Re: Your First Time Teaching Lessons


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TubeNet BBS ] [ FAQ ]

Posted by MA on July 24, 2002 at 12:54:54:

In Reply to: Your First Time Teaching Lessons posted by MG on July 23, 2002 at 22:13:24:

I had both a 24 hour cancellation policy and a frequent cancel policy, back when I was giving lessons to make a living. I was in a different situation from you, because I had a waiting list after I had been teaching a couple of years. Lack of a 24 hour cancel cost them the lesson, and the frequent cancel booted them out entirely. Some of them would call 24 hrs in advance and cancel 3 out of every 4 lessons, and I would lose the money. So a couple got dropped and replaced with more consistent clients.

I have given a couple of lessons lately, and I made a big mistake in one of them. An adult had taken a violin class for a month and came for a lesson. He was doing quite well, but had some obvious things that had been missed, like basic rhythm (difference between quarter notes and half notes, etc) and some physical things. He sounded pretty good in spite of these, and has much potential. I totally misjudged what he was expecting from a lesson and overwhelmed the poor guy. We fixed the rhythm, and then I went on to about three different physical technical things. It was _way_ too much. Interestingly, it was exactly what I would want in a lesson, and I made a bad assumption about his desires.


Follow Ups: