My expectation and 'fee' was--and is, because I have a student now who's asking me for help with his chording, etc--that he/she MUST practice for an hour every day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, NO downtime, no excuses, no shit! Five of those kids went on to other teachers. The other seven or so dropped out--well, dropped out is wrong. I dropped them out because their progress week to week indicated to me that they just weren't keeping up their end of the deal.

Peace, I admire - and envy! - your requirements for practice. If teaching music was not my primary means of bringing home the bacon, I'd have much more stringent practice policies myself. As it is, my students are urged to practice AT LEAST 4X a week, and the more the merrier of course. I've found this is the absolute minimum for satisfactory - but certainly not optimal! - musical progress.

I don't like setting time limits for practice though. It tends to turns students into clock-watchers rather than dedicated musicians, and brings back my own childhood memories of feeling miserably TRAPPED at that piano every day. The second hand on that clock used to take HOURS and HOURS to make even one rotation .... ;-)

SO instead, I tell my students they are to practice each assigned piece, scale, exercise at least 3X each session - however long that takes. And, just to be safe, I let parents know that my practice requirements should take approx the same amount of time as the child's weekly lesson - give or take a few minutes.

WHen students abide by my policies, they do progress satisfactorily, and a lot of them do comply - but a lot of others don't. Truthfully, if I let all the students who don't practice enough go, I'd be looking for another job real quick, just to make ends meet. So, I deal with frustration as a teacher quite a bit - and I've learned to just let it go. I've done my very best with them, after all, and I do need to pay my bills!

I know that many, it not most of the internationally-acclaimed teachers at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto refuse to enroll students unless they practice an hour a day for the first year, two hours and up every year after that. That policy includes even 6 year olds! Personally, I think that's ridiculous! The average 6 year old wants and needs to be outside running off their energy and discovering the other, non-musical wonders of life more than sitting at a piano for hours every day. 20-30 minutes at that age is more than enough imo!

Yet, some people have no problem regimenting even the youngest children this way. And that's how you get all those little Japanese and Korean kids at hte Festival, playing Chopin nocturnes and Bach Fugues at age 9, competing against students 5-10 years their senior. And walking home with all the trophies too.