Coaching for Music Teachers
Thoughtful Support for Real Teaching Questions
Music teachers regularly encounter questions that deserve more than a quick answer. Some arise in lessons: sequencing, motivation, practice, musicianship, repertoire, or a student who is not progressing as expected. Others involve the teacher’s own development, studio or school leadership, professional relationships, finances, career decisions, or the shape of a sustainable teaching life.
Coaching creates time to examine those questions with another experienced educator. The purpose is to understand the situation, identify the underlying issue, consider practical possibilities, and help the teacher make a well-informed next decision.
Through the Dennis Frayne Association for Music Education, Teacher Members can work through these questions in two related settings: the Monthly Teacher Workshop, included with Teacher Membership, and individually scheduled Individual Coaching Sessions, available for an additional fee.
Two Ways to Work Through Questions
Monthly Teacher Workshop
Learn alongside fellow music teachers.
Each month, Teacher Members are invited to participate in the live online Monthly Teacher Workshop, currently led by Dr. Dennis Frayne. During these sixty-minute gatherings, teachers may bring questions, student situations, teaching challenges, professional decisions, and other issues they would like to explore. Together, participants examine the situation, consider possible approaches, share experience, and learn from one another.
Often, one teacher’s question becomes valuable learning for everyone. A conversation about a beginning piano student may lead to a broader discussion of sequencing, motivation, musicianship, repertoire, practice, or communication with parents. A question about a studio policy may open a useful conversation about leadership, professional judgment, or the practical realities of teaching.
Teacher Members may bring a question of their own, participate in the broader conversation, or simply listen and learn from the experiences of others. The Monthly Teacher Workshop is included with Teacher Membership and is open to active Teacher Members at all membership levels.
Members do not need to register separately for each workshop. Current dates, times, and access information are provided to members and may also be listed on the Association Events page.
Format
Live online workshop
Sixty minutes
Questions and discussion
Practical teaching and professional situations
Collegial learning and professional community
Included with Teacher Membership at no additional charge
Individual Coaching
Sometimes a teacher needs more time to explore a particular question or situation in depth.
Individual Coaching Sessions provide personalized guidance focused on the teacher’s own students, teaching environment, professional responsibilities, challenges, and goals. These private conversations allow the teacher and coach to examine a situation carefully, consider possible approaches, and identify practical next steps together.
Individual coaching may be especially helpful when you are:
Working through a difficult teaching situation
Seeking help with lesson planning or instructional sequencing
Supporting a student who is struggling, discouraged, or confused
Implementing the Presto! It’s Music Magic curriculum or principles of the Approach
Strengthening your own musicianship
Developing or improving a private studio or educational program
Considering a career decision or new professional direction
Working through questions involving leadership, communication, or organization
Seeking a healthier balance or a more workable professional life
Individual Coaching Sessions are available to active Teacher Members at any membership level as often as desired, subject to availability. Sessions are scheduled by appointment and billed at the current published rate. Private coaching is not included with Teacher Membership and is not discounted.
Each session provides sixty minutes of focused time, currently with Dr. Dennis Frayne and, as the Association develops, potentially with another qualified Association coach or mentor. Every teacher’s situation is different, and each conversation is shaped around the teacher’s questions, circumstances, and professional needs.
Individual Coaching: $249 per hour
Coaching Topics
The Monthly Teacher Workshop and Individual Coaching Sessions may address a wide range of questions related to music teaching and professional life, including:
Teaching strategies and lesson planning
Instructional sequencing and pacing
Student motivation and engagement
Problem solving with individual students
Healthy technique and natural movement
Comprehensive musicianship
Singing, piano, conducting, and additional-instrument development
Curriculum implementation
Repertoire selection and adaptation
Sight reading, sight singing, and ear training
Improvisation, arranging, and composition
Music technology
Parent and family communication
Private studio development
School and program leadership
Professional identity and decision-making
Career planning and professional development
Work-life balance and career longevity
Observations and evaluations
Certification
Writing, publishing, presenting, and leadership
Mentoring and teacher development
Teachers do not need to arrive with a perfectly defined question. Sometimes the first useful step is simply to clarify what is happening, distinguish the underlying issue from its symptoms, and identify the question that most needs attention.
