How to Make Your Violin Teaching Schedule

This post was originally published on August 21, 2015 so links and resources may not be current.

Keep Your Sanity (and Your Students)

I don’t know about you, but scheduling my students is sometimes an absolute nightmare. Everyone has a billion commitments, and I am so fussy about my hours. I make a new schedule every fall and summer because, well, hmm…I’m starting to wonder why I do that…
Right now, my method is this:
I decide what hours I want to teach. This fall I am teaching Monday-Friday from 2pm-5:30pm and Tuesday from 7am-9am. (My husband works nights and mornings are hard for me to find babysitting.) Then I ask my students to send me their top three choices for lessons within those times, and I shuffle everyone around until it fits. It’s like the ultimate game of tetris. This year was particularly rough because I added some new students, and I had a few students who had only ONE available time.
This conundrum made me think there has got to be a better way. I really hoped there was, so I started looking. Here is my round-up of ideas for how to make your violin teaching schedule.
1. The way I described above. It works great to a certain point, but if you have more than thirty students, it probably won’t.
2. Google calendar. Make a google calendar for your studio, and block out the hours you want to teach. Based on seniority, (years as your student, place in the repertoire, length of lesson, etc) your students can access this calendar a few at a time to sign up for their own times. This may be kind of a downer for your new students.
3. Hold a parent meeting and hash it out all together. Divide up by what day the parent wants the lesson, and then have the parents talk through who gets what times. Depending on the temperament of the parents in your studio, this may or may not work well.
4. Keep the same lesson times forever. If people need to switch, they can ask another student to switch with them. (This is looking very alluring to me right now!)
5. Use a scheduling software or app. I haven’t tried any of these, but many people really like them. One of my student’s dad wrote a free scheduling software that you can access at timestadium.com. You can even embed the schedule on your studio website. There are others that I have seen, but they all have monthly or annual fees. This is what I am going to try for next time I have to change the schedule.
6. Services like Music Teacher’s Helper often include their own scheduling software, so if you are interested in that kind of a set-up, it is already built in.
Working with other people’s schedules is always tough, and the more students you have the more complicated it becomes. These days, kids are involved in a lot of activities, and often, music takes a back seat to thrice-weekly dance lessons or sports practices. Encourage your studio parents to make their child’s violin lessons a priority.
As you are making your lesson schedule, keep in mind that if you are giving all of your personal time it doesn’t really help you. If you have no time for yourself, or your family, your teaching will probably suffer. If you aren’t a morning person, I give you permission not to teach in the mornings! Take care of yourself and your studio will thrive.
How do you schedule your violin students? Please share in the comments, I would love some more ideas!