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Running a Practice CompetitionThe excitement that surrounds the arrival of the practice competition will ensure an initial surge of practice. But that doesn't have to be the productivity high-water mark. There's a way to create a second surge of practice even once the competition is well underway.
The idea is to allow students to nominate one week during the competition during which any practice they do will count as double. So if they record a total of three hours during that week, they get credit for six.
Knowing this, they're likely to go beserk practicing during those seven days—although they need to think carefully about just when those seven days should be.
If you want more evenly distributed bursts of activity during the competition, then an alternative is to instead allow students to nominate one day in each week that counts as double. So if the student nominates "Thursdays", whatever happens in the rest of the week, they're likely to get up half an hour earlier each Thursday to start what should be a series of monster practice sessions.
Once your competition is underway, you can really pour fuel on the fire by making the leaderboards prominent, and keeping them updated regularly.
One easy method is to have a whiteboard in your studio dedicated to just this purpose. The prize categories would be headings, and underneath each would be the name of the student who is currently in the lead for that prize, together with their stats.
If there is an overall champion prize too, then it's sometimes worth listing the current Top 10. As long as you update this once a week, whenever students come to their lesson, they will see fresh information—helping them perceive the leaderboard as being fluid. This will give hope to those not yet on the board, and serve as a reminder to those who are that they need to keep working to defend their position.
Even if you don't normally have a studio newsletter, it's worth creating a weekly bulletin just for the duration of the competition. It will allow you to include detailed stats, and a top 10 for a range of leaderboards—it will normally be the first thing students ask to see when they arrive at the lesson.
If you have a digital camera, it's worth including a headshot of the current leader each week, together with any other students who are improving fast. The aim is to ensure that as many students as possible are mentioned—seeing your own name in print like this is hugely motivating, which is exactly why computer games still have high score tables
Your practice competitions don't just have to about solo triumphs—many students will work even harder if they know that their practice times are contributing to a team effort. (It's one thing to let yourself down, but to have to admit to the rest of your team that you've been slacking is something that would make even your most practice-phobic students blush.)
If you really want to add spice to things, take advantage of natural divisions in the studio and create teams (and associated hype) that will lead to grudge matches:
Boys versus girls. Neither group is going to want to let the other dominate here—if your numbers are uneven, then you can always base things on averages.
Elementary vs secondary age students. Seems unfair at first glance, but the underdog status of the elementary age students is a powerful motivator...they'd love to show up their older rivals. At the same time, your secondary age students have some upstarts to crush. Plenty of reasons to practice here.
Students who have their lesson on a Saturday vs your Thursday students (this allows team members to actually meet eachother at lesson changeover time)
Right handed vs left handed. Blue eyes vs brown. Blonds vs brunettes. Long established students vs recent students. Dog owners vs cat owners vs no pets - there are countless ways to create the cliques you need for the competition to sizzle.
If you assign colors to the teams, then you can issue students with their competition kit—inexpensive, but packed with items of their team's color. So if their team color is blue, their kit might contain:
• A blue notebook (for recording practice times)
• Blue markers
• Blue badge to wear to lessons
They'd walk past the Blue Team Scoreboard to get to their music stand.
Give them a nickname to suit—the Blue Marlins, the Blue Jays, the Blues Scale, whatever—and let tribal instincts propel their practice commitment to new heights.
Given that a well-promoted Practice Championship is going to produce torrents of additional practice, but that it will only be running for a limited time, it makes sense to choose that time carefully.
But when is such a burst of practice likely to have greatest impact?
If your studio has a big annual Studio Recital in September, then a practice competition in August ensures plenty of preparation over those last few weeks.
Better still, it allows you to turn the recital into a presentation ceremony for the competition winners, with the whole event still being fresh in everyone's minds. (To really heighten the sense of anticipation for the announcement, hide the studio leaderboard for the final two weeks—that way students won't have any sense of who the winner is until you open the envelope)
Welcoming students back to a new year of lessons with a practice competition is a great way to have everyone in top gear straight away.
If there is a time of year when students are usually a little jaded—toward's the end the year is always the issue in my own studio—then a practice competition can help put some fizz back in the champagne.
