Arrrggghhhh!!!!

I've only been teaching for a couple of years and I've just had my first experience of parental rudeness and arseyness. I am really angry so am just here to let off steam!!

The story: I teach this girl in her (private) school. (Her mother is a teacher there which makes the whole thing worse!) She didn't show up to her lesson last week; I hadn't heard a reason why but one of the music teachers told me later that she'd been in hospital. Fair enough, but in my opinion I still need to charge her for the lesson - the school's own policy is that one has to have a week's notice for any missed lessons. I put her termly bill in the school's post system for her mother.

Over the weekend, I got an email from her father, saying that the girl would be back in school this week, but doesn't feel up to oboe lessons yet. (He didn't actually apologise for her missing a lesson unannounced, incidentally). I wrote back saying that's fine, and that I'd refund any lessons she misses from now on because of this, but I'd still need to charge them for last week's lesson as I had expected her to be there. This seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Today I get the following email: "Please accept this message as formal notification that we no longer require your services. Under the circumstances any invoice that you may have raised for this term should be cancelled." No further explanation.

Now, this is really NOT okay.

THe school's policy is that you have to give a whole term's notice for cancelling lessons; personally I feel this is slightly over the top, but I do say on the bottom of all my bills that I expect notice by the end of the previous term. Which I haven't had in this case. Not only that, but my bill is for such things as reeds and music, not just teaching!

So I've written back politely pointing out all of this, saying I still expect to be paid for this term, and also asking for an explanation - the first email didn't suggest that the girl wanted to give up lessons. I wonder if this is an OTT parental reaction to the fact I've had the temerity to charge them for *one* lesson she's missed while their daughter's been ill. (If I was really playing it by the rules, I'd be charging them for this week's lesson too, as I only had 5 days notice she was going to miss that, rather than a full week.)

At the end of the day, I'd be expecting her to give up within the next year or so anyway because she is not terrifically bright, has the musicality of a stick, and progress is painfully slow. But that's no reason for her parents to treat me like this! So now I'm having to involve the Head of Music - and because her mother is a teacher there, that could put him in an awkward position too.

Okay, maybe, BUT I still don't see that that's a reason to cancel ALL lessons from now on, and basically sack me. If they want to argue about that particular week, then they should do so, and I would listen to their arguments. But cancelling all lessons altogether? (and not giving the required notice) That just seems like an overreaction.

I agree - they have gone from civil to frankly quite offensive in one bound, and with no explanation. I think you are quite right to ask for an explanation, as this does seem a bit extreme. Don't let the fact that the mother teaches in the same school put you off insisting on being treated fairly. If this is the way they behave towards you, I doubt it will be an isolated incident (so you may find you have unexpected allies, if you see what I mean).

As the mother is in school why not ask her what the problem was with the child's health - did they know she was going to have to be in hospital that day, if so why didn't they tell you? If they didn't know and it was an emergency then fair enough but they should have explained this later and asked nicely whether they could have had some extra lessons in place of the missed ones.

On the other hand if it was a genuine emergency and they were aware that another teacher had told you the girl had been in hospital, then from their point of view it could have seemed a bit harsh and inhumane of you to have blithely charged for the missed lesson. Under the circumstances I would personally try and make up missed lessons due to hospitalisation, although having said that the schools I work in where the school takes the payment for lessons always charge for lessons missed due to illness. If I invoice the parents myself I tend not to charge for lessons missed due to illness but make them up later. Don't ask me why - I just feel funny directly taking money for missed lessons if the reasons are genuine, rules or no rules.

This sounds like a standard case of teachers thinking they're above the law. If the school has a policy, then surely they have to adhere to it.

I wonder how they would feel if their salary was dependent on pupils attendance!

If the problem was theirs, do you think they would hesitate for one nanosecond in getting the Headteacher to write you a strong letter? No, of course not! They would be "simply following school policy".



Steve

You are right - you now have to involve the Head of Music and let him deal with it, awkward situation or no. That's what he's paid to do - it's his job. And you can detach yourself as far as possible and move on.

Although it's annoying to lose a pupil, particularly without any notice, it doesn't sound, from what you say, that this one will be too much of a loss ( musicality of a stick, not particularly bright , painfully slow progress and all that). Leave your Head of Music to sort out how much money you get.

Good luck.

This is exactly why I'm reluctant to make any exceptions at all for missed lessons. Whether the pupil forgot, was suddenly ill or got abducted by aliens... you were there waiting and your time isn't free.

While I'm sympathetic of family emergencies/illness etc... I know that if I ever got rushed to hospital, it would mean losing pay for however long I was in there. Pupils aren't going to pay for lessons that I have missed, whatever the reason, so it's maybe a good idea to leave the reason for absence out of things and apply the same rule to all no-shows.

Having said that I do try to rearrange missed lessons (unless they just forgot), but that might not be so easy if you work in a school.

