Running a Piano Studio During Flu Season

I am just now finally feeling better after being sick for about 3 weeks straight! I had a sinus infection, strep throat AND coxsackievirus. Flu season can often be crazy in my home – with five kids, we seem to pass around a plethora of illnesses and it can be frustrating for a family! Similarly, when you are a piano teacher (especially if you teach lessons in your home, or if you have a large studio) it can be stressful on you and on your business when students are either sick and missing lessons, or if they are coming to lessons sick and spreading the illness around your studio and/or home.

With flu season going on, and with the added paranoia of the coronavirus, I have seen so many piano teachers discussing online how they handle illness in their studio. I would like to share my thoughts regarding the matter, including some business strategies I like to use to protect myself and my income, and some helpful ideas on how to keep your piano studio healthy.

Choose & State Your Policies Regarding Illness

As we are each different and run different studios, it is important to sit down and decide what YOU are comfortable with in your studio as far as illness goes. Are you ok with students coming to lessons with certain symptoms (runny noses, coughing, etc.) and are you not ok with others (fever, recent vomiting, etc.)? Consider yourself and your family (particularly if you teach in your home) and decide what works for you. 

I think it is important to actually write down your sickness policy in your studio policy, especially if you feel strongly about it.

Since I teach in my home and have five young children, I like to state in my policy that “Students should not come to lessons if they are sick as a courtesy to me and my family. I will not teach students if they have any kind of infectious virus or other disease or symptoms, such as flu, stomach flu, strep throat, fever, etc. If they have had any of these illnesses or types of symptoms within at least 24 hours please do not send them to their lesson.” I would also probably increase that to at least 48 hour with the stomach flu….more on that later.

To Make-Up, Or Not To Make-Up?

If you don’t offer make-up lessons, won’t you lose money?? Many teachers are concerned about students missing lessons and feeling like they aren’t getting their money’s worth out of tuition, or about losing the money they would have received had they come to lessons. If you are not using a flat-rate tuition model, I would HIGHLY recommend you start. I have found Wendy Stevens’ articles about this topic SO helpful and definitely recommend giving them a read! Charging by the lesson is unpredictable, it allows clients to abuse your policies more easily and you end up losing more money. 

For the past few years I have used a no make-up policy and I will never go back!  I currently have a very small studio so this is not quite as essential to me right now, but when you have many students and a packed schedule this will save you SO much time and stress.

For each semester of piano lessons I count up how many weeks there are then decide how many lessons students will receive based on holidays, school breaks, and how many lessons they pay for each month at my flat rate. Tuition is the same amount every month, and students know how many lessons they are to receive. I like to schedule “free” group classes monthly or twice per semester, and I use these as “make-up lessons” in case of student illness or other absence. All students usually come to the classes anyway, but they add value to the lessons and take care of any missed lessons students may have so I don’t need to worry about students feeling like they’re not getting their money’s worth.

Utilizing Technology

In the event of sickness there is so much you can do to still give them a lesson via technology. (I love technology! I think we should utilize it more often in our teaching.) Here are some ideas:

Teach Online Lessons

If students are feeling ok but have contagious symptoms (or maybe you teach from your home and you have sick kids, but you feel fine to teach!), you could teach them over Skype or FaceTime during their regularly-scheduled lesson time. While maybe not ideal, it is a lot better than no lesson at all. If you haven’t taught lessons over the internet before, there is a little bit of a learning curve, and you will need to make sure that both you and your student have a good internet connection and a phone, tablet or other device that can make a video call. You should also make sure to have a copy of their music, if possible, and make sure that they either have a tripod to hold up their device so you can see their hands clearly, or have a parent there to help hold the phone.

