I hope you enjoy this series of fictional scenarios about teaching music, and find it at times thought-provoking, familiar, and even humorous. We look forward to reading comments by yourself and other teachers at the end, about “what would you do?”
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The traffic is horrible and it looks like you’re going to be late for teaching Phoebe. She never gave you her cell phone number, or maybe doesn’t have one. OK, maybe you shouldn’t have taken that call from your sister at the last moment, but it was important, and it seemed like there was time to still get to the studio on time. If only there wasn’t much traffic.
You’ve hit every red light there is, and at one of them you even sat through the cycle twice. You’ve resorted to your final red-light-stress-reducing trick: Opening your glove compartment at one of the red lights, you pull out a scratch ticket and scratch off one play. Only one per red light. That way you actually look forward to the next red light!
Finally you arrive at the studio (having won nothing on the scratch ticket, but much less stressed than you could have been), and you are pleased to be only 10 minutes late. Phoebe is not there. You wait 15 minutes. No student. You call her home number. No answer.
When you get home you have an email from Phoebe telling you that she showed up on time but left after 5 minutes because you weren’t there. This would have been Phoebe’s third lesson. You’re not certain whether she has read your policies. Come to think of it, you have never spelled out this situation in your policies anyway.
Phoebe, of course, doesn’t want to pay for the lesson time, and also is unhappy at having taken the trouble to get there for nothing. You’re not too happy that you tried hard to get there only to find no one there. You know you’re at fault for being late, but 10 minutes does not seem an unreasonable time to expect a student to wait.
You have to speak with Phoebe soon about the whole thing, and you are wondering whether to address this kind of situation in your policies. You’re also wondering generally how to be fair to yourself and your student if the student hasn’t read your policies.
What would you do?
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Please add your comments below; if you have any hesitations about it, please see the earlier post about “Adding Your Two Bits! How It Works“.
About the Author
Ed Pearlman has focused on performing, teaching, and judging fiddle music for over 30 years, offering performances and workshops throughout the USA and in Canada and Scotland. His original training was with members of the Chicago and Boston Symphonies, and he played with orchestras and chamber groups at Yale and in Boston. He currently teaches privately at two music schools affiliated with music stores in Maine. Ed directed the Boston Scottish Fiddle Club in monthly workshops for 18 years, directed major concerts and festivals, and recorded 2 solo CDs and several with a fiddle orchestra and top soloists. In addition to Scottish and Cape Breton fiddle styles, Ed plays other Celtic, American, and Canadian fiddle music, classical and some jazz, klez and Hungarian. Ed created and for 11 years ran a CD distribution company to bring music to the USA from Scotland, Atlantic Canada, Ireland, Brittany and Wales. He's the music columnist for Scottish Life magazine.
This is complete irresponsibility on the part of the teacher.
You apologize, and give her a credit or offer her a make-up lesson at a mutually agreeable time.
by Amy — Tue Aug 18, 2009 @ 9:08 am
by Ed Pearlman — Tue Oct 20, 2009 @ 9:48 am