Missed Lessons (Music Teacher Tip #17)

Business, Musings, Tips

One of the most common questions I see or hear from independent music teachers is, “what do you do when a student needs to miss a lesson?” OR “Do you do make-up lessons?”

I don’t do make-up lessons. Matter of fact, I am strongly against them. I don’t know where the idea for make-ups even got started but there really is no reason for them especially nowadays when there are SO many things we can do instead. In this new music teacher tip, I will share 4 different win-win solutions when a student (or teacher) needs to miss a lesson.

 

 

Do you need help creating a strong studio policy and then sticking to it? I would like to invite you to register for my course, Creating a Studio POlicy and STICKING to It! 

 

4 Comments

  1. Michele Tamtom

    Awesome Ideas! can you do a quick video on HOW to use youtube to upload / publish to a private channel? Im not quite sure of the lingo… but specifically how to access Youtube for a video lesson for just one student.

    Reply
    • Jennifer Foxx

      Hi Michele, I’m getting ready to go to TMTA, but here is a link for a quick tutorial on how to do it. https://youtu.be/VtF2AgFSLAw You will want to have a YouTube channel set up first. Once you upload the video on your channel, there are 3 choices to choose from. Public, unlisted or private. Unlisted is the option you want to choose. You would assume private, but don’t do that one, it will just complicated matters.

      I will be releasing a mini-course this summer for doing online and video lessons so stay tuned for that. 🙂

      Reply
  2. May

    I do all these except the flex week. When do you schedule in the flex week and how does it work please? Thanks in advance.

    Reply
    • Jennifer Foxx

      Hi May,

      If you don’t currently have your tuition based on a yearly tuition structure, I would do that first. Basically each month regardless of how many lessons are given OR attended that month, the tuition is the same.  

      When you schedule flex weeks is totally up to you. Say like you give 40 lessons a year (just throwing a # out there). For this year, turn 2-3 of those 40 lessons into flex week lessons without changing your overall tuition cost. (This will give you a different kind of a “raise” instead of it costing you). So now they will get 37 regular lessons with 2-3 bonus weeks if they have to miss (or you have to miss). 

      To make it simple… tuition now covers the 2-3 missed lesson days. This is how I say it in my policy…

      “3 bonus group lessons are scheduled during the year. The bonus group class may serve as “make-ups” for those unavoidable occasions when a student or, rarely, the teacher must miss a lesson. Students with perfect attendance may consider these as a bonus.”

      You don’t HAVE to make these group lessons. Because I find group lessons very valuable, I do my flex weeks as group lessons. But you can run them as normal regular lessons if you want. Totally up to you. 

      If you want, take a look at my yearly calendar here: http://foxxpianostudio.com/calendar.pdf Anything you see that says (in red) “Bonus” Group Lessons- those are our flex weeks. So you schedule them whenenever is best for you. Technically you don’t even have to calendar them in. It’s just an overall # in your yearly calendar. Again, depending what you want to do with them (ie: make them a group lesson or just keep them as a regular lesson). I hope that helps!

      Reply

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