Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum When 5 Mondays are holidays

What do you do when so many holidays (Labor Day, Columbus Day, President's Day, MLK Jr Day, Memorial Day) are all on Mondays? I usually still teach these days as I am often at home, but some parents are always surprised that my studio is open. Do you include all these days in the annual tuition? It would seem like a hassle to charge Monday students less tuition because of so many holidays. And how do you handle students who miss lessons on these days? My policy states that they can only receive a makeup for illness; otherwise they are welcome to swap lesson times with another student that week. But this seems a bit ridiculous to ask all Monday students to swap for 5 holidays a year...

I do not teach on Labor Day (first Monday in Sept in US). I take off the whole week of Thanksgiving, except for Monday. That balances out. For other holidays, I tend to take the whole week off (like for Christmas). Memorial Day (last Monday in May) and July 4th holiday (usually moved to a Monday) I am in my summer schedule, which is much more flexible and not part of my semester teaching.

In our school district, the students have off one Monday per month - often associated with a holiday, but not always. When parents ask for a Monday time slot, I am always careful to explain that I DO teach on Mondays during the school year even if they have it off from school. They need to understand this in advance, because it is too inconvenient for me to reschedule. If they take long weekend trips or make other plans for these Mondays, please consider scheduling their lesson on a different day or they will end up paying for lessons they don't get.

Since I do not have a full schedule, there are plenty of other time slots available.

I put a notice in my policy that I teach on all Monday holidays, but I also try not to fill it up. In a perfect world, I'd have Sunday-Monday off, but we all know how that goes...

I agree. If parents are given a studio policy that lists the scheduled weeks that your studio will be closed, that should suffice. I have a few families that leave town every 3-day weekend to go to their cabin near Yosemite or their house at the beach. I encourage them to NOT choose Monday as their lesson, since I will not be offering makeups.

I don't teach on Labor Day and Memorial Day. The other Mondays are business as usual. I teach on Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. This creates one extra Tuesday, and makes Mondays only short by one. I then take one of the Monday-short weeks (this year it's Labor Day week) and make it the Tuesday students who don't have lessons that week. Monday students are invited to come on Tuesday that week, at their usual Monday time. Voila! -- Everyone gets the two 3 day weekends, and everyone has the same number of lessons for the year. This is all spelled out in the annual calendar given out before the start of the year.

If a Monday student cannot attend on the Tuesday reschedule, then they are taking the week as a holiday. It really hasn't been a problem.

I teach all Monday holidays and let parents know that from the start. I only take off 2 weeks at Christmas, one week at spring break, and one week during summer. So I teach all other holidays (including Thanksgiving...usually family gathering is the day after...and I only teach Sundays thru Thursdays). I ask parents to let me know in advance if they need to reschedule. So far most have not tried to reschedule.

I offer 38 lessons between Sept. 1 and Aug. 31 with my vacation days marked off. If they miss a Monday during the year, it gets made up in the summer. That being said, I take on Memorial Day and Labor Day as official, separate Monday holidays.

I teach on all those minor Monday holidays. I always tell my Monday families that I will gladly reschedule them if they would like, but they usually go ahead and attend.

All of my students pay the same tuition.

From this September, I will take mondays and Tuesday off. That should solve the problems for me.

The bottom line for self-employed people is that when you don't work, you don't get paid. I don't teach the week of Thanksgiving, the two weeks of Christmas and the week of Spring break (it seldom coincides with Easter any more). The Monday holidays are working days for me, but if a family cannot be here, I will allow them to reschedule. Most are quite understanding and most are here and are more than happy to have their students occupied part of the day.