A Mentoring Approach
Coaching is not based on the assumption that someone else should make a teacher’s decisions or solve every problem. The purpose is to think together.
A productive coaching conversation may include listening, questions, encouragement, educational principles, practical suggestions, possible strategies, and help identifying a realistic next step. The goal is not dependence on a coach, but deeper understanding, stronger professional judgment, and a growing ability to respond thoughtfully to new situations.
This approach recognizes that good teaching cannot be reduced to formulas. Students, teachers, studios, schools, communities, and circumstances differ. Coaching can help a teacher understand those differences, consider relevant principles and possibilities, and make decisions appropriate to the particular situation.
Your Coach
Individual coaching is currently provided by Dr. Dennis Frayne, founder of the Dennis Frayne Approach to Music Education and the Dennis Frayne Association for Music Education.
Drawing on decades of experience as a music educator, studio and school director, curriculum developer, author, publisher, and teacher mentor, Dr. Frayne works with educators across a wide range of settings. Coaching may address classroom and studio teaching, musicianship, educational philosophy, curriculum, leadership, career development, and the practical realities of building a rewarding life in music education.
As the Association develops, additional qualified coaches or mentors may be added to serve Teacher Members while maintaining the educational purposes and standards of the Dennis Frayne Approach.
Scheduling an Individual Coaching Session
To schedule an Individual Coaching Session, email office@dennisfrayne.com.
Please briefly describe the topic you would like to discuss and, when possible, provide several days and times that may work for you. We will reply to arrange a mutually convenient appointment.
Because Teacher Members already have payment and account information on file, no separate registration or extensive online form is required. Once an appointment is scheduled and confirmed, the coaching fee will be charged using the payment method associated with the member’s account.
Teacher Members may schedule Individual Coaching Sessions as frequently as they find helpful, subject to availability.
Scheduling Commitment
Each Individual Coaching Session is reserved specifically for one Teacher Member. Once an appointment has been scheduled and confirmed, it cannot be cancelled, refunded, transferred, or credited toward a future session. If a member is unable to attend, arrives late, or misses the appointment, the session will still be considered completed.
Members should review their schedules carefully before confirming an appointment and join the session promptly at the scheduled time.
Confidentiality
Individual coaching conversations are treated as confidential. The Association respects the privacy of each participant and does not disclose information shared during coaching sessions except when required by law or as otherwise provided in Association policies.
Private coaching sessions are not recorded, transcribed, published, or shared with other members. No formal account of the conversation is created for Association programming, certification evaluation, or membership records. This allows teachers to speak candidly about questions, uncertainties, professional decisions, and challenging situations.
Members should use appropriate discretion when discussing students, families, colleagues, employees, or other people. Personally identifying information should be omitted whenever it is not necessary to the coaching conversation.
The Monthly Teacher Workshop takes place in a shared professional setting and may be recorded. Participants should respect the privacy of fellow members and should not repeat personal stories, questions, or situations shared by others outside the workshop.
Professional Scope
Coaching may address pedagogical, musical, professional, leadership, organizational, and business-related questions connected with music teaching and music education.
This may include general discussion of studio policies, tuition structures, scheduling, communication, hiring, career planning, program development, and professional decision-making. Coaching does not constitute legal, tax, accounting, investment, financial, medical, or mental health advice.
Laws, regulations, tax requirements, employment rules, licensing obligations, and business practices vary by location and individual circumstance. Teachers should consult qualified attorneys, accountants, tax professionals, financial advisers, health professionals, or other appropriate specialists when advice within those fields is needed.
Coaching Rooted in Mentorship
Teaching is complex, creative, and deeply human. Even experienced educators continue to encounter unfamiliar students, changing circumstances, new responsibilities, and decisions they have not faced before.
The Monthly Teacher Workshop and Individual Coaching Sessions provide complementary ways to work through those experiences. One brings teachers together in a shared professional conversation; the other creates private time for sustained attention to an individual teacher’s circumstances.
At the Dennis Frayne Association for Music Education, coaching is therefore about more than solving an immediate problem. It is part of a longer process through which teachers deepen their knowledge and musicianship, reflect on experience, strengthen professional judgment, and continue developing throughout their careers.
Active Teacher Members may participate in the Monthly Teacher Workshop at no additional charge. To schedule an Individual Coaching Session, email office@dennisfrayne.com.