Quick edit - to think of it another way, you depend on not being ill in order to make money when you are self employed, which can be risky! If you don't charge for absence through illness then you are also depending on everyone else's health too - which is even riskier! What if all your pupils catch the same virus for a week?!

Like David, I can see both points of view here! But I'd tend to be similar to violinia in that I just don't feel quite right about taking money for a lesson missed through genuine illness. Granted, you should have been told, but sometimes parents under stress WILL forget about something that needs to be dealt with. I can't help feeling that the problem wouldn't have arisen if you'd been paid in advance; the ball would have been on the other foot with regard to who was accomodating whom, and they'd have been singing your praises if you'd offered to reschedule the lesson. It might have been better to offer to reschedule the lesson anyway, and let the situation ride with regard to money; once they'd had a few resceduled lessons they'd have been in a weaker position with regard to non-payment, and nobody in the school would have agreed with you being put in the position of having a whole term - or even some of it - unpaid for.

It does seem a bit extreme to 'sack' you, though, which, in effect, is what they are doing. It's possible that they were in two minds about the girl having lessons at all, and that this has tipped the balance - but you may never know! E-mails and non-verbal means of communication are a curse at times; face to face discussions - and even telephone discussions - call for more explanation and diplomacy, and situations like this tend not to arise so much.

Good luck with it, anyway!

I charge half a term in advance and do not refund lessons at all.. if your kids go to ballet, private school, or other such thing you don't get refunds and for a lot of us it is a salary... I will however do make up lessons and re arrange if possible if it is requested.
I don't think you are out of order. Stick to your guns!

Since I wrote back asking for the explanation and pointing out I expected some notice, the father has actually climbed down quite a bit during the course of the afternoon and become more human! Seems like the girl isn't very motivated to practice, so they thought they'd cut their losses (news to me - when I ask her how much practice she's done, she always says 'almost every day, at least 20 minutes', and she seems to come quite happily to her lessons. It would make a lot of sense that she's not practising though).

So now they've moved to a position of 'well, if you expect a term's notice, I suppose she may as well carry on for now and we'll reassess the situation at the end of term'. Phew.



The irony is, I *do* charge more or less in advance - I give them the bill in the 1st lesson of each term, but it just so happened that this was the lesson she missed last week. Maybe I should give them the bill a couple of weeks before the end of the previous term, and ask for it to be paid before the holidays, or first week back? That's just difficult to do so far in advance, though, particularly for over the summer, as I won't necessarily know by then any weeks that I'm away myself, or when they are on school trips or whatever... Hmm.

If a lesson is missed for a genuine reason in term time you can always make it up by doing a double one later on if there's time in the day.

I've been asked to go in and do extra hours to make up for lessons that are going to be missed on Thursday due to the teachers' strike! The secretary who phoned me today pointed out that the parents might take a dim view if paid for lessons are missed because school's closed on violin day. So I get this Thursday afternoon off but have to go in early for the next three weeks to make up the time. Luckily I can fit it in but there would have been some grumpy parents apparently if I hadn't been able to...

Glad things are getting sorted out Claire and in this case it sounds as if you were right to stick to your guns and there was more stuff going on behind the scenes than they had let on in the beginning.

As well as the boot??

Sorry D - couldn't resist, this just made me !

To be honest, this is a problem at times with me too. They're not back from their holiday, or it's easy to be 'sick' on the first lesson of a term - and it's hard for the teacher to charge for something that didn't take place. I give out bills on the first lesson of term as well. Rather than risk confrontation, though, I wait a week or two to give out the bill to the odd one who misses the first lesson - so that I can say, "Hey, I have a gap on Tue at 7 (for instance) to fill in your missed lesson." That way, I don't feel guilty for charging for it, and they don't feel vindicated for not paying for it if the 'Tue at 7' doesn't suit!

Completely off-topic but...when I was at uni there was a one-day university lecturers' strike. Our lecturer wanted to participate, but equally didn't want us to miss out on the two lectures he was due to deliver us that day. He also happened to be the curator of the University Museum of Natural History (I was studying biology).
So the compromise was that on Saturday morning, we'd have a lecture in the museum's lecture theatre, a half-hour break to run around the museum looking at things including behind-the-scenes specimens relevent to the lectures, and then the second lecture.
Amazingly enough, almost everyone turned up for a 9am Saturday lecture!

This is probably not what you want to hear but are you sure that you should still carry on teaching her? Aren't you better to just cut your losses. Its hardly going to be rewarding for either of you teaching someone till the rest of the term just to fufill contractual obligations. What has always made lessons as a student a positive thing for me is that the teacher seems to want to teach me anyway no student wants to feel the teacher is just doing it for the money.

Yes you have been treated rudely but from the parents viewpoint I would not want someone teaching my child who viewed them as having the "musicality of a stick". I find this attitude a little offensive. If you can no longer see the musicality in this child then you should stop teaching her and maybe give her the chance to enjoy music with another teacher.

