I make fairly decent money if you look at my lesson rates as an hourly wage for student contact time only. However, when I figure in all the other time that I spend on lesson related things, that hourly wage doesn't look quite as good anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm not living in poverty. But it is good to take a step back and evaluate every once in a while.
In the fall of 2009, I did a post titled "Teaching is More Than Just Student Contact Time", referring to and answering several questions that Monica K. Allen had given us at a seminar I attended. I'll be reflecting on those 2009 answers, and answering those questions again today taking into account my own goals for this year. This is also for the school year only. I teach fewer lessons (and therefore have less student contact time) during the summer, and I spend much more time with the other areas.
1. How many hours do you spend with students per week?
I'm still searching for that perfect number where I feel like I can pay my bills, but I'm not so drained that I can't do the other things related to my business or have a life outside of lessons. My plan for this year is this:
- Lessons start at 8:25 (the time that the first choir class of the day begins.) No more 7am or 1st hour study hall lessons.
- Lessons end at 5PM. I'm involved in more things in the evenings now. Plus, it's just nice to have some free time and not work constantly.
- Maximum of 5 lessons in a row. I have to schedule breaks to get up and move. I also need time to rest my brain. I'm not opposed to using these breaks for administrative tasks, but I can't keep going with more and more lessons. Since most of my lessons are half an hour, the 5 lesson maximum means I will get a break every 2.5 to 3.5 hours.
- I need at least 60 half hour lessons per week to pay the bills. Maximum I will accept for fall is 70. Weekly time with students will be between 30 and 35 hours
Running total= 30-35 hours per week.
2. How many hours do you spend on prep time per week?
- During the summer, I'm spending 2-4 hours a day on prep and administrative duties. (I'm also only teaching 20-25 lessons per week.) I'm hoping that all of this time will make my prep time shorter for the school year.
- Ideally, I'd like prep time to be able 30 minutes per day (2.5 hours total per week) that I use for warming up and review the lesson notes for the past week. There may also be a little more time involved if I need to find repertoire options for students. Although I like to have students choose their music (it helps them to own it and take more responsibility), I usually have a few books and specific titles in mind that I want to give them as options.
Running total= 32.5-37.5 hours per week.
3. How many hours do you spend on administrative duties per week?
- For my purposes, administrative duties include:
- Reconciling lessons in MTH including copy/paste of student lesson notes.
- Keeping the Lending Library and Repertoire Tracker functions on MTH up to date.
- Recording payments.
- Creating and sending invoices to families that owe me money.
- Keeping the website calendar up to date.
- Sending announcements by email, and posting them on the website.
- Replying to emails and phone messages.
- Contest/Festival/Exams: Registrations, hiring accompanists, certificates and ribbons.
- Sometimes this takes as much as an hour a day. I'm hoping that with online lesson sign-ups and payments that this will be shortened. My goal is 30 minutes or less per day, putting my weekly total at 2.5 hours.
Running total= 35 to 40 hours per week.
4. How many hours do you spend on marketing per week?
- Because I only do the New Student Orientation and Parent Open House at school, plus I counted responding to emails under administrative time, I really only do about 6 hours per year. Averaging that time over the whole school year is about 10 minutes per week.
Running total: 35 hours 10 minutes to 40 hours 10 minutes per week.
5. How many hours do you spend on professional development per week?
- A big chunk of my professional development comes in the form of conferences and conventions that happen in big blocks of time, rather than spread out into each week. Even if I counted 0 hours for professional development for the other weeks, I still need to consider the costs of conferences and conventions which can be into the thousands of dollars when you figure in registration, transportation, lodging, and the money that you won't earn while you are at the convention.
- With conference time averaged over the whole school year, plus time that I spend in my own reading and research, I'm going to say 1 hour per week (and I think that is a pretty low estimate.)
- I am going to count my tai chi and qigong classes (but not personal practice) as professional development time too since I'm using that a lot in my teaching now. Averaged over the school year, it's probably 4 hours per week, bringing my total for this section to 5 hours a week.
Running total: 40 hours 10 minutes to 45 hours 10 minutes per week.
I'm adding a question here. Because it was not one of the original questions, I'm not including the time in my running total, even though this does require a lot of time, It is however, something that definitely needs to be considered when setting my rates.
5a. How much time per week (on average) do you spend in volunteer and/or required duties so that your students have more education and performance opportunities?
- This year, in addition to the regular studio classes and recitals that are covered in their quarterly tuition, I am offering 3 free workshops, plus the opportunity to participate in NATS Student Adjudications, MMTA Theory Exams, MMTA Voice Exams, and MMTA Voice Contest (Preliminaries and Finals). Enrolling students in NATS and MMTA events means that I need to volunteer to help with those events. At the very least, I am there as a teaching supporting my students.
6. How many hours do you spend practicing each week?
- I'm going to answer with a realistic goal of how many hours I'd like to practice each week and put it at 2.5 hours. It's not as much as I would do if I had more time and energy, but it's better than nothing.
Running total: 42 hours 40 minutes to 47 hours 40 minutes per week.
7. How many total hours are you working each week?
- 42 hours 40 minutes to 47 hours 40 minutes per week (If I don't sit at home and do projects to make my studio run better.)
8. Do your tuition rates reflect this?
- As I said in the other post, I wish that what I make per hour of student contact time was what I made per hour of work time. This many hours at my rates would be awesome. I would feel comfortable charging more, but we try to keep the rates reasonable so that we can have more kids involved. We also try to stay pretty close to what the other schools in the district are charging. I think that how much you charge should reflect the things listed above, plus your education and experience, plus take into account the local economy.
- Since the other high schools in our area raised rates last year, I'm hoping that we will be making some adjustments (even if the adjustments are small) for this year.
- Math time:
- Yay! I'm doing much better than minimum wage earners.
- You don't need to know the rest of the math, but I do think that with my education and experience, I could bump the rates up a little and still be safely within what others in the cities are charging.
- I've always kept my non-school students at about the same price as my school students. (Tuition is set by the choir department, not me.) I could change what I am charging my non-school students, but it makes things a little more complicated in other areas. It's something to think about. I guess now I'll just wait and see what the school decides to charge for this year.
To wrap things up, go read "What I Do Has Value", a post I wrote in response to an article I read about how healers need to value themselves and their work and let their fees reflect that. Then leave some comments (here, there, or on the FB page) and tell me about what things you consider when setting your rates.
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