Communicating a student’s progress to their parents is a key factor in retaining students and an excellent way to keep class levels where you want them to be. It also helps your front desk staff to know at a glance what the correct placement is for each student and gives them a feeling of confidence when talking with the parents when they are registering their child, even if they know nothing about dance.
Each year in the spring we place a questionnaire form in with the daily class attendance books that are kept in each studio. There are a number of questions on the form with four boxes next to them for the teacher to mark. The boxes have a heading above them such as Excellent, Good, Fair or Bad. Questions regarding class attendance, level of focus, grooming, whether or not the students apply their corrections, general attitude in class and level of improvement are all on the sheet. If a student is ready to audition for our performance groups or company, there is also a box for that. The teacher can easily fill out these questionnaires on each student in their classes without having to take any additional time and they can also add any comments they might have for the students on the same document. This is a simple but effective way for you, as a studio owner to get the information that you need to give an accurate recommendation for each student’s progress.
Once all the forms are submitted we are able to fill out the students’ recommendation forms and send them out to our clients with all the early registration information. We also keep a complete binder with copies of the recommendations at the front desk. This really helps when a parent who wants to push their child ahead too fast tells the person registering them that they should be in a higher level class—the person at the front desk can show them what the child was recommended for, which usually makes our position clear!
Our early registration is at the beginning of May and this is only for current students. Normally we open it up to the general public two weeks later. We have found that this system works extremely well for a number of reasons. First of all, current students are able to receive preferred placement, something that the parents absolutely love. Next, it enables school or studio owners to have a good amount of revenue coming in prior to the beginning of summer—this helps you to have a better financial plan for the entire year. Early registration also gives you a better idea of exactly what faculty you are going to need for the fall and more time to find or secure the right people.
For your teachers, going through the assessment process helps them focus and really consider how they have helped the students’ progress. It also gives them an incentive to find even better ways to reach out to them in their classes, helps them to plan their classes for the following year and encourages them to be more organized.
For the school or studio owner these assessments are a way to evaluate how your teachers are managing the students. If the evaluations are excessively negative or show that every student is brilliant, it might raise a warning flag—a sign that you need to either visit the class, watch a video of it or talk with the teacher to find out what is really going on. Obviously, inaccurate evaluations are not at all helpful.
I have found that the recommendations help me plan the class schedule each year. Some classes just always seem to go, no matter what, but others often have to be shifted around to accommodate faculty availability or student needs. Knowing clearly each student’s technical level will help you to see how many classes of each level you will need in each week. This in turn enables you to put classes back to back, which encourages students to take more classes. Parents appreciate this because of the convenience factor. They generally like nothing better than to drop their children off to take classes for a couple of hours as it is less driving for them and also gives them some time to themselves.
The more things that you can do to streamline your operation, the more time you will have to do the other things that you may want to do. And remember that communicating with parents helps them to see the progress of their children and that is always a positive for your business.
