New Year New School
Hello!
Thank you so much for stopping by our NEW Newsletter School Blog!
We are so excited for this upcoming year and cannot wait to watch our student grow even more as musicians! Feel free to check out this blog to keep up to date with changes, learn the “why” behind our decisions and to just be a part of our awesome community!
BMA Toy Drive / Christmas Party
We would love to take a moment to thank everyone who came to our Christmas party and donated to the toy drive! We had a BLAST! We started off with a few games with the toddlers are the party, that was a hoot! After that we did a little reindeer games with the older kiddos, leading into the games our adult volunteers participated in! To end the night off we had a surprise SNOWBALL fight and MAN did we make a mess! It was so much fun and we really appreciate everyone for taking time out of their crazy schedules to have a little fun with us!
Thanks to you, we were able to donate over 70 toys to children in the Foster Care system this year! We were originally donating to NECCO but the main contact had a family emergency and wasn’t able to take our donation SO we dropped everything off at DCCH, with is another foster care agency in the area!
The New Annual Calendar
In the grand scheme of things, it typically takes a musician a year of lessons and continual practice to really see a huge improvement from when they started to reaching their goals!
A little detail about our new programs that are ALL included in our student memberships!
Due to this, we have create an annual calendar of events to keep students engaged throughout the year but to also give them a more well rounded education!
Our students will learn new skills as well as building confidence, community and social skills. Throughout these weeks they may get professional photoshoots, videos, prizes, jamming with others, and so much more!
Our workshop or masterclass weeks will replace our students normal weekly lesson, BUT these are 2 hour workshops instead of a 30 minute lesson!!
We kept our adult students in mind when creating these specialized weeks! We want our adult students to also partake in these weeks and know you will really value what they have to offer! We plan to give the adults their own workshop date!
Schedule Changes
Along with our new music program we also made a few changes in the schedule! After 3 years we have seen trends, ebbs and flows, with students and their other commitments. With that in mind, we wanted to create a schedule that not only benefited our students but also our instructors!
We know that taking a weekly lesson for young kids is hard on parents schedule but also on their mental load. Having to get them to practice throughout the week take them to lessons, that half the time they want to stay home and play video games or whatever their other interests are. So we thought, how can we make their time with us engaging enough that it trumps video games?
Well, we found a few ways. Some more exciting than others. First we started off with our new goal tracking system! It gives the lessons more direction but also shows our students they ARE processing. Somethings it’s not always as noticeable. We are encouraging students to set goals and attain them! We will celebrate wins with them and plan to add a physical tracking system in the school so everyone can celebrate with them! We are providing tons of opportunities to earn or win prizes as well!
We also came up with burnout. A lot of students were just burning out and believe it or not, so do our instructors. Just a few days off will give our instructors that boost of energy to focus on each lesson and the same goes for students! We don’t always want to just close and not have a lesson, we do need consistancy as well. This is when our workshops / masterclasses come into play! It’s a great way to get a “break” from a weekly lesson but also learn and engage in another way musically!
Lastly, we also decided to close on the 5th week of each month! This helps many things, burnout being number 1. However, after looking at the calendar we found many times were one student would have more lessons in a month than another, in order to maintain fairness to all students and a way to guarantee YOU how many lessons you will receive at BMA we came up with this strategy! It all washed out in the end.
Same monthly subscription but TONS of new incentives! If you haven’t gotten our NEW Magnet Calendar, please let us know this week!
Upcoming Events
YouTube (Video) Week will be February 5 - 8th! Make sure to sign up by January 20th to secure your spot! These workshops will be 2 hours long starting at 5pm each day, let us know which day works best for you!
Adult students, we kept you in mind and think this is a great opportunity to get a professional video of yourself playing to show off your new skill to family and friends! Why not commemorate all the hard work you’ve put in!
During this week you (or your child) will receive a professional photoshoot, a professional recording of them performing a song they’ve learned, they will learn how to work a camera, lights and participate in a intimate recital with their peers.
They will learn confidence, practice playing in front of others, they will gain a sense of community, learn social skills, learn to market themselves as a musician, and most importantly strengthen their performance skills!
We are so excited to offer this new workshop as a way to help our student push passed their fears of performing! At the end of the week, all students who are interested, will enter into a contest. The videos will be posted online for parents/families to share! Three students will win a prize for: most liked video, best performance, most “rockstar” photoshoot!
Students/parents will share their videos over the course of 3-4 days and the winner will be announced on our Facebook page!
Important Information!!!
Online Portal:
If you do not already, please start utilizing your online portal! This portal has access to just about everything you need! You’re able to join workshops from here, you can cancel or reschedule classes on your own AND it’s a one stop shop to contacting your instructor! We want to try to limit all the forms of communication for you, so by using the online portal as much as possible, you do not have to give out your personal information and if you need to look back at something it’s all in one place! We are also growing and it is becoming harder to manage as many schedule changes, if you are able to do it in the system that would be fantastic! However, you are always welcome to contact us as well!
Super important!
Now that we will be closed every 5th week, make sure to check your schedule to ensure we have lessons that day! We would hate for you to come in but there are no classes that day!
Did you know you can make the online portal an app on your phone?
Whether you have an android or iPhone, go to the link bolderymusicacademy.opusio.io and log in. You will act as if you want to share that page, you should see an option of “add to home screen” or “create an app.” Follow the prompts and there you have it! If you cannot get it to work, let me know and I’m happy to walk you through it (or do it for you).
New Facebook Group!
This is something we are excited to start is our new Facebook group for parents of students (or our adult students)! This group will be a great resource for announcements we may have, polls to get your input on things you’d like to see or, in our hopes, create a community amongst other members!
We would love to see practice videos, photos, celebrating student wins and so much more! This can be a place to chat, create friendships or maybe brag a little to like minded people! Sometimes when we have a passion that others don’t share it’s hard to celebrate the wins, we want this to be your place to brag a little!
Please join us at: www.facebook.com/groups/bolderymusic/
Thank you for taking the time to read out comprehensive blog post! We have SO many things in store for this year it’s hard to decide what to talk about first!!! We are so thrilled to be able to provide such a unique experience to the community and hope to continue to grow and become someone else’s journey to becoming a musician!