Teacher Development Opportunities at ISM: Amongst the many benefits of teaching with us, we offer many teacher development opportunities including systemized 24-level curriculum to ensure long-term student retention, teacher training (lesson planning, classroom management, and classroom games that keep lessons varied and interesting, early childhood music training, and more), guest clinicians on teaching hot topics, faculty concerts, department meetings for addressing teaching issues as a team, and department leadership positions.

As a music teacher, you can either teach privately in your house or in students homes, or you can teach in a music store or school – both have upsides and downsides. If you teach in your home or students’ homes, the upside is you can keep all of the money you charge to the student. Since you have no expenses like rent, a receptionist or yellow pages advertising you do not have to pay out a percentage to overhead costs. There are also downsides of teaching in your home or your student’s homes. It can be hard to keep your schedule constantly full with new students. Getting a full schedule can be difficult and expensive if you have to run classified ads or small newspaper ads. Even if you are a good, well-liked teacher, it can take a long time for referrals and word of mouth to fill your schedule. If you are driving to student’s houses you also have to factor in the driving time between students which limits the amount of teaching you can actually do.

The other downside of teaching on your own can be the difficulty in enforcing your attendance and payment policies. No one likes being a collection agent. It can be difficult to concentrate on your teaching while trying to keep track of who owes money and to make sure you are paid.

If you are teaching on your own, it can also be difficult to enforce your teaching policies and have your time respected. For example, if a student tells you they are going to Disney Land for the next two weeks, it can be difficult to still make them pay for their lesson time. Many students will refuse to pay for those missed lessons because they will think: “I’m not getting my lesson so why should pay?”

Chances are you can’t book another student in that lesson time for just 2 weeks, so if you don’t charge the student in Disney World, you have just lost 2 weeks of pay. If that scenario happens a couple of times per month it can greatly reduce your earnings.

Now let’s look at teaching at a music school. The downside is you don’t get paid as much per student. Teaching rates that in-home teachers and music schools charge are usually pretty similar. So the pay per student to the teacher is lower because of rent, yellow pages, receptionists and other expenses. The upside can be having a consistently full schedule of students each day. Being paid a little less per student but having 10 or 11 students in a day will mean you earn more overall.

Another upside to teaching at our music school is that you do not have any collections hassles. You only have to focus on the teaching. Also our music school provides a professional educational environment that is stimulating to the students. We use top of the line instruments (Yamaha Grand pianos, Roland drum sets, etc) that are fun for both students and teachers to play on. It is also free from distractions found in a home such as ringing phones or doorbells, TVs, and noisy family members.

Those are the general differences between teaching on your own and teaching in a music school or store.

Here are reasons why music teachers choose to teach at our school over all other choices:

1. A constant flow of new students to keep schedules as full as possible.

Over the course of the year, students can move or quit. This can leave a teacher with gaps or holes in their schedule. Most student register and start lessons in September. Most music schools only advertise in late August and September for new students. At our school, we spend a lot of money on advertising and marketing year round to keep our teacher’s schedules as full as possible. Each year we spend over $60,000 on advertising in newspapers, yellow pages, direct mail, community publications and other media to constantly attract new students. We are continually registering new students for our private music lessons even during typically slower registration months like May or June.

2. Extras are taken care of – your only responsibility is to teach.

We have full-time front desk administrators to handle all of the “details” of teaching. From scheduling to collecting fees or arranging an accompanist for recitals, these details are handled by our administrators, not the teacher. This means the teacher is free to focus on teaching and not get bogged down by the administration.

3. Your time is respected and you are paid whether or not students show up.

Teachers are paid for lessons whether students attend or not. If a student misses classes for school trips or holidays, the teacher is still paid. The only time a student is given an extra make-up lesson is if the student is sick and they can only have 2 make-up lessons per year for sickness. If a student does not pay for their lessons or has an uncollectible debt, the teacher is still paid. Our priority for our teachers is to make sure that your time is not abused and your teaching day can be as productive as possible.