Guitar teachers in Tulsa | Retaining Students

This content was created for Curtis Music Academy

One thing that many guitar teachers in Tulsa may experience as they teach lessons throughout many years is what happens when a student no longer wants to take music lessons. And when a student decides to quit taking lessons, it can be a very sad revealing. It could be a very relieving situation depending on whether or not a instructor feels as though that student is putting in the effort. So as for me personally as an instructor in Oklahoma, Tulsa, Oklahoma, I have noticed that there are many students that take their weekly lesson and they do not practice even one minute in between their lessons. Now, ideally this student would be practicing four hours in between their weekly lessons. And that’s something that is unfortunate when they decide that they don’t want to practice. So it usually doesn’t come to a surprise when a student like this decides they don’t want to continue taking lessons because you have seen firsthand that they aren’t necessarily all that invested into mastering their instrument.

So with that being said, some students, it can be something that you are anticipating for a while. And then other students who practice all the time. There’s some students that practice six days a week in between their lessons and they decide for whatever reason, whether it’s financial reasons or whatever, they decide they’re not going to take lessons any more than that can be something that’s a little bit frustrating. So that’s what we will be tackling in this article. When a student tells me that they will no longer be taking lessons, it can be very sad. So typically what I do is I listen to them as they are describing the reasons for cancelling lessons and then I try to figure out what is the real reason they are not going to continue taking lessons. Now this is actually pretty difficult because again, if you are one of the many guitar teachers in Tulsa, you will notice some people will decide to quit lessons and they’ll tell you by texting.

And typically these are the people that don’t have a real connection with you. Perhaps they’ve only been taking lessons for a couple months. And so these are the people that if they text you and decide that they’re going to stop taking lessons and that’s how they want to communicate that there, there’s really no way to try and get a deeper understanding. Sometimes I will call them up and try to figure out the real reason. Sometimes they don’t answer, so it just kinda depends. But if you’re able to talk with that student and figure out what it is that is truly causing them to want to quit taking lessons, that’s what we want to dive into. We want to figure out this reasoning because chances are they have simply lost sight of their goal. That’s the main reason that people are going to quit taking lessons. Every once in a while.

Somebody may say, it’s just too expensive. We had this and this and this come up. But the real thing is that they have lost sight of their goal because if their goal was still something that they wanted to grab onto and tackle, they would be willing to make any sacrifice to make that happen. If you think about people that want to give their kids a good education, they will make sacrifices upon sacrifices to make sure that their child is either enrolled in a private school or don’t take an income cut so that the mother can stay home and teach homeschooling. It just depends on what the situation is, but people are willing to make sacrifices in order to achieve what it is that they want to achieve. And so usually even if they say it’s financial reasons, the real reason is almost always they don’t feel they are able to reach their goal or they don’t feel their instructor is helping them to reach their goal at a way that the purchase of the lessons is going.

So I have heard this strategy and I have implemented it, but one of the things that can actually help to turn in that student around, not only asking them to stay with you, but another thing can be to ask them how you could help them reach their goal better. Even if you say, okay, I understand that you will no longer be taking lessons. Just out of curiosity, if we decide to continue lessons in the future, if you decided to come back, what is one way that we could help you reach your goals even better? And then they may actually give you some information that is pivotal to helping guitar teachers in Tulsa, and that’s going to be the whole thing. You really want to help them reach their goals at a time that is quick and efficient and that’s what makes great guitar teachers in Tulsa.

So another thing that a student may experience is they have simply lost interest in their goal. This happens every once in awhile and there’s usually two reasons why someone has lost sight of their goal. The number one reason is because they didn’t realize how much work it was going to take. If you have one of the students that I mentioned earlier who takes the lessons and does not pick up the instrument for one minute in between their lessons, this is one of the students that is very likely to quit lessons because they didn’t realize how much work it was going to take. But the converse side of this is that it really doesn’t take a lot of effort to learn an instrument despite what many people say or think. It just takes time. That’s really all that it takes. It just takes time spent playing your instrument. It doesn’t take a lot of effort. And so the biggest thing in helping to retain your students is to effectively show your students what it looks like to be a diligent worker, not a hard worker, a diligent worker, and this right there is going to help you retain many students. If you think about it that you may have hundreds of students in a year that decide not to take lessons because it’s too expensive or because they think it would be too much work.

You know, there’s thousands of reasons why somebody might not ever start taking lessons, but once they start taking lessons with guitar teachers in Tulsa is absolutely essential that you help students to retain them by figuring out what is a likely reason. Students in general stopped taking lessons and how can I address those situations well before they ever arise. And so that’s one of the most pivotal things. It’s very important for you to realize that students likely will quit taking lessons due to the fact that they are not reaching their goal and, and efficient amount of time. And that’s usually due to the lack of diligence in their instrument. So I hope that that helps all of the guitar teachers in Tulsa.