Use a Video Messaging App

Another great option is to use a video messaging app such as Marco Polo. I love this app! Not only is it great for keeping in touch with friends and family, I have also used this with great success in my studio. Basically, it is an app that allows you to leave video messages back and forth with a person or a group of people. When I was sick recently and had to cancel lessons, I asked my students to use Marco Polo to send me a video of them playing their pieces. Even though I was sick and didn’t feel like teaching, I didn’t want their progress to slow and wanted them to have an opportunity to play for me and pass off some pieces. This option works well if you want them to be able to video you at their leisure and you don’t necessarily need to be there in real-time. (Marco Polo would also work GREAT for mid-week check-ins with students!) 

Use a Practice App

If you use a practice app in your studio, this can also come in handy in the event of student or teacher illness. When my students sent me videos via Marco Polo, I was able then to go into the app that we use (Better Practice App <– click to get my referral code if you want to try it out and save, I would also save if you end up using it long-term) and type in my feedback and give them new assignments. If you use an app like this you can also check in on your students’ practicing throughout the week, send messages back and forth, and so on.

What If I Get Sick?

What happens if YOU get sick? Do you credit lessons? Teach make-up lessons? If you don’t have a plan and policy in place it can be very stressful to get sick (or if your children get sick, especially if you teach from home!) As for me, I can basically count on our family getting sick at some point during flu season. This is why I typically build about two extra weeks into my teaching calendar each semester. I use those weeks as time off in the event that I or my family gets sick and I am unable to teach. And because I use a flat-rate tuition, getting sick does not mean losing income. Plan ahead, put good policies into place and your business will continue to run smoothly even during flu season!

Confronting Germs in Your Studio

There has been much discussion online about germs in the piano studio. Many teachers implement a strict hand-washing policy for all students who come into their studio. This is so smart and studies have shown that hand-washing with soap and water works far better than hand sanitizer as far as stopping the spread of germs. Do you wipe your piano keys down between students? If I know there are germs on my piano I will occasionally use a disinfecting wipe on the keys, but I am not sure if this is the best for the piano keys! I have heard great things about Norwex cloths for this purpose.

My Stomach Flu Soapbox

I can’t write an article about illness without mentioning the stomach flu – being a mom of five has forced me to learn a lot about the stomach flu and I think I’ll take this opportunity to get up on my soapbox a little bit! Haha. As a parent, there’s nothing quite like the stomach flu to cause fear and dread and ruin your week (or longer if you have several children who pass it around a few days apart….). Similarly, a nasty virus like this can wreak havoc on a piano studio, and let’s be honest, it is just not fun – and it’s REALLY easy to pass around. That is why I specifically mention the stomach flu in my piano teaching policy, particularly because I teach from home and I have several young children, some of which seem to pick up EVERY virus they come in contact with. We have dealt with so many bouts of this that I have learned a thing or two over the years.

Did you know that, depending on which particular virus is causing the stomach flu (common ones are norovirus and rotavirus), you are still contagious for at least 3 DAYS AFTER symptoms have STOPPED? That means that if your student was throwing up on Monday, they are probably still contagious on Thursday (if not longer). Did you also know that regular disinfecting wipes that you buy at the grocery store do NOT kill the stomach flu virus? Neither do most hand sanitizers. These types of germs can live on surfaces in your home and studio for WEEKS. The best way to get rid of them is with bleach. There are also a few products that do claim to kill norovirus that I will link to below (I keep them stocked in my home to use when the need arises in my family or piano studio).

These wipes actually do kill norovirus! I love them. I wipe down surfaces in my studio during flu season, particularly if I have been sick or know of others who have been sick.

This hand sanitizer kills norovirus – I like to keep one in my diaper bag and in my car.

Regular Lysol products do not claim to kill stomach flu viruses, but this one does! I keep it on hand and use it when we get a stomach bug.

In Conclusion

Having plans and policies in place for both student and teacher illness in your studio will save you lots of stress and will help keep your business running smoothly, even during flu season!

What things do YOU do in your piano studio to help keep illness at bay? How do you handle missed lessons due to sickness?

Happy teaching! (And stay healthy!!)

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