Detached house a must?

[justliam]

Do all you teachers out there live in detached houses?

I was just wondering if anyone has found possible to teach in a semi-detached house or even a terraced or a flat/apartment.  I can't imagine the latter is possible, but I am curious and it could bring up an interesting story or two 

Also, how many of you teachers only travel to your students?  I imagine that ends up being rather costly, any thoughts?

[m19834]

When I first began teaching, it was out of the townhouse apartment that I lived in at the time, fully attached to others on both sides.  The space itself had its own problems as my ambitions for the space were bigger than the space itself, however, that really still has nothing to do with whether or not it was attached to anybody else's home.  I have found myself to be much more self-conscious about my own practicing when it comes to attached living arrangements. 

I do currently live in a detached house on all sides, and there is more space so as far as my ideas fitting the space I have, it's at least a better fit now.  I am still conscious about my practicing with both voice and piano, but I definitely feel less intrusive now that there is more space between the neighbors and our home.

Any voice coaches I have visited in the San Francisco area have their teaching out of their attached flats.  I used to feel self-conscious about that, but then I came to figure that the neighbors must have some kind of tolerance, as it had been that way for years.  It is how my coaches ran their teaching though, and it must not have caused any problems that were too big to not be overcome.

During my second year of teaching, I started traveling to some students' homes, and I continued to do that for about 4 or so years.  At first I was not very efficient about scheduling, and my traveling days would not make much sense with regard to the rest of my schedule.  After a year of that, plus having one heck of a schedule surrounding that, I finally at least condensed my traveling time to one day.  However, eventually students with busy schedules thought it was no big deal to arrive back at their house very late (20 minutes or more) into our scheduled lesson, or stand me up altogether whilest I sit outside their house or in my car waiting.  I also had a dog excitedly pee on me twice in somebody's house, had another biggish dog run across the room, launch himself into the air and pounce on my lap as I was sitting down to teach, ripping my books, and then dealt with the general annoyances of being in other people's living rooms most of the time, where there were almost always other distractions.  Once I got my gig singing in the schools, I decided it was the right time to make the switch to teaching ONLY from my home, and I gave the option to my traveling students to come to me or stop lessons with me, and every single one of them decided to travel to me.  I could have stopped those traveling days much earlier than I finally did, I am figuring. 

There may be some people who feel fine about traveling to students' houses, especially if they are charging extra for it (which I stupidly wasn't) and are able to have a truly workable environment, but personally speaking, I don't generally recommend it.  At the same time, I did find some interesting students that way whom I still have within my studio.  With my current schedule though, I wouldn't make plans to go back to traveling to students' houses.

[go12_3]

I have always been teaching from my home.  It's easier for the students to come to my house where I have all my music books, etc, in case a student needs to sightread a new piece, then I would have it in my house.  The travelling to other students' house, wouldn never appeal to me.  Not now , not ever.  I love my grand piano and I know how it sounds.  I keep it in tune and the students love it.   

[richard black]

My wife's the teacher here - about half her pupils come to her. We live in a flat - a typical London arrangement, basically the upper half of a terraced house. No problems with neighbours. For sure they can hear everything but they don't seem to mind. But this is a very tolerant part of London, and we also make sure we get to know neighbours and keep on friendly terms with them.

[justliam]

That's interesting, travelling around seems to be a pretty huge negative.

I guess if you have to teach or even practise/play yourself in a flat it helps to get lucky and just have friendly/tolerate neighbours.  I expect most people are out in the day anyway, but there must be a few who are still in.

Maybe eventually they are persuaded to have lessons themselves