Each year, before the beginning of August, I send updated policies to my students.
Why? As a teacher, this is an important email to send. It kicks off the school year and sets your expectation for the next 9-10 months.
What should you cover in your policies?
- Tuition for the school year. I like to collect equal monthly tuition from September – May so that my income is consistent.
- A calendar of the upcoming school year. What weeks will you teach? What weeks will you have performance classes? What weeks will you have recitals?
- Your policy on makeup lessons. What will you do when a student needs to miss a lesson? Or when you need to miss a lesson? Be clear on your expectations and what you except from the parent and student. Do you want to credit lessons back to their tuition? Do you want to do private makeup lessons? Do you want to do asynchronous video makeup lessons? Do you want to do group makeup lessons?
- Expectations on practicing: what does it mean to be a part of your studio? Do you have any specific requirements for students to complete assignments from week to week? How will you relay assignments to the student from week to week? Will you use a notebook, software scheduling service or something else?
- A general list of outside events that your students can participate in. Do you belong to a local organization that hosts festivals? Do you participate in competitions and examinations? List these options here! This gives your students and parents a overview of the school year.
Here are the reasons why I send this email before the start of August.
- As a parent myself, I know that schedules begin to fill up a few weeks before the school year. You want to make sure you are on the parent’s schedule as an important part of their child’s week.
- As an independent teacher, it’s important to know how much work and therefor how much income you will have over the school year.
- Setting up your calendar before the school year starts gives you a reason to plan out your studio year, giving your students events and recitals to look forward to. Students and teachers need performance and studio goals!
As teachers and studio owners, the more organized we are in our presentation to parents, the easier it is for us to run our studios as the businesses that they are.
So this week, before August starts, send our your updated policies and email about the coming school year to your students and their parents. Give them their scheduled fall lesson times, even if it is only a rough draft estimate of your schedule. One easy way to do this is to create your studio policies as a google doc and save as a PDF to email to students, put on your website, and/or share that doc with your families.
Need help with writing your own piano studio policies?
Join me for the Piano Pedagogy Collection, starting September of 2026. This is for new teachers AND seasoned teachers alike. I’ll share with you the exact steps I take every month to keep my studio running smoothly.