Scheduling

Regular scheduling

For reg­u­lar stu­dents, lessons are sched­uled at the same time each week (e.g., every Wednes­day at 6:00pm) year-round, except for planned absences (see below). Once we’ve estab­lished a week­ly les­son sched­ule, your appoint­ments will be added to my cal­en­dar with an indef­i­nite end date, and you will be able to view and mod­i­fy these appoint­ments in the TuneKey app.

Instructor-initiated schedule adjustments

Planned absences

I do not offer lessons on New Year’s Eve→Day, Memo­r­i­al Day, June­teenth, Inde­pen­dence Day, Labor Day, Thanks­giv­ing Day, Christ­mas Eve→Day, or on Elec­tion Days (spring and fall).  I also take one week each sum­mer to par­tic­i­pate in Shenan­doah Conservatory’s Insti­tute for Con­tem­po­rary Com­mer­cial Music Vocal Ped­a­gogy, and an addi­tion­al week of fam­i­ly vaca­tion dur­ing the year.  These planned absences are fac­tored into the tuition rates for Sub­scrip­tion stu­dents, so no make-ups are offered for these absences.

Unplanned absences

As much as I wish I could guar­an­tee oth­er­wise, life does present the occa­sion­al per­son­al, fam­i­ly, or pro­fes­sion­al con­flict that requires me to can­cel lessons. I will com­mu­ni­cate unplanned absences as ear­ly as pos­si­ble, and will coor­di­nate with stu­dents to resched­ule or offer cred­it for lessons missed as a result.

Inclement weather

If weath­er con­di­tions war­rant it—if the roads are unsafe, for exam­ple, or if the park­ing area at my teach­ing loca­tion is snow-covered—I may opt to hold sched­uled lessons online instead of in per­son. (See this page for more infor­ma­tion about online lessons.) In these cas­es I will send email and text noti­fi­ca­tions to all affect­ed stu­dents as soon as the deci­sion is made.

Student-initiated schedule adjustments

Student & household illness

If you or a mem­ber of your house­hold are expe­ri­enc­ing fever, cough, fatigue, short­ness of breath, chills, body aches, diar­rhea, or vom­it­ing in the days pre­ced­ing your les­son, I ask that you choose one of three options:

  1. At any point up to 24 hours in advance of your les­son, you may choose to resched­ule your les­son to a lat­er date.  This is usu­al­ly the best option, as it allows you to recov­er and meet with me in per­son when you’re func­tion­ing at clos­er to 100%.  If you have dif­fi­cul­ty resched­ul­ing in TuneKey, you may con­tact me direct­ly.
  2. If the 24-hour resched­ul­ing win­dow has passed, or if you have time-sen­si­tive goals and don’t want to lose the sched­uled appoint­ment time, you may wish to switch your in-per­son les­son to an online les­son.  To do this, please con­tact me direct­ly as far in advance of the les­son as pos­si­ble, so that I have time to pre­pare any need­ed resources for the online for­mat. I will make the change in your TuneKey cal­en­dar and con­firm with you.
  3. If you or a mem­ber of your house­hold is ill and nei­ther of the above options is pos­si­ble, please can­cel your les­son. You can can­cel in TuneKey or by con­tact­ing me direct­ly.  (Remem­ber that I do not offer dis­counts, refunds, or oth­er cred­it for lessons can­celled by stu­dents with less than 24 hours’ notice.)

No-show lessons

If a stu­dent is more than 5 min­utes late in arriv­ing (or log­ging in for an online les­son) and has not con­tact­ed me to indi­cate that they expect to be late and/or are en route, I will assume the stu­dent has can­celed the les­son and for­got­ten to noti­fy me, and will mark the les­son “No Show.”

Regard­less of the rea­son for the can­cel­la­tion, I do not offer dis­counts or refunds for lessons can­celed by stu­dents. (In oth­er words, once a les­son has been con­firmed as sched­uled, the stu­dent is respon­si­ble for pay­ment even if the les­son is can­celled.)  This pol­i­cy helps avoid incon­sis­ten­cies in the month­ly income on which my fam­i­ly and I depend.