Instrument fitting days are exciting events for your incoming students. They’re also a perfect opportunity to get logistical details out of the way early, freeing you and students to focus on music when school starts. Many educators also use fitting day (or another mandatory parent meeting) to perform administrative tasks including signing everyone up for Remind, CHARMS, and their LMS. Use this time to get everyone signed up for SmartMusic, too.

Take Advantage of This Time

Instrument fitting days are the ideal opportunity to set up student SmartMusic accounts. Instead of spending valuable rehearsal time at the beginning of the year, you’ll take advantage of a meeting where parents (and students) are in “logistics mode” and ready to listen – or at least follow instructions. Instead of requiring students to act as a go-between to parents, you’ll have access to a household decision-maker. Every middle school teacher knows 12-year-olds aren’t always dependable messengers.

What’s more, you’ll be able to make sure everything is working properly before the school year starts.

Additional Benefits

You’ll also set some great expectations for incoming students. By establishing that SmartMusic assignments are “normal,” students won’t be surprised to learn that they’re being assessed throughout the term. (Yes, even electives have assessments.) You can even create basic assignments with SmartMusic’s free library so students can get used to using the program over the summer. Try assigning a simple rhythm exercise and have students clap along with it so that instruments won’t be needed (and beginning players won’t learn bad habits over the summer). This will give them a chance to get comfortable with the interface and submission process, and you can use the analytics tool to see which students practiced between instrument fitting day and the first day of school.

The entire approach demonstrates to parents that your program has a culture of practice and feedback, and they should expect students to invest time at home working on music skills.

Not sure which access level your class will need next year? You can set up a free class, get student accounts ready and connected, and upgrade the access level over the summer to meet your students’ needs.

How to Get Started

Once you’re signed up for SmartMusic, set up your educator account and create a class for the group of students you plan to enroll. Then have students go to https://admin.smartmusic.com/join and enter your class code and their school email.

Parents and students will see on-screen instructions to sign up for SmartMusic. We highly recommend that students use their school email and choose a consistent username and password combo. This will make it easier for you to identify student accounts – and any accounts created by mistake (we can help delete those mistakes). A combination of student initials, last name, and student ID number works well.

During the sign-up process, students will be prompted to set a backup email in case they lose their password. If you’re willing, you can have students set your email as the backup. Then when students inevitably forget a password you’ll be able to help them recover it.

If students (or parents) are having trouble, remind them that they can contact our support team anytime and we can help. There’s no need for you to be a technical support representative in addition to all your other jobs!

You can also refer parents to our Help Center. They’ll find instructions for every step of the process and some tips as well. If students get stuck, they can search these articles using the Help icon within SmartMusic itself.

Once students are enrolled in your class, you can start sending them assignments!

Your Turn

Taking care of this process at instrument fitting day can help streamline your SmartMusic implementation. You’ll set expectations for student practice from day one, make sure that student passwords and usernames are consistent and easy to access, and get tasks out of the way early.

If you aren’t using SmartMusic, get started for free. Sign up for a free trial and get your students practicing!