8 Reasons You Are NOT Growing as a Teacher at Your Music School

Music school owners around the country are mostly musicians that struck out on their own and grew their student base to more than what they could handle. 

So they hire a music teacher as cheaply as possible to maximize their margins. They do this because they have a new business to run, and that takes time away from their own teaching. Those reduced teaching hours mean more outside teachers are needed to make up the revenue the musician lost by running the business. 

With that, many do not have the acumen to properly run a business. Anyone can collect money and send invoices, but they also have to handle customer service, sales, marketing, student retention, teacher retention, payroll, accounting, and other required business processes.

That makes the whole endeavor daunting, difficult, and most often ineffective, or at least barely effective enough to keep things going. 

The result is there are areas in the business that get passed over or neglected. One of those areas is most often the teachers. In the music teaching industry, teachers tend to be contractors and not employees. That way, the owners of the music school don’t have to manage the whole effort of things like employment, taxes, etc. This does not help a teacher grow in both their teaching skills and their financial stability.

The following eight reasons are why music schools are failing you as a teacher. 

As a contractor, there is nothing preventing the school from dropping your contract. There is no job security at all. If you teach guitar, it is easy enough to find another guitar teacher to replace you. That does not mean they are a better musician or teacher than you. It just means they have someone to fill a slot to allow their students to continue lessons with someone else.

Sage Music does not agree with this. They believe a teacher should have help to build their student studio and be provided the stability and security being a real employee entails. 

As a contractor, you get no benefits from the company. They keep you at arm’s length, so they do not have to provide those additional benefits and expenses to the company. In today’s world, medical benefits, among other key things like a retirement 401K, are critical for survival. 

Sage Music believes that a teacher should have the opportunity to gain health benefits, vision, dental, retirement, and more, because a professional teacher should be provided the same safety nets that other professional companies in other industries offer. 

On a per hour basis or even an average range, pay for music teachers is very low. It is seen as a part-time job or a side gig to make some extra income. Few people can make a true, comfortable living on it. 

Sage Music believes otherwise. A professional teacher who treats teaching music as a career should have a living wage. It does not have to be a part time job or side gig. It can be a full time career to grow from. Pay based on the quality of the teaching encourages teachers to become the best they can be for their students and frees the teacher from the stress of paying their bills paycheck to paycheck.

When you are replaceable at a school, there is no job stability. When there are no benefits or decent wages, there is no financial or future stability. Teaching music ends up being a short-term fix despite how passionate teachers are about teaching music. 

As mentioned above, Sage Music provides that security and stability. They found a new paradigm that can allow a side-gig industry to become a real job with a real career and a real future. 

Most schools do not have much in the way of structure for their teachers. They let you show up, and they may provide a few ideas on how to conduct lessons, but really, the teachers create everything on their own. This helps those music schools save costs and time by dumping that responsibility on the contractor teachers.

Sage Music believes in the idea of structure and provides a scientifically proven framework for teachers to create their lessons in. This helps teachers structure their lessons efficiently while maintaining the creativity of the teacher to teach their students with their own flare and style. 

Grade-school teachers, university professors, and all other jobs requiring a certification insist on continued education to maintain their certification. It helps teachers keep their edge and improve their techniques to better serve their students. In the music industry with music teachers, this is not the case. The idea of formal, continued education is virtually non-existent. 

How can a teacher become better without external help that excludes well-meaning but often mistake-ridden YouTube videos?

Enter stage right with Sage Music. Their intense teacher education and continuing education puts the spotlight on not just good musicians teaching music, but helping musicians to become top tier teachers. This emphasis on great teaching vastly benefits both the speed and quality of teaching. Quality teachers result in quality students. This is the reason that students stay with Sage more than three times as long as the industry average. 

There are few music teacher certifications that focus truly on teaching. Of the ones there, the legitimacy is suspect. Many colleges offer music education, but only a couple courses focus much on the actual teaching and how to teach. These are skills and techniques that matter to be successful as a music teacher.

The Sage Music Teacher certification is a multi-level, top-tier system of education that focuses on actual teaching. They understand general music education is separate from excelling as a teacher in music and push for teachers to be their best. Completing the Sage Teacher certification sets teachers up on a path to success for their future.

Most music schools just need bodies that know how to play an instrument, keeping the students coming back and pouring more money into the company’s bank account. While they enjoy the revenue they make off each teacher, they don’t have the responsibility of that teacher. 

They want their cake and eat it too. It is a sad concept. It is even sadder this belief is SO broad, it is an industry expectation. 

Sage Music wants to change that perception. There are so many examples in other industries where companies focus more on their employees, and thus, their employees take care of the business. Sage believes that too. Provide a real wage, benefits, stability, security, and skills to someone… really INVEST into a teacher. They, in turn, will be able to give more to their students and really impact their lives in a positive way. 

The Sage Music way is the ONLY way to go forward as a music teacher because it is the ONLY way to have a successful career doing what you love.