New Lesson Program – Independent Teachers

Suddenly, both students and teachers needed an unprecedented level of flexibility and justifiably began coordinating with each other. Having a central lesson coordinator became an extra step in the lesson scheduling process that wasn’t serving our teachers and students as well as it did in years past.

So we took a hard look at our business model and made the decision to move to a paradigm that could maximize flexibility, plus other win-win benefits.

As a small business, we try to stay nimble in the face of a changing environment, to best serve our students and teachers.

• The teacher sets their own schedule. Need to reschedule? Contact your teacher directly and resolve your inquiry faster than ever. All questions regarding scheduling and make-ups are addressed directly to the teacher.

• The teacher sets their own rates and billing policies. All lesson payments are made directly to the teacher. This better supports the teachers and allows a much greater variety of qualified instructors to be part of our team.

• Each teacher has greater freedom to design lesson offerings for their students. Depending on the teacher, this might entail group lessons, in-home arrangements, virtual lessons, or something else completely. We look forward to supporting innovation in music education.

• The teacher is no longer directly employed by Family Piano Co, but is rather a completely independent partner. They’ll simply pay us a small “room rental” fee to help us cover our overhead expenses.

What Happens Next?

• We’ll be implementing all changes starting in August.

• If you are currently taking lessons, please continue to attend your regularly scheduled lessons, whether it is in-person or virtual.

• We will not charge any of our students in August, but rather all lesson payments should be made directly to the teacher.

• We are working hard to update our website as quickly as possible, including new and improved teacher profiles that allow prospective students to contact the teachers directly.

• The teachers are working hard to transition to the new model as well. Some are established teachers with existing studio policies, prices, etc. Others will need to create their own from scratch and/or adapt from our previous student policies. Some are also working on returning to in-person lessons, under certain conditions.

• While we would have preferred to transition more slowly, we felt strongly that making this transition BEFORE the chaos of Back-to-School in the era of COVID-19 was in the best interest of teachers and students.

Our beloved Lesson Coordinator Donna will be staying with Family Piano Co. She’ll continue to help with the lesson program, but with fewer responsibilities in that department, she’ll be lending her excellent administrative skills to our growing service department. She brings a wealth of experience and knowledge for running a service business that we’re looking to better engage with.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, you can still reach us at 847-775-1988 or at [email protected]. We will try to update this page with answers to questions we receive.

And if you’re interested in teaching at Family Piano, please contact us too!