Teachers visiting your home Options

[barcarolle]

Hi parents, I'm a piano teacher who's had a really successful practise in one area for 10 years, working from home. I've just moved areas and for various reasons don't want to teach at home anymore. I'm weighing up between visiting students' homes to give lessons versus hiring premises. Hiring premises is obviously going to increase the cost of the lessons significantly as I need to cover the cost. What I am wondering is how parents feel about teachers coming to their house - is it preferable or do parents like going out for instrumental lessons? Also I wonder if parents taking their child out for a lessons says more in terms of parental commitment to learning an instrument - if the parents have to visit the teacher do they tend to encourage / support practise better at home than if the teacher visits the family? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

[BadStrad]

I generally find that parents are overjoyed when I say I'll go to them, especially if they have several kids all wanting to be ferried to activities. As for helping and encouraging, I don't think it's the travelling or lack of it that makes the difference. Encouraging parents are encouraging either way.

[Scooby Doo]

I think you will have plenty of willing takers - who wouldn't prefer to be able to get on with something else while the teacher comes to them, and cut out the hassle and travelling.

The down side would be that the child only ever gets to play their own instrument, so you could find it difficult if their piano is really inadequate. Perhaps you could arrange occasional visits to each other's houses if students know each other so that they are able to play a variety of pianos. Students living close to each other could perhaps take it in turns to host lessons - that would also save you some travelling time and enable you to rehearse duets, do aural work together and so on.

[sbhoa]

The down side would be that the child only ever gets to play their own instrument, so you could find it difficult if their piano is really inadequate.

Or if they don't have a piano.

[Czerny]

While a studio should provide an ideal teaching environment (or as near as possible), in some ways it seems the worst of both worlds; it's convenient neither for you nor for the pupils, yet you have to charge a premium to cover the cost.

[Halka]

Also I wonder if parents taking their child out for a lessons says more in terms of parental commitment to learning an instrument - if the parents have to visit the teacher do they tend to encourage / support practise better at home than if the teacher visits the family? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

What a funny idea! Daughter's clarinet teacher has been coming to us for almost 5 years now. We chose him after a break up from a previous teacher because he seemed to be exactly what we wanted. How dismayed would I have been if he had thought I was not "committed" because I didn't want to drive my daughter to someone less suitable?!

The arrangement has worked brilliantly for us. It saves us time, which can be invested in homework or music practice, and I can enjoy listening in on much of the lesson while getting on with the ironing elsewhere in the house. No waiting around in a cold car. I think communication is made easy too. Very easy to have a relaxed chat in our sitting room (where the lesson happens) at the beginning or end (I try not to!) of the lesson.

[tonedeafmum]

Also I wonder if parents taking their child out for a lessons says more in terms of parental commitment to learning an instrument - if the parents have to visit the teacher do they tend to encourage / support practise better at home than if the teacher visits the family?

When Daughter goes for a violin lesson I just have to remember to shout "Have you got everything?" as she heads out the door.
When she has a piano lesson I have to dust the piano, remove wandering socks and mystery stains for the piano listening chair, buy nice biscuits, clean the loo, and boil the kettle - much higher level of parental commitment. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Misterioso]

I think it can work both ways. We had son's piano teacher coming to us for a while, which worked fine until one day I went into the teaching room to find him lying full-length on the sofa, with feet up on a pile of clean washing that I had omitted to remove! I'm not saying he wasn't teaching from that position, but it did raise questions......

I don't really think having a teacher travelling to a student's house means less parental commitment. One student I travelled to had a double lesson during which mum entered the room as silently as possible near the beginning, to set down a cup of tea and the most recent home baking for me, then creeping out again without a single word to disrupt the lesson. The only thing that made me feel slightly guilty was drilling daughter on her scales while I tucked into yummy coffee cake that she herself had made!

The most frustrating things about teaching at their home rather than elsewhere are (a) not having music and other resources to hand, and (b) occasionally arriving to find them out!! These occasions were both last-minute emergencies, but it is none the less frustrating when you have negotiated rush-hour traffic to get there, wasting time and petrol. (Don't laugh, now - we do have a mini rush-hour even in the Outer Hebrides!)