Woo, don't overreact when you know very little about me or my pupil, thankyou.

Yes, I would say at the moment she is not very musical. BUT I do believe that she can learn to become so. Everyone can. I will teach anyone who is prepared to learn and to practice - this girl doesn't practice *enough*, hence the slow progress, but we have nevertheless made some progress since she started with me last September. Therefore I am happy to stick with her, even if she is perhaps not my most rewarding pupil.

She has quite a positive attitude in her lessons, and plays away quite happily, and that's fine for me. I think she would get more out of it herself if she applied herself more, and it's a shame she's not doing that, but I can't do her practice for her!

No, the boot would have been in their court - of course!!

Well I don't know if anyone knows who Claire21 is in the real world, but the pupil she's referring to is completely anonymous. Ok, it was a slightly flippant description, but I'm sure Claire is perfectly diplomatic and professional when necessary.

For what it's worth, Claire, here are my thoughts:
- I don't think the parents should have relied on another teacher to tell you their daughter was in hospital (if that is what they were doing - they could of course have just forgotten).
- I think the 'termination' e-mail was rather brusque and impolite; but this is obviously slightly historical now.
- I agree with ad_lib - no-one queued up to pay me for lessons when I had to go into hospital. You can't budget for everyone else's illnesses as well as your own and I've always felt a policy of not charging for lessons missed through illness is open to abuse.
- I am not impressed to have been told (not asked) by my school not to come in tomorrow when a) I'm not going to benefit in any way from the NUT strike and b) I'm going to lose pay.

And finally, how on earth did the word 'arseyness' get through the over-zealous filter when you can't even write h-e-l-l or b-u-m, neither of which are rude words!

I do feel a bit got-at here. Firstly, my title *said* I was letting off steam. Don't we all phrase things less than elegantly in such circumstances?



I would never describe her that way *in a professional context* - ie. where she, her parents, or the teachers in her school were going to hear me. Maybe I got it wrong but I didn't think these boards were that kind of professional environment.




Thank you.





I was surprised about that too! I think it's probably an American spell checker. Either that or the Y confused it.

I agree that we should be able to be down-to-earth here when we want to be, rather than feel obliged to only use the sort of vapid language that is expected on school reports. We're largely anonymous here, and we want to dicuss how we feel about things openly, which I think is fair enough.

I also agree with kate bush fan that continuing to teach a pupil simply in order to finish the term off is a bit pointless. I had a feeling that the parents' reaction had to be coming from some other agenda rather than simply you wanting payment for a missed lesson. Like many parents, they probably weren't taking the lessons all that seriously, didn't fuss much if she didn't practise, and suddenly woke up to the fact that they were paying for more than allowing their daughter to spend an enjoyable half hour a week with you when it suited. If you really feel that you might be able to stimulate the girl into some effort, then it might be worth continuing, but if you have a waiting list it might also be worth coming to some arrangement whereby another child takes this child's place, with no financial loss to anybody. Each lesson is partly preparation for the coming week's practice, which leaves both teacher and pupil at a loss when they know lessons are coming to an end.

I wasn't trying to get at you Claire21 but also I have been through the situation of teaching someone who really didn't want to be there - and in the end it is very dispiriting for both parties.

This is a forum and if you post on it asking for advice you should be prepared sometimes to hear views you don't agree with. Sometimes people have told me things here that have annoyed me at the time but then I have gone away and thought about them and have been grateful for their views.

Im afraid that the new word which appeared on here seems to have become part of my general vocabulary! I used it twice in the office yesterday !, Also you know that song that begins 'Happiness, happiness ' ???............ well I've changed the lyrics !!

Glad to be of service

I have just been to Tesco where the aisles between parking slots are alternatively 'up' and 'down.
Whay are there always some idiots who go down the aisles the wrong way !! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr...........
What happens is they come in , park , do their shopping, load the car, then reverse out and try to go down the aisle the same ways as they come in. Then someone trying to turn in at the bottom of the aisle suddenly sees a car coming down ! They must follow one way streets properly in towns, why cant they do it in car parks. !

I think, as well as this (that's happened to me here too!) it's possible for a thread like this to become very linear, in that everybody agrees that the original poster has been hard done by, and we all, one after the other, get very moral with regard to how to deal with the situation. So the odd post of a different nature will stand out! I think we teachers need to be pragmatic at times. Most battles of this kind aren't won by a show of strength from the teacher; if you play the game, you can sandpaper away at a pushy parent's attitude over the years with a little give and take, and many will eventually see that you do actually know what you're doing.

An apology from me! I got distracted when reading two threads at the same time and I thought I was responding to a different thread with this answer! I got mixed up and thought kate bush fan's post was in reply to Daisy Chain's thread in Theory and Composition - Aaargh, I don't want to do this. So sorry if I've been obtuse and if you wondered why on earth I was talking about pushy parents!