STUDENT WITHDRAWALS

How to Save Withdrawals

If you’re reading this, you may have been told that one of your students has submitted their withdrawal notification! Aaah! Sometimes this can take teachers by surprise, and sometimes not, but either way, you need to try to save this student from withdrawing!

The Withdrawal Reason

We always ask students/parents why they want to withdraw, and we tend to get the same types of answers over and over. There are only a few reasons which we consider to be valid reasons for withdrawing and unsaveable. Here is the list of most common reasons students give for withdrawing:

High school graduation/Going to college

Moving

Health problems

Financial reasons

Lost interest

Doesn't like to practice

Too busy

Schedule conflict

Only interested in summer lessons

Not ready/too young for lessons

Teacher not a good fit

Too far away from home

Taking a break

Personal reasons

The top three listed are the only reasons given that indicate this student likely cannot be saved. Other than that, all of the other reasons typically tend to be excuses masking the real reason which is simply that lessons aren’t going well enough to be prioritized. Let’s take financial reasons, for example. We all know that families will create their budget to fund what is most important to them. If lessons are not going great and money is already a bit tight, they will be one of the first things to go! So listing “financial reasons” as the excuse doesn’t necessarily mean lessons can no longer be afforded - it just means they’re no longer a priority, and that can be turned around! Same goes for a reason such as “too busy”. People make time for what is important to them. People who give that reason aren’t actually too busy, they’re just not motivated enough to find the time. Any of the reasons below the top three can be turned around!

Why Save Students From Withdrawing

At ROOS, we’re looking to keep students in lessons for as long as possible and ultimately grow them into proficient musicians. We’re not looking to be a revolving door for beginning students, but rather to build a reputation of excellence regarding the proficiency of our students. In order to do this, we need to keep students in lessons! Sometimes students lose interest in practicing or get super busy with other activities, but this does not mean it’s time for them to stop engaging with music. In fact, most students go through a phase of reduced dedication to their music lessons at some point in their life. When this inevitably happens, your job is to get students through this phase so they can eventually get back on track and continue to grow their skills. If you think back to your time as a music student (maybe you still are one), you undoubtedly can remember times when you didn’t want to practice, had other things that were more important to you, or maybe even wanted to quit. Whether it was you, a parent, or a teacher who kept you from letting go of music, you owe that person a lot of gratitude. It’s time for you to be that person for your student.

How to Get Students Through the Loss-of-Interest Phase

So how do you do it? Here are the most effective long-term student retention and withdrawal-saving strategies as identified by experienced ROOS teachers with the highest retention:

Have a Heart-to-Heart Chat:

Talk with your student candidly and let them know it’s okay that they don’t want to practice as much as they used to! This doesn’t make them bad and it doesn’t mean they don’t love music anymore. Let them know you’re here to work together with them as a team to make it fun again. Try to get to the heart of why they don’t want to practice or why they want to quit, listen to what they’re saying, and change things up accordingly. Depending on your relationship with the parent, you might want to try getting some information from them as well as to why the student is experiencing a reduced interest right now. Make sure to continue reassuring everyone that this is normal, expected, and okay, and you will develop a plan.

Change It Up:

Try something new! Maybe a new style of music or a new style of playing such as learning by rote or improvisation. Maybe try teaching your student something new such as some interesting theory concepts or music history. Change up your routine in the lessons by playing some games or playing duets together more often. Change up the type of practice assignments you give. Help your student change up their practice routine at home. Shake things up any way you can! You’d be amazed at how well this simple strategy can breathe life back into your student’s experience.

Introduce a Favorite Song:

Ask your student what song they’ve always wanted to learn how to play, and then find or write an arrangement of it for them! There is hardly any better strategy to keep students in lessons than to help them achieve a long-time dream of learning a favorite song. If they don’t have a favorite song, present them with some fun options. Or maybe try learning what their favorite style or mood is (fast, dark and dramatic, majestic, slow and beautiful, playful and silly, etc), and then find an awesome song in that style.

