What's the best type of lesson format?

[Bob]

Bob ponders... (this is an incomplete idea, but any responses are welcome)

What's best?   Half hour lessons once a week, twice a week.... meeting every day....  What type of student does it produce?

[robert]

For a beginner, 15 minutes lessons 5 times a week is much better than just once a week.
The for intermediate piano player, an hour or two once a week should do it and once you are advanced, you can even have fewer lessons but they usually are much longer and deals with a lot aspects of the piano playing and all the circumstances around it like concerts etc.

[dveej]

I agree with what Robert said.

The several-lessons-a-week thing for the first week is a great idea, and could solve a lot of problems for a beginning student who has no clue how to practice. I have never tried it, but I mean to with a beginner some day.

For me, an hour is the magic amount of time for a lesson. The only people who don't get an hour are young children (4 to 5) who are too young to sit still and focus that long. I have have younger siblings of current piano students who were 3 and who wanted to "have a lesson", and I started out for 15 minutes with them either before or after the older sibling's lesson. Some of those 3 year-olds are now 8 and 9 and still with me, and are doing well. When I do the 15 minute lesson thing (eeew, there's the second time in this post I did the "thing" thing!!!), I don't even charge for it. But I make the parents understand that it is a serious lesson, and I expect the kid to do what I assign and to come back the following week with everything prepared. From the moment I have a 15-minute kid, I am working up her/his stamina to be able to have a half-hour lesson. When it becomes a good half-hour and the kid is able to concentrate for that long, then I start charging the parents for the lessons.

Then I start working them until they can do an hour. Sometimes some young kids balk at an hour, and I have to be judicious about why they are balking. It could be that they are not ready for such a long period, or (I think more usually) they are ready for it but not used to focusing for so long a time.

When I get students to the level where they are playing sonatinas and simple Bach preludes, I think they need an hour and a half. But I use many different books, including lots of written homework books for theory/musicianship, so that takes time.

I have evolved a system where, except for the very young students mentioned above, I charge for the lesson, not for the hour. It's unorthodox, but solves the problem of parents not wanting to suddenly pay 150% of what they were paying a month because I decide that the kid needs a longer lesson. (This also works because I go to people's homes and don't teach out of my home.)

I think the traditional half-hour lesson is bogus for most people - only a very focused and experienced teacher can teach good half-hour lessons. (I do know a few who do, though...)

[janice]

I like the idea of having the 15-minute break after a 45-minute lesson, thus completing an hour.  People are way too busy these days, I feel.  Every kid is involved in several extra-curricular activities, and it seems that (usually) mom is running little Johnny to his ballgame, or whatever.  So it seems like we can expect people to be late.  Right?  But personally, I think that's a poor excuse.  People need to learn to be on-time.