How to Start a Suzuki School

June 17, 2016 at 05:13 AM · I want to start a Suzuki school in my area, and want to start taking first steps. Anyone have any experience starting a multi-teacher string school? Where should I begin?

Replies (8)

Gene Wie

June 17, 2016 at 06:22 AM · Are you planning on making it a formal non-profit school subject to federal/state regulations for P-12? Or just a standard for-profit business?

Andrew Victor

June 17, 2016 at 03:21 PM · Contact this lady, Julie Mellon juliemellon@yahoo.com .

She runs the violin section of the Suzuki school resident on the campus of Dominican University ( http://www.dominican.edu/academics/ahss/undergraduate-programs/performingarts/sms ) in San Rafael, CA. She can probably tell you a lot.

And then, there is always this: https://suzukiassociation.org/about/

I'm assuming you have taken Suzuki teacher training to some level, otherwise you cannot really be a Suzuki teacher, although you can teach from the Suzuki books.

Andy

Adrian Heath

June 17, 2016 at 05:44 PM · Can we be clear that the basis of Suzuki teaching is individual lessons, even if several students are present. The group work is added to this, ideally every week.

Mary Ellen Goree

June 18, 2016 at 12:41 PM · I think you're looking at this backwards. Nobody jumps in and starts a school with several teachers. Assuming you yourself are Suzuki certified, you start to build your own studio by recruiting students and making sure there is a violin shop conveniently located where the students can rent fractionals. If you are good at both teaching and marketing, your studio will grow to the point where you can no longer manage all the students. That is the point at which you start looking at recruiting another teacher.

You need to be in the right sort of area for this to work: enough population for there to be a potentially large market for string students, and demographics that suggest there are a lot of people with enough disposable income for this to be realistic. There needs to be at least one violin shop nearby that rents fractional violins. It is helpful if the schools have a strong strings program also. You are not likely going to be able to support yourself at first with the little ones so you will need other students to help fill your schedule and pay your bills, and a strong strings program in the schools is the best possible source.

I was in my first teacher's first ever Suzuki class, which consisted of six or seven little girls and one little boy. 50 years later she is running one of the largest and most successful Suzuki schools in the country. But it started with one class.