Rescheduling lessons, a nuisance or a dealbreaker?

I think we get canceled/moved a lot more than the rest of the people at our studio, because our lessons are later, we're am/am, and mostly because they know we're OK with it. It's annoying, but I don't really mind - our coach always does it for good reasons (even if it's just "I'm not feeling good") ... if it happened often because of double-booking, that would get pretty annoying.

Do they not use some kind of system, like a hourly/daily planner? Or are they just inconsistant? Or playing favorites (not "double booking" but replacing people)?
 
They use both a computerized and paper system. Double booking happens, generally because of misreading the schedule and not realizing a 7:00 lesson is not going to be done before a 7:30 lesson starts. A lot of it also seems to be poor time management with outside of studio stuff, resulting in arriving late and then all the lessons get pushed back. Some of it is rearranging to try to fit more lessons in (ie, so and so can only come at 7 pm, but there's already someone booked for 7 pm, so they try to move the already booked lesson). I understand that they want to book as many lessons as possible, but where is there the trade off between becoming "the unreliable teacher that always moves my lesson start time" and being as efficiently booked as possible?
 
In my competitive days I had a lot of privates and rescheduling was happening very infrequently. Also, usually I got a notice that next week (or so) a lesson could be rescheduled due to some reason which was usually specified (like judging in other town etc). But, there were not much of us dancers so I presume it was easier to organize. And it was very cheap compared to prices today, so I wasn't bothered with that at all

Dancing as hobby dancer now, I still take a private from time to time by several pros and it is still ok. Several short-term reschedules without sound reason would be surely a deal breaker for me. I mean, if the teacher can't organize his schedule, how can he organize my dancing?
 
Rescheduling doesn't bother me too much, I've done that before myself as a student, usually because of an illness, but once because I was so overwhelmed by a personal matter that all I could think of is to go home and hide. I kinda keep a mental score of cancelled/rescheduled lessons with my teacher, he has done it about the same number of times as me. I think it gives us some kind of mental freedom.

What I hate more is a no-show to a lesson. In the past I had two instructors who were notoriously bad with that. Well, in their defense, the no-shows were always re-scheduled lessons (either by them or by me), and their excuse was always that they forgot to put me on the new time slot in their calendars. The are multiple reasons why I left both teachers, but this issue was on the top of the list.

Let him know politely that it makes your life more difficult when the schedule changes too much, maybe he just doesn't realize that.
 
Reading through this thread, I agree with the general trend...rescheduling once in a while, ideally with some warning, is fine. Rescheduling as a routine course is poor time management and is a deal breaker.

And at the risk of (not really) outing at least one pro I have run across in my day...repeatedly having "scheduling issues" is a childish, albeit effective, way to convince a student you don't really want that it is time for said student to move on to a new teacher.
 
Kind of like making your SO miserable so they leave you and you don't have to be the bad guy.

(didn't work for me. I had to be the bad guy.)
 
GGinrhinestones said:
Reading through this thread, I agree with the general trend...rescheduling once in a while, ideally with some warning, is fine. Rescheduling as a routine course is poor time management and is a deal breaker.

And at the risk of (not really) outing at least one pro I have run across in my day...repeatedly having "scheduling issues" is a childish, albeit effective, way to convince a student you don't really want that it is time for said student to move on to a new teacher.
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I've heard of that happening also: Making it very difficult for a difficult student to schedule lessons (or even raising their rates), in hopes that the student drops out, because the teacher wants to avoid any drama associated with firing a student. Not quite sure what I think about that.
 
Thank god, never had such an experience! Thank god, only problem that has ever arisen had to do with being human and not God!
 
TwoRightFeet said:
I've heard of that happening also: Making it very difficult for a difficult student to schedule lessons (or even raising their rates), in hopes that the student drops out, because the teacher wants to avoid any drama associated with firing a student. Not quite sure what I think about that.
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Well, on group classes I was attending there were sometimes "difficult" people, so I understand that a teacher can require higher reward for more difficult work, or trying avoiding that person somehow

There was another thing I noticed - "difficult" people somehow tended to go to classes with "difficult" teachers for some reason, so actually whole environment was "difficult"
 
vit said:
There was another thing I noticed - "difficult" people somehow tended to go to classes with "difficult" teachers for some reason, so actually whole environment was "difficult"
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I confirm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Funny isnt'it?
 
Yeah

This is off-topic but - attending classes of most teachers in the area (ballroom, salsa, zouk, wcs, kizomba ...), my conclusion is that people tend to stay with a teacher that is similar to them in various aspects. Other than "difficult" people tend to go to "difficult" teachers, younger people usually go to younger teachers and older people to older teachers and so on.

One of my "difficult" teachers even made a comment to her friend (who later told me that) "I don't understand why I'm always getting some difficult students, while <name of another, very good and nice teacher> always gets nice people and good dancers"
 
If it was a constant thing with me I'd first have to tell them to get their stuff together and if that didn't happen then it would be "hasta la vista"

Fortunatley though the studio uses a computer scheduling system. The whole day is broken into 45 minute increments so one can't schedule a lesson at 1:45; it would have to be at 1:15 or 2:00.

I am scheduled for a standing time every week. There was a season where they kept having to bump me because another couple could only come in during my time so I finally told them to move my standing time.

I did feel sorry for some of the students as we only had two male instructors for a while and I'd see it where the students came in for their scheduled time but not sure which male was going to be teaching them that day.
 
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