Biggest Issues Facing Piano Teachers Now?

[benzwm02]

Hi, I'm a software developer and am curious to hear from teachers about the biggest issues they are facing in their jobs and studio these days.

These can include...
frustrations scheduling students and billing them/wasted time doing so

getting students who care about their lessons and practice

getting students at all...

finding apps or programs to help with theory, ear training, etc.

or something else? What is yours? Thanks

[liszt1022]

Hardest for me is to get them to listen to piano repertoire.
If I leave a good CD it'll be in the same place when I show up next week.
If I send their parents a Youtube link they won't watch it.
If I add a free classical music library to their laptop, they won't look in it.
If I (were to) put an MP3 player in their hand at the end of the lesson, put headphones on their ears, and their finger on the Play button, and leave the house, they would stand there for a few minutes, take it all off and go watch TV.

[taoxia1970]

The hardest thing for a piano teacher is the challenge that the general population does not have a good understanding of music, or learning music, or appreciating music.  This makes recruiting, teaching, and keeping the enrollment very hard.

[diomedes]

These can include...

frustrations scheduling students and billing them/wasted time doing so

Every occupation has wasted time, and frustration with scheduling is just making life difficult. There will always be misfires, so i never blame anyone. Perfect anything doesn't exist even if you do it all right.

getting students who care about their lessons and practice

My experience, if you really show that you're dedicated to what you do because you believe in it, it helps, overall. But, you're crazy if you think you'll be in something like this and not end up with the average tourist. They're there for all the obvious reasons, and is it the students fault? If you think so, you're making the world difficult fr you and everyone near you. If they aren't serous, i make a few ridiculous observations, they laugh, i help them practice and as they lumber through their task and i pay attention as needed, i jog through the chord progressions of the Rachmaninov i'm learning or the passage work of the Chopin i'm dealing with. Mental practice is extremely valuable.

getting students at all...

I have not been doing this for that long but long enough to learn from observation, which is, we all want something but getting stressed over it doesn't help. With students, they're difficult to get when you want them, i think that says it all. A life of extravagant travel expenses doesn't suit me anyway so i'm fine. I rent a church and put together a recital is my idea of a vacation, do that 4 times a year, life can't be better.

finding apps or programs to help with theory, ear training, etc.

I teach theoretical subjects at 2 schools and my own clients too. Apps don't preoccupy me and ear training is a waste of time, it's just hoops students jump thorough to earn marks.

My general remarks are: You don't need to work enormous amounts of hours career wise, which suits the occupation since i believe that time should be put into the art that the teacher abstractly maintains in daily life. All my spare time goes into practice and learning, the consequent is i have very many advanced students who are influenced by my ability to demonstrate, or my insistence on developing my own performance ability.

On a single income you won't have an income for a single detached house mortgage is the main issue. I had that at one point. But that's not the purpose of life. I had a good plan after that, and was building a future with, ironically, someone who was on their way to become a software engineer, but alas they chose their career over me, so that's that.

I see no point in complaining, many people have it far worse.

What are the biggest issues facing a software developer now?