Save!

The dreaded ring of the phone about 3 hours before a student's lesson...what will it be this time...?  Yes, it's an inconvenience to the teacher to receive a call so late, and of course it eats away at your monthly income, but what does it do to the student?  I could list a myriad of consequences, but I think we can draw the conclusion that students who come regularly to lessons progress much faster than students who become "hit and miss."  The reason this time was that the student's family had been busy with summer activities so he had not practiced his lesson that week.  I knew that starting a habit of skipping a lesson due to family busy-ness would be detrimental.  I explained briefly to the parent that I understood, every student has weeks like that, and that I always have activities we can do at the lesson: flash cards, review games, concept reinforcement, etc. etc.  The parent of course felt badly she had not kept up the home practice, but didn't realize that I could still work with her child.  I explained that they will forget concepts if too much time goes by, and encouraged her to stick with it, especially as he is just a beginner.  She agreed to bring him, and we had a wonderful lesson!  I feel like a piano student was saved and will continue on to play piano another day....!