By Joe Bergamini
Last year, the Sabian Education Network celebrated its tenth birthday. I’ve been honored to direct this wonderful program aimed at helping drum teachers for all that time. We’ve created an amazing family of dedicated teachers and amassed a huge library of knowledge and resources to improve the craft of drum teaching for anyone inspired to improve their craft. I had been a Sabian endorser for about 20 years before Sabian approached me to create and direct SEN. In that time, I saw Sabian’s dedication to education in their support of drum clinics and artists who spent a large amount of time as educators. As a dedicated drum teacher myself, I was excited by the opportunity to build a new resource for teachers. I immediately thought back to one of my early trips to PASIC, sitting in a hotel bar in Nashville with some new friends, talking about which books we used to teach, how we ran our studios in terms of billing and cancellations and so forth, and trading stories of our students. We drummers have a brother and sisterhood that is unique to us, and I felt a companionship among these new friends at PASIC. I had many meetings like this, and of course during my studies with Dom Famularo, I attended many clinics and other events where like-minded educators gathered. I wanted to create a similar feeling within SEN.
Dom was a huge inspiration of course, but he was also a driving force in helping me understand the business of music and learn how to run and improve my teaching business to make it more profitable. I knew this should be an important part of SEN. Dom drove his students to improve their art and business skills equally, and this extended into teaching skills as well. As a young teacher, I strove to create a program and curriculum built around books and a path that would take a beginning student as far as they could go, making sure to cover all the main aspects of playing, especially if the student aspired to play professionally or attend college for music. I soon noticed that my students came from other teachers having big holes in their knowledge which could limit their path forward. In developing a strong curriculum, I would be organized in making sure I didn’t miss anything important and inadvertently hurt a student’s future. This took a lot of work, research and planning. After dedicating so much time to becoming a professional-grade drum teacher, I started to compare notes with colleagues about how to handle billing, cancellation, scheduling, and other similar issues. Everyone who teaches music lessons deals with schedule conflicts, but why should we not get paid because someone didn’t practice or got sick? I started to examine how I could be treated more like a pro in any other trained field. All of these issues were in my mind when we created SEN. Basically, the goal of SEN is to help you get more students, keep them longer, gain more fulfillment from teaching, increase the level of drum set education, and increase your bottom line. All of this helps the teacher, and Sabian can see that it also helps them and the industry at large, so they devote financial resources to maintaining this great network for us.
Think of SEN as a gathering place and knowledge base for all drum teachers who want to be better educators and build their businesses. We have an online forum with threads on nearly every topic related to drum set lessons, including curriculum, drum books, technology, billing, cancellations, teaching beginners, and working with special-needs students. There is a large library of videos and documents from educators of all stripes. SEN conducts interviews with leading educators from all corners of the business, and they are saved for members only in the SEN Library. Guests have included Billy Cobham, David Garibaldi, Carmine Appice, Jimmy Branly, Rich Redmond, Gregg Bissonette, Dave Weckl, Will Calhoun, Ignacio Berroa, Bobby Sanabria, Claus Hessler, and many other leading Sabian artists. Before his passing, Dom Famularo conducted many interviews with successful drum teachers from all over the world. Some of these teachers may not be household names, but they are making a great living in their own market and influencing the lives of many students of all ages. This is the heart and soul of SEN. We feature a member every month on the website and in our eblasts. In our interviews and other resources, we’ve devoted a ton of time to technology, since so many of our members teach on Zoom or online. We’ve covered cameras, DAWs, switchers, educational apps, mixers, music notation software, digital books, Zoom settings for lessons, and more. This discussion is ongoing as new technologies emerge. Which books and videos are best for teaching is always a fun and interesting topic, as is recruitment and advertising. SEN members who are also successful artists and teachers like Jim Toscano and Jeremy Hummel are regular presenters on these topics.
I am truly proud of the educational resource we’ve built, but even more proud of the community we’ve created. Everyone in SEN is truly supportive of each other. When we meet up at the Sabian booth at PASIC each year, it’s like a family reunion. This community of drum teachers is full of people who love to share their knowledge to help others achieve success. We are so fortunate to have the support of Sabian to foster the growth of this community, because the more inspired drum students we create, the better the future for all us drummers. Sabian has even funded an annual mentorship program in honor of our late brother Dom Famularo. We’ve given a cash and mentorship prize to a deserving drummer for the last three years.
In conclusion, if you teach drums, I invite you to join us and see the great things waiting for you within the Sabian Education Network. You don’t have to be a Sabian player or endorser to join. Just a passion to teach. Visit us at www.sabianed.com.