Parents- lingering- after- the- lesson solutions

[anja]

If you want parents not to linger, as one responder to Bob felt was a problem, you can consider these options:

Inform them in the welcoming sheet that they should call to discuss their children's progress.

Schedule students back to back. (But allow them to get up and stretch from that position!)

Start talking about yourself. (This almost certainly bores them compared to their children's exciting lives.)

Do not have a comfortable seat anywhere in sight.

Excuse yourself and say you need to prepare for the next lesson. (Which includes this fond farewell to them!)

 

[hgiles]

...Or go to them to teach.

[lostinidlewonder]

I dont see the problem in parents lingering. This social connection is extermely important if you hope to make more contacts and hope to have a good student relationship. The amount of times I have been asked out to families house for dinners, special events, it is very nice. I like this side of teaching very much and if you just treat teaching as an efficiency system awlays watching your watch and never spend extra time with students etc, then you get a plain teaching world thrown back at you. If you feel people staying around you is a problem then you can't be enjoying their company. People can feel that very easily. $ is not everything, being late for the next lesson by 10 mins is nothing, making people feel less important is devistating.

If you are tied up for time you simply say that. I have had to apologise to parents who want to talk and talk after lessons because of this and they don't mind it at all. If you are sincere and sorry for not being able to spend more time today, they will understand, but if you never offer them extra time, some personal talking time with you, then you simply become a teacher and nothing else. Pretty plain and boring if you ask me. A student is absoluetly delighted and will never leave you as their teacher if you give them extra time in lessons, whether that is to talk about music or other stuff.

[anja]

I can understand how you read my posting to believe I'm an efficiency expert. It was more in response to a thread than its own thread.

But I must differ with you on being 10 minutes late for the next person. This is rude. Even 2 minutes late is too late. My students and their parents are very busy people, and often have something booked within minutes of a lesson. I think it's also wrong to give students extra time. They are never grateful for it in my experience, and they never let me get away early in return. If a lesson goes overtime it means it was planned incorrectly in the first place.

I do chat with them if I have nobody after them or if they're early, and do not suffer in any way from a plain teaching world or from students leaving because they didn't receive enough free time with me. I think this does all reflect a lack of desire on my part to sit around and shoot the breeze with people. That's just me. I think people waste inordinate amounts of time doing this especially at parties. They never talk about the important issues of the day, just the price of fish and such.