Tulsa Guitar Lessons | Whiteboards
This content was written for Curtis Music Academy
So today I’m going to talk about the important of white boards. Now I’m sure that everyone had a whiteboard in their classroom when they were growing up. When they were little, there was a white board. Even when you got into high school, there was still a whiteboards in all of the classrooms. And that is because whiteboards are awesome and I think they’re often underestimated in how much you can accomplish with the whiteboard. But at Curtis Music Academy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where we teach Tulsa guitar lessons we do not underestimate the power of whiteboards, rather, we genuinely love them and we use them every single day because we recognize how important they are for learning. Whiteboards just provide a ton of visual representations and cues and they’re just incredibly critical for a student’s learning. And there’s not that much difference in taking Tulsa guitar lessons, piano lessons, and vocal lessons. Then there is when we were in school.
So there really isn’t a big difference. So just as the whiteboards were important in school growing up, they are equally as important now when taking Tulsa guitar lessons. So we have white boards in each of our studio rooms, in even one in the office. So in the first studio we have a whiteboard that is right by the piano and the whiteboard is utilized by our piano instructors, guitar instructors, and even our vocal instructor occasionally. But for the most part is utilized by the guitar instructors who teach Tulsa guitar lessons because there seems to be a lot more to draw and explain when it comes to playing the guitar because you have to put your fingers in certain places and there’s just a lot of coordination that is required so you can easily draw it out on the whiteboard to better explain the finger positioning and strumming patterns and all that fun stuff.
So why ports are really important and that is why we have them in both studio rooms and in our office. So in that first studio, like I mentioned, sometimes the piano instructor write something on the board, whether that be the note to a scale so that the student can look at the progression. They can draw a staff and draw the notes on that so they can see exactly how it, how it looks on paper or they can draw where the fingers are supposed to go, one playing a certain song. It’s really important for that because the student can better visualize it because like we’ve talked about in previous podcasts, the student really has individual needs and we recognize every single day at Curtis Music Academy that all of our students have different individual needs and goals when taking Tulsa guitar lessons. Each student learns differently. So we have found for a lot of students, the whiteboard is the best way for them to learn it because it provides those visual cues and visual representations of whatever the instructor is talking about. So a lot of students might be audible learners, meaning that when the instructor talks to them and says something out loud, they remember it and then you’re able to follow through and do it. And there are also other students that might be
physical learners where they have to actually do it. So if they’re on the guitar, they would actually have to strum it themselves for them to remember it and it’d be able to play it again. But there are a lot of students that are visual learners. So if our instructor writes something on the Whiteboard, really big, easy for them to see, then the student can remember and see all of that information and is really able to just word through that visual visual learning. And so the whiteboards are really great, especially particularly for visual learners. Okay. So when a student comes in to take Tulsa guitar lessons, the instructor will oftentimes start out by writing on the white board, the staff, the music staff. So there are two, three, five lines and four spaces on the music staff.
And the guitar has several strings and the instructor is able to draw out the finger positionings on the music that they’ve drawn on the whiteboard. And you can tell exactly where those students fingers are supposed to go. So they can look at that white board and look at their own fingers and work to match them up. I’m staring right now at the whiteboard that is in our office and I have often talked about the importance of having an office and having everything organized and the whiteboard is actually one of the critical components in making sure that we remain organized. So we have a giant whiteboard right above the desk, right above the computer and it is full of stuff. Eight is full of reminders, schedules, tasks, all of that. So it looks like in the top left corner we forgot my own personal schedule so when I am available to work based on my school schedule and all of that stuff.
So it shows the days and times that I am available to work and right below that is our instructor schedule. So this instructor’s schedule is actually really important because I am able, when I’m scheduling someone for our first lesson, I’m able to look up at the whiteboard and see when each instructor is available on what days. So if I want to give the student to Olivia because Olivia is really good at dealing with young children and beginning students, then I will need to look at when she has available for teaching Tulsa guitar lessons and try to match up the student’s availability with Olivia’s availability. So the whiteboard is really important because we have schedules written on it and it really helps to smooth out the scheduling process, makes it really easy to schedule people for first Tulsa guitar lessons at the top of the white board along at the entire thing. We have the line, I guess you could call it of how we get in touch with people once they contact us to take a first lesson.
So we have a lot of steps in that process when it comes to contacting our new students. So like I’ve mentioned before, the first step obviously is them filling out that form on our website per taking a first lesson and then we would give them a call to try and schedule that lesson. If they don’t answer, we will send them an email. If they don’t answer that email, we will send them another email. They don’t answer that email, we will send them a third and final email. So that is all written up there. After that phone call, if they did answer and we got them scheduled, then we will send them a confirmation text and email to verify it and that’s the time that they signed up for. Then the day before, we’ll send them a phone call reminder that says, Hey, whatever your name is, just a reminder that you have a first lesson scheduled tomorrow, this time.
Then the same day, two hours before, we will send them a reminder text. And this is one of the most important components of this contact form because it allows them to stop whatever they are doing and racked it up in order to make it to their first lesson on time. So that is at the very top of the Whiteboard, just outlining all the contact steps through that. I know when I should contact people so I know who to send emails to, all of that fun stuff. Right below that is my personal daily tasks and things that I’m supposed to do every day. Just so that I don’t forget, it’s kind of like a checklist or reminder of all the things that I needed to do.
So whether that be watering the plants are cleaning the oil diffusers, greeting people as they come in. All of those things are under my list of daily tasks. Uh, underneath that you’ll find that the general tasks section that says all the tasks Ron and I both need to do, whether that be a random thought that we had, we will read up on the whiteboard because of that. It’s written down and we can look at it every time so that we can remember to get it done.
So all in all, the whiteboards are really important for all of us here at Curtis Music Academy, whether that be the instructors, the students, or myself back in the office. The white boards play a critical role in our success as a music academy, as they allow us to reach out to all of the students no matter their learning needs, and allows us to stay incredibly organized and on task.