To our Conservatory Family:

We are a hale and hearty bunch and would be prepared to teach in any conditions, but we value the safety of your families and ours more than our personal pride. As a result, we will be closing our physical locations as of 5:00 PM Wednesday, March 18, 2020.  As all teachers are on the premises for the day, should you choose to come we will happily teach you.

Obviously, being a small business, this puts our instructors and their families in quite a financial bind. And, as our teachers would like to continue to eat during this time of unrest, we will maintain lessons via Skype. Welcome to the 21st century, my friends!

Please, this is totally easy! Let us know your availability, download the Skype app, and sign up for a free account. Send us your Skype user name, and we will send you that of your instructor. At your scheduled time, have a pencil ready! Your instructor will have a copy of your music and will walk through the lesson with you, making the student in charge of marking the music. We will also send out some games and activities to go along with the normal lessons.

This works best for students over the age of 6 and adults, and we have successfully proctored online lessons for the past several years. This is not time wasted, just time spent in a different way. Also, if you have multiple children, we will have to consider other times…unless you have an extra piano!

For our very young students, we urge you to call us directly. For some very young students, virtual lessons may be a possibility with parental help. If virtual lessons are not a viable option, we will make note of any missed lessons and will reschedule any missed lessons for a time in the future.

Unfortunately, all sampler classes for children must be postponed until after this crisis. They will continue as normal once we have been given the “all clear”. Adult Sampler classes may continue online if desired.

Communication is the key! We will be manning the phones and email lines and hope to finalize the schedules for the next several weeks in the next few days. All missed lessons will be rescheduled. Please contact us as soon as possible and let us know your availability. We will get through this together, and we will do our best to maintain a sense of normalcy which is so very important for students of all ages.

Again, thank you so much for your support – our students are the very reason we come to work every day and why we are doing everything we can to continue throughout this unprecedented situation.

Penny Popper

Director

The Conservatory of Piano, Inc.