Practice Makes Perfect

CollegePlus! grad and entrepreneur Heather Stagg runs her own piano studio and loves it.

By Shawn Cohen

When Heather Stagg was 16, she had a choice to make: perform or teach? She chose to teach piano and hasn’t looked back since. “Within 24 hours of deciding to teach, I already had four students,” she said.

Now 21, Stagg runs a studio of 50 students, with a bunch waiting for a spot to open up on her roll. Yet she has found that there’s a whole lot more to teaching piano than just sitting in front of the instrument with her students.

The Ins and Outs of Running a Business

“I’ve learned diplomacy and conflict resolution,” said Stagg. Although she doesn’t have to resolve issues with parents and students every week, they do crop up from time to time. “You have to deal with the conflict in a way that brings resolution and doesn’t give them the opportunity to get angry in the future.”

Then there’s the financial aspect of the studio. “There’s a whole lot more to teaching than just teaching,” Stagg noted. “I have to [write] the bills, collect the payment, answer and return phone calls. There’s a whole other side of the business in addition to the teaching."

Stagg has also had to learn about IRS compliance and filing her own business taxes. “I’ve learned how to save because I know that I’m going to owe self-employment taxes,” she said. “If I didn’t own my own business, there’s a lot of stuff I wouldn’t have had to learn.”

The Mechanics of a Music Degree

It’s taken Stagg about three years to finish her music degree, a considerably shorter period of time than the norm for that type of bachelor’s degree. She started by taking courses locally at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and then did music coursework there later on. She did these courses in addition to teaching some students and studying for CLEP exams.

“I worked and went to school. That was my life,” she said. “Music isn’t like English or history: you have homework in addition to the pieces you need to memorize for competitions and private lessons.”

After going to courses at UTSA in the morning, Stagg would come home and practice or teach her students in the afternoon. After that, she studied for CLEP exams. “I was able to complete about 50 to 60 credits my first year,” she said.

Making the Most of Her Music

Now that she has been a teacher for a while, Stagg has focused on getting her students involved in local competitions. As a member of the San Antonio Music Teachers Association, she helps with logistics for events along with other piano teachers.

Shawn Cohen is Public Relations Manager at CollegePlus!. He writes a lot and just submitted his first graduate school application.