The Sports Season Survival Kit for the Private Music Teacher

It’s that time of year again. The time many private music teachers dread.

Sports season is upon us, wreaking havoc with our teaching schedules, creating make-up lesson headaches, and making us wonder how on earth we’ll ever get our busy and distracted students ready for the upcoming performance.

For many years as a private music teacher, I geared up for sports season the way I imagine boxers gear up for a match: by preparing to tough it out. I’d put on my metaphorical boxing gloves of irritation, anxiety, and grit and ready myself to battle through a few months of overscheduled students, unreasonable parent demands, and make-up hassles that inevitably came around with each new sports season.

I just hoped to get to the other side of students' soccer/softball/ultimate frisbee commitments with as little damage to my mental health and student roster as possible.

Several years ago, I had an epiphany that, in many ways, saved my teaching career. Rather than dreading and resisting sports-related problems with every pore of my being, I decided to treat sports season like you would a trip to the dentist: not something I’d necessarily do by choice, but a nonetheless perfectly manageable experience with the proper planning, mindset, and safeguards in place.

Letting go of the frustration and stress that sports season conflicts cause requires a change in perspective. I came to realize that sports - and their busy schedules - aren’t going anywhere. Since that wasn’t going to change, *I* had to.  My journey from sports season animosity to acceptance started as soon as I embraced the following ideas.

Here's your sports season survival kit for the private music teacher: 5 sports season mindset shifts for the private music teacher to help you navigate sports season without losing students or your mind:

1. Remember that sports season is just another cycle. As teachers, we are really, really good at working with cycles. Heck, our entire annual calendar is build on the annual cycle of 9 months school year session/3 months summer session. Just like you plan for each annual cycle, you can plan for the sports cycles that occur within it. If you accept sports seasons as an inevitable occurence each year - like school vacations and student illness - and incorporate this thinking into how you run your studio, sports season issues are less disruptive and irritating to deal with.

2. Pre-plan for the sports season disruptions ahead of time.  Make sure your lesson policies address the inevitable student requests for flexibility during sports seasons. Be sure that your policies set limits based onFiv the worst case scenario. (You will inevitably have those students who miss lots of lessons and demand maximum flexibility. Your written policies should safeguard you in these situations.) Keep track of the dates when sports season practices begin, and send pre-planning reminders to parents ahead of time. For a list of creative suggestions you can offer parents and students to pre-manage conflicts, check out my guide Balancing Music & Sports.

3. Allow your teaching to be different during sports seasons. Anticipate that more studio schedule changes and make-ups to will occur during sports seasons. Because of this, have a plan in place to keep students who miss a lot of lessons in a short period of time keep moving forward in their music studies - even if it's at a slower pace or slightly different way than they progress during the off-season. Prepare exercises they can work on at home if they don't see you for a few weeks, or plan a 10-minute online "check in" lesson where you help them with a small technical issue or offer encouragement.

4. Use "off season" opportunities to pre-prepare students. If your student has a performance or competition scheduled during or just after sports season, have the students pre-prepare for it before sports begins. For example, to have students heavily involved in spring sports ready for my June recital, we often selected and began working on a piece in January or February. Giving the student a good head-start on learning a piece before sports season even begins makes it much easier for them to complete performance preparation (even with modified practice expectations) during the busy season.

5. Keep your sports season expectations reasonable (for students and yourself). A lot of my frustration came from trying to hold myself and the students to the same practice and performance expectations during sports season that I held us to during the off-season. If you adjust your expectations during the busiest time of year, you can often reach workable practice and expectation compromises that don't make you feel like an ineffective teacher or the student feel it's impossible to maintain lessons. For example, consider asking the student to prioritize practice consistency rather than practice session length (a daily 15-minute session is much more effective than 45-minutes once a week). My guide, Balancing Music & Sports has lots of creative tips to help parents and students manage their music lessons and practice time without falling off the wagon completely. Get it here.

Ready to level-up your lesson policies but don't know where to start or how to do it effectively? Hop on a FREE business coaching discovery call with me and I’ll explain how I can help you do just that. Schedule a call here.