Many teachers interview prospective students before accepting them into their studio. While I haven’t yet felt the need to do so with my own studio, after reading James Bastien’s insight concerning interviews in his book Teaching Piano Successfully, I’m convinced that interviewing students is a great idea — even if you are planning to accept the student anyway.
It’s difficult to know how to spend the first lesson: should you buy a book in advance for the student, and jump right in? Should you hold off on the music books, and first teach them the musical alphabet, some simple tunes, and maybe some five-finger patterns? Maybe. Continue reading “Conducting Student Interviews”