Lesson Info for the week of 3/29

Good afternoon!

I hope that everyone is doing well as we start our third week of “stay at home.”  I really miss meeting all of my students in person, but I think we are doing well with video lessons.  In some ways it’s fun using technology in this way, and hopefully all of you are finding it helpful, not just in terms of flute playing, but also with having a routine and something that is normal and familiar.

We had a pretty full schedule this week except for Wednesday.  There were a lot of conflicts on Wednesday, so I left that day clear, but this week, I will be available on Wednesday for anyone that needs it.

Looking forward to this week, and keeping the idea of establishing some normalcy, I am going to plan, for now, to keep everyone on the same day as last week.  I am, however, going to shorten the time between lessons again this week, which will allow me to add more students as I am still receiving new requests.  I have considered, and am still considering, using sign-up genius, or a Google sheet to facilitate signups, but I have a couple obstacles to doing that: depending on the school, my students take 22, 30, or 45 minute lessons, making a standard sign up cumbersome; and I have not set up lessons for several of my students yet for various reasons, and I need flexibility to add them in when or if they choose to do so.

Here’s how it will work for this week:

 

• I am going to set aside 12:30 – 1:30 every day to have lunch with my family
• You will have your lesson on the same day as last week
• If your lesson started before 12:30, it may move a little later
• If your lesson started after 1:30, it may move a little earlier
• If you signed up for two lessons last week, we will keep that in place for now
• If you didn’t sign up for two last week, but want two this week, let me know ASAP
• If the schedule for this week doesn’t work for some reason, let me know ASAP
• I will send out your schedule for this week this evening by the normal method
• BE FLEXIBLE

And some reminders:

 

•  I will send the meeting link or initiate the call for your lesson at the time your lesson starts
•  If you don’t receive the link/call right away, be patient, it’s on the way
•  If I send the link/make the call and you do not reply within a few minutes, I will contact you to see if there is a problem
• You don’t need to send me a reminder or let me know you’re ready right before your lesson time.  I am working with another student and want to give them my full attention.
•  If you try to contact me during my lunch break, I may not respond right away
•  BE FLEXIBLE

I want to thank all of you for being flexible during this time.  You’ve all been great to work with.

And, as always, thanks for letting me share my love of music and flute with your child.

Lesson Info for the week of 3/22

Hello Students and Parents,

Sorry for throwing something new at you in this time of crisis and uncertainty.  My hope is that by setting up this website for the dissemination of non-personal information, it will make it easier on both of us, but especially those that receive information through text messages.  I know that I don't like receiving really long text messages with important information, and I imagine that many of you don't either.  And, since I am using Google Voice for text messaging about lessons, hopefully this will also help keep me under their messaging limit, which I have run afoul of once or twice since switching over. 😁

I am accepting appointments for video lessons this coming week now, but I also need to share a little bit about what we have learned this past week to help us all plan going forward.

This past week has been a whirlwind of stress and unexpected changes for all of us, but I must say that doing video lessons was a highlight for me.  Yes, there were some technical challenges, but we were able to overcome most of those fairly quickly, and I think everyone, including me, had a fun and beneficial experience.  It was definitely a learning experience for us (my husband and I) in terms of the technical challenges.  Here's some points we need to keep in mind going forward:

• I will keep a little additional time between lessons for technical issues, but as we get better at this, and I have more of you sign up, I will need to minimize that so I can fit everyone in.
• It's important that you allow me to initiate all of the "meetings" so that I can finish up one lesson before starting another.
• Sometimes email and text messages are going slow, or don't go through at all.  If you haven't received your meeting invite from me, please be patient.  It's probably on the way.  If I have sent an invite and you haven't joined the meeting yet, I'll contact you to see if there's an issue.
• Skype is still going to be my preferred method for now.  However, Zoom has some neat features that I might want to use, so I am considering that for some future date.
• If your child is trying to do this with a school-issued Chromebook, Google Hangouts seems to be the best option.  I will need your child's gmail or @g address to make that work, so please be prepared with that.
• If you're using external speakers, make sure the volume isn't too loud as it will cause the sound to cut in and out.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, I am setting up for this week.  Starting times will be from 9:00 to 3:30.  I may be able to go later on some days, and if I need to I will start earlier.  Please give me a range of days and times to set our lesson, and please be flexible as we may not start right at that time due to the technical issues I described earlier.  Also, I know you will be receiving more meeting requests as we go on for other classes at school, so we may need to change the schedule as we go to accommodate those when they come up.  That being said, please email or text me with your time request(s) at your earliest convenience.

I have received a couple requests for two lessons a week.  As long as I have room in the schedule, I will accept those requests on a first-come-first-served basis.

I may set up a Google Sheet or Survey in the future to help facilitate sign ups, but my hope is that at some point your child's other teachers will have a fairly regular schedule, and then we can have a regular time for lessons each week.

I hope all of you are staying safe, healthy, and happy, and I look forward to seeing all of you this week.

And, as always, thank you for letting me share my love of music and flute with your child.