So you’ve made the decision to enroll your child or teen in music lessons. That is awesome! Let me just say, as an educator, musician, and parent, I can promise you, that is one of the best decisions you will ever make for your child!

Staying up to date on your child’s musical progress is important, and it is your responsibility. Because we want to give each student every bit of our attention during their lesson time, we just can’t call, email, or text every parent every week about their child’s lessons. Here’s a few great ways to stay up to date and in the know on your child’s progress:

• Be Present in Lessons as Often as You Can if Possible. This is the most important and the best. If you are in the lessons, you know exactly what’s going on because you’re there. Sometimes a student is distracted or less open when a parent is in the room, and if that’s the case, we will let you know, but 99% of the time it doesn’t bother the student at all as long as the parents are respectful and not being a distraction, or even sort of a hindrance by their kid being stressed out that you are there. That obviously is an exception. And in those cases we will always talk to you about it.

• The Lesson Notebook. Every student should have a notebook. We assign one when you enroll. If you don’t have one, be sure to get one right away. And one of the things about that lesson notebook is if you or your teacher is regularly writing the homework in that lesson notebook every week, then also their progress is right there and you can look back very easily and see what they were assigned several weeks ago, last week, several months ago, and what they are doing now, etc. We also usually break this down into at least a couple of different categories of scales, fundamentals, theory, lesson book material, repertoire, etc.

• Brief Chat Updates in Person Either Before or After the Lesson at the Studio or even if virtually. These are obviously great and one of my favorite ways to do it, unfortunately it’s just not always possible because sometimes parents don’t come in, sometimes we don’t have the time. But if you want this to happen you can talk to us about what needs to happen so that we can make it work. We can easily take the first few minutes of a lesson or the last few to do this. I will often do this while a student is putting away their instruments, grabbing a sticker, etc.

• Ask for Direct Updates Occasionally. Ideally, if you are doing a-c, you won’t need much else. But if you still have questions about a specific concern or area of musical development—just ask us! We are here for you!

• In Home Mini Concerts. These are so good and fun anyways! I have students that do this and come in and tell me about it all the time. It can be as simple as the student sitting down once a week to play whatever they are currently working on for their parents/family. It can of course be more elaborate if they’d like and I have many students that love that, putting on like a little mini concert for their parents every week. I suggest this be something your child picks as a special day/time and make it a regular thing even putting it on the family calendar, that way it’s something the student can prepare for and look forward to. This is a great way for them to demonstrate their continued growth and for parents to see their progress. Maybe even record it on video. If you shoot it to us, we will post it on social media! People love that!