u/Interesting-Bet-4383

Lately this has honestly become the most frustrating part of teaching for me.

I can prepare great lessons, organize pieces for each student, write notes after lessons etc., but if they don’t practice between lessons it feels like we spend half the next lesson just recovering lost ground.

Especially with younger students it’s really hit or miss. Some practice consistently, others touch the piano once the night before the lesson and then say “yeah I practiced a bit”

I’ve tried:

• practice journals
• texting reminders
• asking parents to help
• assigning very small daily goals
• writing detailed homework notes

Some students improve a lot with structure, but keeping track of everything across multiple students becomes its own job after a while.

Curious what other teachers are doing because I still feel like I haven’t found a system that actually works long term.

Do you just accept that some students won’t practice? Or is there something that genuinely helped improve consistency?

Running my own small guitar studio and honestly the admin side has become a second job.

Between managing schedules, rescheduling requests, chasing payments, and trying to figure out which students actually practiced this week, I feel like I spend more time on this stuff than on actual teaching.

The practice accountability thing is what gets me the most. Students show up, haven't touched the guitar all week, and there's no real system to track it or hold them accountable between lessons. I've tried just asking them but that obviously doesn't work.

For those of you running your own studios, how do you actually handle this stuff? Specifically curious about:

• How do you track whether students are practicing between lessons?
• What do you use for scheduling and dealing with last minute cancellations?
• Payments, do you automate this or still do it manually?
• How do you keep notes on each student's progress without it becoming a mess?

What's the one thing you wish you had a better system for? I feel like there has to be a better way than what I'm doing right now, I also heard about MyMusicStaff but I'm unsure about the price.