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Bi-weekly Lessons – Why they won’t work

Bi-weekly Lessons7 reasons why bi-weekly lessons do not work…

Now and then, our studio gets asked if we offer bi-weekly lessons. I mean, doesn’t it make sense that if you take lessons every other week, you have half the number of trips into the studio, you have double the amount of time to practice, and you can save some money, right?

WRONG.

Aside from the fact that it is a scheduling nightmare for the teacher and studio, I want to outline a few reasons why (in most cases) bi-weekly lessons do not work.

1) If a lessons gets cancelled for whatever reason, you could go 4 weeks without a lesson.

Things happen. People get sick. Cars stop working. Bosses want overtime. Snowstorms could hit. Whatever the reason, our studio is pretty happy to schedule a makeup lesson. But not all studio policies are the same. In some cases, if you cancel at the last minute, you forfeit your lesson. In that case, you are going 4 weeks without instruction!

2) Think how hard it is to correct a mistake you have been unintentionally ‘practising’ all week. Multiplied by 2.

In normal weekly lessons, a teacher can give you constant guidance, and fix wrong notes or other errors before they become too firmly ingrained in your mind and your fingers. Now imagine that two weeks goes by before you get that feedback from your teacher. If you’ve been practising wrong notes for two weeks, it becomes that much harder to correct because you are now used to the wrong way of playing.

3) Most people think: ‘Wow! I will have more time to practice my lesson assignment!’

After all, you have 14 days before your next lesson, right?! In reality, what most often happens is this: the day or two before the lesson: ‘Erm. What did my teacher assign again?’ Or others treat the extra week as a week off and then try to binge practice in the days leading up to the lesson. (In case you’re wondering–it doesn’t work!)

4) Loss of forward momentum

A weekly lesson seems to be the ideal time period to go away and work on the things that your teacher asks you to work on and then come back, show you’ve learned it, and try something new. If we think in terms of a year, we have 50 or so lessons in a full year. If we are taking bi-weekly lessons, we have only about 25 or so. That makes a huge difference in a person’s forward progression.

5) Lowered commitment

This is along the same lines as number 4.  When we have a weekly commitment to weekly scheduled lessons, it is something that is (usually) on our minds. With bi-weekly lessons, it seems like students lose that forward push and start to get disinterested in their studies, especially because their forward progression slows to a snail’s pace.

6) Bi-weekly lessons are a scheduling nightmare!

Bi-weekly lessons means that you are holding a spot that the studio could have filled with someone who would take and pay for weekly lessons. Our studio tries to only offer bi-weekly lessons at the beginning or end of a teacher’s schedule so that the hole every other week won’t be a great inconvenience. Another solution we’ve tried is to schedule another bi-weekly student who will fill in the alternating weeks.

7) Bi-weekly lessons require more planning

The student needs to be supremely organized in order to make sure they don’t miss a lesson, and make sure they are on the same page as the studio, especially if their regular lesson times are interrupted in any way by holidays, etc.

The teacher that does bi-weekly lessons has to do more lesson planning to make sure that the student will have assignments that are easy to understand and execute even without teacher input. After all, the student is going to be going away for two weeks until you see them again. You have to walk the line between them being bored because there wasn’t enough work to do or because it was too easy; and them giving up altogether because the assignment was too hard to figure out without the teacher there.

So if you still want to pursue bi-weekly lessons, here’s what you have to do:

  • Be supremely organized! Put in your calendar the lesson times and make sure you have the same dates and times as your teacher / studio.
  • Even if two weeks elapse between lessons, make sure that you schedule a routine daily practice time
  • Keep excellent notes. Write down what your teacher tells you and put it into action right away. Use video, audio recordings, and/or keep a notebook if necessary.
  • If possible, go straight home and practice. That way you will remember what your teacher asked you to work on.

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