Posted by Logistics on July 24, 2002 at 12:25:26:
In Reply to: Your First Time Teaching Lessons posted by MG on July 23, 2002 at 22:13:24:
Some others have given good advice about the content of lessons and such, I just want to warn you about logistics.
Are you giving private lessons, totally managed by you, or through a 3rd party (music store/public school, etc)??
Private is easy to manage--if they dont pay, dont show up, etc, you boot them off your schedule, or move them to the end of your schedule so if they dont show up, its ok.
If you are teaching through some kind of 3rd party management, you need to be careful. When the student is not paying you directly, sometimes you can get late payments, or no payments at all, and there is sometimes not much you can do about it. I know this cause I got screwed once teaching lessons for a HS music program, and had little help from the band directors in getting the students to pay--because the kids payed the boosters, then the boosters payed me--once a month rather than every lesson.
Anyway, to combat this, I had every student, and their parent(s) sign a contract with me before I would teach them. This puts everything up front--ya know, student must give 24 hr notice to cancell without paying, etc, etc...
It may save you some heartache....
Good luck!