If you do teach in students' homes, though, it's best to make clear right from the start that there needs to be some kind of supplement for the service. I charge an extra ?3 on the lesson fee to teach in a student's home, and that goes nowhere near the time it takes to pack my violin and music, and get across to the other side of town.

[saxophile]

Also I wonder if parents taking their child out for a lessons says more in terms of parental commitment to learning an instrument - if the parents have to visit the teacher do they tend to encourage / support practise better at home than if the teacher visits the family?

When Daughter goes for a violin lesson I just have to remember to shout "Have you got everything?" as she heads out the door.
When she has a piano lesson I have to dust the piano, remove wandering socks and mystery stains for the piano listening chair, buy nice biscuits, clean the loo, and boil the kettle - much higher level of parental commitment. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) I do the same! Seriously, we have experience of both arrangements, and having a teacher come to the house is an absolute godsend from my perspective as a parent. I view it as a real selling-point, personally.

[Hedgehog]

We had a trumpet teacher for a long while who came to our house. He was a little bit unreliable in terms of arriving for lessons at the beginning of term, but he was a good teacher and I got used to reminding him at times that school had begun again. My son had his lesson on a Friday which I don't regard as a particularly good day for a lesson because children are tired at the end of the week, so that fact that the teacher came to the house was good because it saved us the hassle of going out again.

The main disadvantage was that I couldn't teach in the lounge where the trumpet lesson was happening. On the very rare occasions when I needed to do a catch up lesson, trumpet teacher + son + music stands etc etc all had to be removed into the living room, and we had to remember to move the hamster out to save her nerves.

Over all I would welcome teachers coming to the house so that I can get on with other things while lesson is happening. I think it is pretty poor that Misterioso found teacher lying down on the job - I would never do that in my own teaching room, let alone in someone else's house with feet on clean ironing!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif)

[notmusimum]

We've done both and I can't really say it made any difference at all to our committment to teacher or practice.

[FullofWind]

I would be overjoyed! What do you teach and are you moving to my area! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[barncottagecat]

Epiphanya's piano lesson round trip is over two hours. If her teacher could come to us I would love her even more than I do now! Violin teacher comes to us whenever he can - if he's in town for something else. I much prefer being able to something other than wait.. Waiting takes up most of my life at the moment.....

Interestingly though, my son was completely weirded out at the age of 7 by having piano lessons at home. He couldn't take it seriously at all. But I think he's in a minority - lots of my friends children have lessons at their houses and don't find this an issue.

[saxophile]

A further plus from my perspective is that I can much more readily have a brief chat with the teacher about anything which comes up. When I take Son No.1 for his trumpet lesson, I sit in the car outside (wouldn't dream of sitting in on the lesson, since it would be distracting for pupil and teacher, in my view). This means that I don't actually get to see the teacher, and have to make separate contact if there is anything needing to be discussed.

Oh, and sitting in a car on a winter's evening for up to an hour is a pretty miserable experience (cold, too dark to be able to read or do anything other than listen to the radio). I'd willingly pay more for the teacher to come to us. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[jcassell]

We are v grateful for teacher coming to us and for 3 girls it means we they can go to their occasional social events on a Saturday afternoon (grr.....) and split the time differently without disrupting timetable or income of our lovely teacher

A further plus from my perspective is that I can much more readily have a brief chat with the teacher about anything which comes up. When I take Son No.1 for his trumpet lesson, I sit in the car outside (wouldn't dream of sitting in on the lesson, since it would be distracting for pupil and teacher, in my view). This means that I don't actually get to see the teacher, and have to make separate contact if there is anything needing to be discussed.

Oh, and sitting in a car on a winter's evening for up to an hour is a pretty miserable experience (cold, too dark to be able to read or do anything other than listen to the radio). I'd willingly pay more for the teacher to come to us. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)