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“.
This is easy. It’s your fault. You give a credit. You should have been more prepared by having her number in your cell phone, and you should have let her know in advance that there was a chance you could be late. Anytime you have a student that is first at a location and you are traveling to get there, you need to let them know that there is a possibility you could be late due to traffic, etc. . .
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.
One thing I used to do to pre-empt such a possibility was to make the following policy (and this was before cellphones!): if for any reason, either I or the student wasn’t there at the start of a lesson, we would wait 20 minutes for each other before feeling free to leave. If I didn’t make it by then, the student would get a partial credit towards next lesson; if the student didn’t make it, the lesson would be charged for.
Then, Ed, you are a fool. And a cheat.
I wouldn’t pay a teacher for that time. 20 minutes late, leaving me ten minutes? Really? No.
Like the first comment said, there’s a measure of responsibility and the teacher and student should both have the other’s phone number.
The policy should match that of the student’s version. What if a student is late? Do they get a make-up for the same reason? If not, then the teacher is in no way just by not offering credit or a make-up.