I am pleased to post my first review on this blog!
I’ve been a long time follower and fan of Jennifer Foxx over at Music Educators Resources. She has developed a new course, “Creating a Studio Policy and Sticking to it!” I love that title because policy development is not just about creating a policy, it’s about implementing and not being afraid, as she says, to “stick to it.”
My first impression as soon as I logged in was that both the program itself and the platform it’s presented on are very clean, simple and professional-looking. I love that! It’s very easy to navigate. When you log in, you can see how much of the course you have completed.
Modules
The curriculum is a set of 7 video modules ranging from 2-minutes to 37-minutes. The videos follow a nice Powerpoint as Jennifer talks you through the program.
Modules include:
- Introduction
- Policy Myths and Benefits
- Tips on Creating Your Studio Policies
- What Should a Policy Include?
- Understanding Conflicts and Resolving Confrontations
- How to Say NO and Have it Stick
- Create Win-Wins.
Bonus Material
There is quite a bit of bonus material including a course workbook that outlines the Powerpoint. Using it can help you keep focused, stay on track, and jot down your notes and reflections. Writing out her points makes it nice so if you want to review the material you don’t have to watch the whole video again. There’s both a printable and interactive version of the course workbook available!
Besides the course workbook, other bonus materials include a pdf of Jennifer’s studio policy and registration forms. This is especially great because during one of the videos she shares her specific policies. Having it accessible as a download helps avoid the scramble of trying to write so much during the video.
You also get two more bonus videos: Tips to Getting Paid on Time, and a Video Lesson Tutorial. The video lesson tutorial is especially great because she shares her recommended equipment including links.
This program is rounded off with a hefty PDF full of Policy Script Starters (for those who just don’t know what to say or how to say it when it comes to defending their policy!), a Course Certificate and access to a private Facebook Community!
More Thoughts
The content is well organized, clear, simply presented, and thorough. If you are someone who is looking to develop studio policies from scratch or even if you need to do an overhaul of your old policies, I would definitely recommend this program!
One thing Jennifer offers in her program that I have not seen anyone else in piano-teacher-world discuss is understanding and resolving conflict and different styles of conflict.
We ARE talking about listening to someone talk about studio policies though (not exactly the most exciting topic in the world, right?), so I wouldn’t recommend listening to Jennifer’s lovely Zen-like voice at 10:00 pm! Ha! I would also recommend tackling the program in small bits over the course of a few days so you can take the time to reflect and work on your policies.
On Sale
The course is $79 and Jennifer has a discount going on NOW but it expires July 1! Get $10 off using the offer code STICKING-TO-IT.
Since this post is going out the day before the code expires, Jennifer has extended an offer to Piano Pantry readers to get a $5 discount through July 31 using the offer code PPJULY.
Thanks to Jennifer!
P.S. A few tips when you purchase the program.
Know that when you start a video, if you pause and jump to something else in the program for any reason, then come back, it will not save your place in the video. Not a huge deal as long as you remember where you were in the video.
Regarding the interactive PDF, which personally I was thrilled she had available! Be careful when you go to save. I thought you could just click “save” but found out the hard way that you have to print to save. I accidentally ended up losing everything I typed! Maybe I missed something but just be smarter than I was. Also, I’m a big-time user of keyboard shortcuts so tabbing through the fields wasn’t always smooth because they weren’t always in order. This was a nuisance to me but does not affect my recommendation. For the sake of authenticity and thoroughness, however, I felt I should share my feelings!
Thanks for a lovely review Amy! I’ll have to go see what’s going on with those tabs in the interactive pdf file. I have my suspicions so I’ll try to get that fixed. 😉 I tested out the “save” though and it worked for me without having to print so I’m not sure what’s going on there? I would probably recommend to everyone just to be safe is to do a little save test before typing the official notes because that would be frustrating to lose them all! Thanks again!
That’s a great suggestion! Test save before going through the whole thing! Thanks for checking those things out!