Build a Meaningful Relationship:

I’m sure you can think of a music teacher in your past who was also a friend and mentor for you. Music students are human beings with busy, complex lives, and we, as teachers, are there to help them have the best, most joyful life they can. Yes, we focus our joy strategy around learning how to make music, but the fact remains that there is much more to it than that, and we need to stay focused on the bigger picture. Get to know your students outside of their weekly music assignments and whether or not they practiced. Ask about their other hobbies and activities, their favorite food, whether or not they have any pets, their favorite tv show, and let them know yours, too! Ask them how their week or day was and be observant to their moods, adjusting your plans for the lesson as necessary. Tailor your teaching style and personality to how they best respond - sometimes that means more enthusiastic and playful and sometimes that means more gentle in your interactions.

Relax Your Practice Expectations:

Sometimes students can just feel a little burned out. If you have been giving your student the same amount of practice assignments for a while now and they’re starting to drop the ball, you might try reducing your expectations a bit and letting them know that you’re still proud of them and they can still feel good even without working at such a frantic pace. Make sure you let their parents know this is your recommendation so that you can all be on the same page.

Challenge Your Student:

Try giving your student a special challenge that can reinvigorate their interest. Challenge them with a new song at a higher level than they’ve ever played or maybe challenge them to prepare and perform in a recital. Maybe you can find a more advanced duet and let them know you’d really like to play it with them, but they have to learn it first! You can also try challenging them to complete a method book by a certain time, memorize a song, build a repertoire of 5 memorized songs, etc. Just make it tougher than usual, hype it up every week as the greatest thing they could ever do, and then pour on the praise all throughout the process!

Remind Your Student and Their Parents of Progress:

Lavish over-the-top enthusiastic praise on your student for every tiny accomplishment and share this with their parents as well! It’s sometimes difficult for students and parents to see progress from week to week, so remind them of the big picture. The majority of students respond better to positive reinforcement than lectures about how they need to practice more, listen better, pay more attention to detail, etc. Instead of lecturing about those things, work hard to get them to accomplish one tiny goal in those areas and then compliment them so well on their achievement that they’ll work hard to get more of your praise! 

Set Long-Term and Short-Term Goals:

The satisfaction of completing a goal is addictive, and that is actually scientific! The trick to setting goals is to make them clear, objective, and attainable. Sit down with your student and make sure that they always have some type of short-term goal (maybe for the month) such as completing a certain song or a certain number of pages in a method or theory book and some type of long-term goal such as building a repertoire of songs, performing in a recital, etc. Make the goals and timeline clear to the student and their parents, determine an action plan for accomplishing them, and then encourage your student excitedly with every tiny step toward achievement.

Utilize Recitals:

Listen, you’d be crazy not to have your students involved in both of these free programs! Recitals are specifically designed to help keep students goal-oriented and parents updated on progress at all times. Our stats show that students who participate in recitals have a much longer life as a student than those who don’t.

Pay Attention:

In order for any of these strategies work, you’ve GOT to pay attention to your student. Is their focus wandering? Pick up the pace or do something different. Is their practice slowly dwindling? Explore what’s going on and try one of the strategies above. Do they seem upset? Take time to talk with them and let them know you’re here to listen. Are they telling you they don’t like music anymore or want to quit? Find out what secret message they’re REALLY trying to tell you - because it’s almost a guarantee that something deeper is going on.

Ongoing Schedule Conflict:

If the student’s reason for withdrawing is actually related to an unavoidable, long-term schedule conflict, there are multiple options available to you.

  1. You can suggest that the student change their lesson time going forward. Sometimes students and parents are unaware that this is an option, and can be a very easy way to save a withdraw.

  2. You can suggest that the student utilize one of our “hold options”.

Put It All Together

If you have even one lesson left with your student before their withdrawal takes effect, you can turn things around. We’ve seen it happen over and over. But you have to move quickly and you can’t be shy. 

Follow these steps:

  1. Apply the appropriate strategies above based on the situation. Use your gut on which ones are best to try first and then keep trying until something sticks.

  2. Spend the lesson talking with your student about your new plan for them and getting them excited again about lessons under this new plan.

  3. Talk with their parent (or send an email through ROOS if the parent doesn’t come in) and confidently state that you feel the student should not quit, tell them why you feel that way, and then present your plan to them and tell them you’d like them to give it a try for a bit longer and see if things improve. Boldly ask them to give you at least another few months (or whatever timeline makes sense) to see if things can be turned around. Remember that you are the authority figure here, and most parents greatly trust and respect the opinion of a professional!

  4. If they agree, send them to the front desk to cancel or postpone their withdrawal.