make sure that we are really providing them with all the resources that they might need. So I’ve talked a ton about how we are really good about providing our students in guitar lessons Tulsa and piano lessons with resources. Whether that be videos or documents that we create are different arrangements of songs. I think one thing that we can do for students who feel like they might be ready to quit is just make sure that they’ve got everything that they need to practice. I think there’s might be a time when a student gets burnt out because the practicing is too difficult.
I think that is definitely an option. So by making sure that we provide them with resources, even if they don’t ask for them, could be a really big factor in making them stay if they feel like they have a better grasp on it and can practice a lot easier. So we just want to make it as easy as possible for them to have a good time. One of the last things we can do is start to surprise them with something that they love. So we kind of talked to our students. Sometimes we know what they like and we’re trying to get inside their head and we want to be their coach and their friend. And part of this is just getting to know them.
So we like to ask as kind of an ice breaker question like, Hey, what’s your favorite snack? And we keep track of these things because you never know when it might come in handy.
So if a student says their favorite snack is sour patch kids, one thing we can do is just show an interest in their life and beyond the classroom by bringing them something that they love, something that we know that they like, they might feel like they are, may make them feel even more welcome and excited to come back because wow, they actually remembered what their Ferris tech was.
So I think that is another thing that could get them more excited just by feeling like they are known and welcome here at Curtis Music Academy. Lastly, we can do the last thing that we can do if we feel like a student might be ready to stop taking guitar lessons Tulsa and told Tosa is have me the administrative assistant call and do that monthly check-in. I think I’ve talked about before, how I typically call once a month our students and see how it’s going. Make sure they’re still liking their guitar lessons Tulsa and see if there are any ways that we can improve. And I think by doing this outside of the lesson setting, might get them to open up with me and see what we can do even better.