Simpedia

Mark M. New York

For my first two Summers, I pretty much just let my general policies hold. Originally, I had a policy of letting people get tuition credit for any absences they told me about in advance, prior to paying tuition for a given month. As my student body grew, I abandoned that policy, so after that, all that was in place was people’s general opportunity to take an unpaid leave of absence. As a courtesy, I bent that policy a little bit for some people who were taking vacations of multiple consecutive weeks, handling it in the same way as my previous planned absence policy, without them having to take the full month unpaid. After all, it was either I get no tuition and they get no class for the month, or we all at least get some of what we wanted. Still felt consistent with the spirit of the policy, just allowing unpaid leaves to be less than a month at a time.

Either way, though, I’d still had a fair number of students/families with Summer piano issues, whether vacations/camp that caused absences, and/or practice routines suffering somewhat even when people are around, simply because Summers involve a completely different routine for them compared to the school-year — and often no consistent routine from week to week at all, or even day to day. I never wanted to take the whole Summer off or just make the Summer optional with it’s own lesson term separate from the rest of the year, but I thought something was worth doing, so I tried something a little different.

I decided to offer, in a limited way, my original planned absence policy, just for the months of July and August, just for a maximum of two total lessons/credits over the course of this time period, and just for days when the entire group would agree to be off together. I had a number of groups take advantage of this, and though things weren’t perfect, it did ameliorate issues better than how things were the previous two years.

I don’t even mind, and have even in some cases encouraged, some students taking off a day they otherwise wouldn’t have, simply because others in the group already were taking a day off. At least this way everyone could get a tuition credit and it would ameliorate catch-up concerns. That may not seem fair to whoever would have attended the lesson, but just like game theory tells us things about loyalty programs, the situation is similar here. Some give and take may not yield the biggest possible win for every individual in every moment, but all the members of the group benefit overall over time, including particular other kinds of benefits for the very same individual who may from a different angle seem to be losing out.

It’s enough of a decent middle ground that I believe I’ll do this every year from now on, and likely even open it up beyond two to some greater number of potential July/August lesson credits. I still teach out of my house and therefore have fairly small groups (max of 3), and so absence/catch-up issues can be quickly magnified if it happens too frequently over a short time. I — and apparently many of my students/groups — would rather have the Summer go at a bit slower pace for everyone, if it helps group members stay on pace with each other and if it helps students in general to avoid losing so much ground during a period when a lot of other things make demands on both the amount and regularity of their practice time.

Patti P. Hawaii

I teach all year round, but I usually take a two-week vacation in the summer.