Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum How do you determine what teaching load is good for you?

Hi Morodiene, I'm not a teacher so I wont make any contributions, all I want to say is all the best. I dont claim to have the wisdom of the world as a young person, but I've been there before, poor health, too many commitments, it didn't end up very nicely, good on you for adressing it now, not letting it get bad to the point that it is unbearable. All the best.

I hope you feel better be careful you don't perhaps fall into the same trap with your health, once you start feeling better. Perhaps if you need a certain base of money start there, and find out which time you absolutely do not want infringed on and don't schedule students then. The other is up your rates so that you can afford to teach less students and still have the same income that you need and then you will free up your time without the financial burden. And you will have more time for you and your husband and your health.

It must be a nice luxury to be able to afford to take an entire month off.

I am in a similar boat as you, so I can only offer the things I've thought through.

I know that this year I've taken on way too much. I have several little ones of my own with another one on the way, and I have something like 27 students.

The only reason I did this in the first place honestly, was because of financial circumstances. Before this, I taught about 3 students who were all children of friends. Now I have all these new students and I can't exactly quit on them, can I?

The thing is, I LOVE teaching. I just have to learn to put my family's needs first.

For me, I have over scheduled 3 days a week in order to leave 2 week days and weekends free. I kinda like this this as it gives me room to breathe on 2 weekdays and know that I can love on my own kids all day long during those times. I always look forward to those days. But, I am finding that I am starting to dread those over scheduled work days. (Tomorrow, for example, I teach 14 students. Ack. Mondays are my huge days.

So ideally for me, I would drop to about 15 quality students and teach them all on 3 light days a week, back to back so that I have huge chunks of time free for my own family each day.

Also ideally I'd like to be done by 5pm every day but I don't see how that could work in the real world. I do have quite a few homeschooled students though, so this is almost doable for me and I'll keep working on that.

I'm hoping financial circumstances turn around to the point where I am able to cut back, because I'm close to my breaking point. I want to keep on loving what I'm doing, and keep being inspired and being inspirational instead of beginning to resent that I having to make the choice of spending so much time with other people's children instead of my own!

Hope you feel better soon, Morodienne.

Pieces like Chopin Ballades
are out of your reach, and trying to learn them so that you
can prepare students for conservatory auditions is not going
to happen.

Gee, that's a nice thing to say.

Pieces like Chopin Ballades
are out of your reach

When I was taking lessons way back when, all the teachers did was go through the motions and collect the fee.

Pieces like Chopin Ballades are out of your reach...

This seems out of character for you, Gyro, considering you advocate learning a concerto note by note regardless of one's ability or experience.

I say do what you love and love what you do.