Before you create dates purely based on your own studio's needs, double check with your students to make sure you're not considering a 4 week event in the middle of the school exams, or when a third of your studio will be away on school camp.
This robs you of the opportunity for an extended period of hype, but allows you to respond quickly to an unexpected deadline. So if, for example, you suddenly find out that your studio needs to provide performers for a major MTA workshop in only 8 weeks, then it would make sense to have a practice competition now, even though one hadn't been scheduled.
Not how you should always run things, but being light on your feet like this allows you to turn complications into opportunities, and practice competitions are a powerful weapon in just about any campaign.
Teams are one way to create a feeling of common purpose for your Practice Championship entrants, but if you really want to add some zing, consider running the competition in conjunction with another music studio. Your students would be pitted against theirs in a no-holds-barred practice frenzy, with bragging rights going to the studio that prevails.
Doesn't have to be limited to two Ask around at your next MTA meeting—you might find a dozen other teaching studios that are happy to take part. This opens the way to possibly hundreds of participants, and adds a captial "E" to your Practice Event. Grand practice champion of your own studio is one thing, but also being King Practicer out of studios that represent a total of 45 zip codes is something else entirely.
With a dozen studios pooling resources, you'll also be able to offer some truly fabulous prizes that would have been well beyond your means if you were running all this alone. How much will students practice, for example, when the prize on offer is a Games Console? If each studio chips in $50, you've got your console with games and peripherals too...brace yourself then, because you're going to see some serious practice once you unveil the prize.
There's no reason that the competing studios have to be local. By emailing practice times you could run a competition against a studio in another city, another state......it could even be another continent. Then, with competitors in Denmark, Australia, Canada and Argentina, your practice competition is nothing short of a Practice World Championships.
This is a great way to allow your students now to compete with students you taught a decade ago.
Once the competition is over, and the winners have been decided, add the names of the victors to an honor board that lives permanently in your studio.
Future students will be able to see the names—and practice times—of past champions. It gives your more competitive students a chance to be the Greatest Ever, while growing ivy on the walls of both the competition itself, and your studio.
This is not something you should do using cardboard and markers. This honor board will be a growing chronicle of a highlight of your studio year—it's going to be an impressive curiosity piece for prospective students, and is worth shelling out a few extra dollars to have it look the part.
Most of the expense will be in the very first year as you pay for the board itself, but thereafter you only will have to pay to have the new student's names engraved.
Another alternative is to have a gallery instead, where the signed photos of past winners are displayed, together with the details of the results that got them there.
If you have your own studio website, then you can easily create a permanent online Hall of Fame gallery of past competition winners.
With all this practice going on, there's a terrific opportunity for some fund raising for your favorite worthy cause—which in turn provides an additional incentive for even more practice.
The idea is that your students would collect sponsors, who would donate a certain amount for each hour of practice completed.
In addition to all your other awards, you could create a special award for the Most Money Raised—it might not necessarily be your hardest practicing student.
Fundraising doesn't have to be motivated by a cynical desire for studio promotion, but if the hard work of you and your students means that there's a check of $5000 being handed to a local charity, then you should at least consider contacting the media.
As the larger-than-life check is handed over, the charity wins not only because of the money itself, but because of the additional media exposure. And your studio is noticed by thousands of potential students as they see the photo while eating their breakfast.
And if the story happens to mention the individual efforts of your leading fundraiser-student, that becomes a powerful incentive for next year's students to better their efforts (everyone loves to see their name in the paper).
If your fundraising is target based ("we're going to raise $6,000 for Breast Cancer research), then you may well get local media interested as the competition starts.
The best method is to appear side-by-side for the radio spot with someone from the organization that will be benfiting from your work. You can talk about the practice competition, the organization can ttalk about the good work they do, and their need for support—and the radio station ends up with a 6 minute spot that's a local good news story, with the promise to follow up once the competition is over.
It's a win for everyone, and a studio promotion opportunity that would have cost you thousands of dollars in conventional advertising. (For a huge collection of studio promotion ideas, see The Guide to Promoting Your Teaching Studio)
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