Quitting Private Music Lessons: Why I Stopped Teaching
I began teaching bassoon lessons professionally in 2012 and taught full time from 2014-2021. I have been fortunate to work with many fantastic musicians, students, and directors. This post details my experiences as a private music teacher and what I plan to do next.
Before we dive in, the opinions in this post are my own and my experiences are specific to teaching on-campus bassoon lessons at Middle Schools & High Schools in Central Texas.
And last but not least, many thanks to all the wonderful students and colleagues I’ve worked with over the years!
I’ve broken this post down into three parts:
My Teaching Career in Numbers (from 2015 onward)
Taught 173 bassoon students ages 11-19
Worked with 15 Schools across 4 Districts
Taught 3,531+ hours during 7,200+ lessons
💖 What I Loved About Teaching Music
My Students
I was lucky to work with hundreds of brilliant, fun, and kind students. Of course, there were students that didn’t click with me or didn’t want to be in lessons, but generally, I had the best students and parents. Maybe it’s a bassoon thing, or maybe I really lucked out, but my students were absolutely fantastic and we had so much fun!
Fellow Teachers
Austin is packed with incredible music educators. I worked with inspiring, dedicated, and generous teachers who have motivated me to improve my skills and invest deeply in my students. I saw teachers transform their students’ lives with their vision and commitment to music education.
Academic Calendar - Holidays & Breaks
While working “hourly” meant that student holidays and breaks usually resulted in lower pay or missed lessons, it was still great to have breaks and holidays built into my schedule! I really enjoyed being on the academic schedule and having my summers free to teach at camps or take time off with family.
Freedom & Self-Direction
Self-employment allowed me to completely shape every aspect of my experience - from how many hours I worked, to where and when I worked, to how much I got paid, ultimately this career offered me a level of freedom that I found incredibly rewarding.
🚪 Why I Left Private Music Teaching
Burning Out - Quality vs. Quantity of students
Burnout is described as a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, with symptoms including feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job, feelings negative towards one’s career, or reduced professional productivity.”
To make a sufficient income from teaching primarily middle school students, I had to fit as many lessons as possible into my schedule. For most of my teaching career, I worked with 50-60 students per week. Despite being very organized (see my posts about organizing your studio), teaching that many students one-on-one was always a little overwhelming.
In pre-COVID times, I spent hours each day driving back and forth between schools (in Austin traffic, yikes!). My schedule consisted of driving or teaching from around 7:30 am to 5:30 pm Monday through Friday with the occasional, rare break.
Private Teachers Are Entrepreneurs
Most private lesson teachers in Texas operate as independent contractors. They are responsible for paying self-employment taxes (15.3% of gross income) and their own benefits (health insurance - around $300 per month until I got married, perks!). Most parents and band directors view private music teachers as hourly workers. They expect to pay only for the time spent teaching, with no compensation for the many hours of work spent preparing and running their business outside of lessons.
Time spent contacting parents, creating materials, writing bios, answering band directors’ questions, and working on my website are a few examples of the “unpaid work” I did as a private teacher.
To be clear, I really enjoy being an entrepreneur and I still love being self-employed! The “unpaid work” of improving my business didn’t bother me until I realized that I was spending a lot of time trying to be more effective, organized, and creative while some other teachers didn’t put in the same effort but still received the same rates.
Over time, I realized that as a private music teacher, there was no additional compensation for being more efficient, experienced, or innovative than other teachers. There is no promotion, no bonus, and very little (if any) recognition for the above-and-beyond, unseen work.
Issues with Private lesson Rates & price caps
As a private music teacher, there is no additional compensation for being more efficient, experienced, or innovative than another teacher.
Hypothetically, if I raised my rates to what I felt was appropriate based on my level of experience and the quality of my services, many schools and parents would complain or quit lessons. I actually think that is fine - that’s how free-market capitalism works! However, when band programs expect teachers to work with all of their students (not just the ones willing to pay your rate) and teach on campus at school, this becomes an issue.
I considered building a studio completely separate from the band programs, teaching out of my home, and charging a more substantial lesson rate. But, since most band programs encourage all of their students to study with the same teacher and promote that teacher exclusively, being a maverick is a challenging path.
The choice then comes down to quantity (of students to make enough money) versus quality (of lessons and of your work life).
In addition, teachers who under-charge keep hourly rates down for everyone by pricing out more experienced teachers who charge higher rates. I live in Austin, with the University of Texas nearby, so there is a constant supply of less experienced teachers willing to take very low pay just to get students.
Some band programs even enforce hard limits on the amounts teachers can charge. Either because it’s an administrative policy or because they view high lesson rates as creating a barrier to some students to take lessons. Many school districts set an arbitrary cap on lesson rates even when you are not directly contracted by the school.
Their goal is to enroll as many students as possible in lessons not to ensure a living wage to the teacher.
40 weeks, 25 hours at $55 per hour leaves us at $55,000 per year in gross income NOT $129,360.
Private Music Teacher Income
My starting rate in 2012 was around $40/hr and when I stopped teaching in 2021, I was charging $33 per half-hour lesson which included 10 reeds per student, so my base hourly rate for teaching was $55 per hour.
“High” hourly lesson rates do not translate to a “high” annual salary. There is no comparison to an hourly rate in a typical full-time job (40 hours per week, 49 weeks per year). If these numbers were equivalent, I would have been regularly making over $129,360 in annual gross income (income before taxes and deductions).
So why doesn’t the math add up? Here’s why:
No benefits or paid leave - Lack of benefits and paid time off or sick leave as a self-employed person. If you miss a lesson and can’t make it up, you don’t get paid. There is no employer to cover your time off for maternity, sickness, bereavement, or any other type of leave.
Not enough weeks of lessons- Student absences, school testing, band directors canceling lessons for rehearsals, students missing lessons over the summer due to vacation or camp, etc. result in canceled lessons. Even with a very strict attendance policy that was signed annually, realistically I got closer to teaching all of my students something like 32-36 weeks per year, not 49.
Not enough hours of teaching - Then in terms of hours, even with 50-60 students per week I was only able to fit in around 20-30 hours of teaching maximum. The amount of time spent driving to 8 different schools and the difficulty of lining up 8 different bell schedules, made teaching more than that impossible unless I was willing to teach on the weekends or evenings too. This is especially a problem for bassoon teachers, as there are probably only 2-5 students per school, so I couldn’t just work with 1-2 schools to have a full studio. In Texas, you might also encounter many parents who expect lessons to take place during band class, and are not willing to arrange lessons in the evenings.
So, 40 weeks, 25 hours at $55 per hour leaves us at $55,000 per year in gross income NOT $129,360. This sounds pretty good even though it’s much more than most private lesson teachers make on average. However, that doesn’t factor in taxes or overhead expenses.
Beyond Lesson Pay - Expenses, Taxes & Net Income
Overhead expenses really add up. Things like health care, self-employment taxes, extra gas, and car maintenance, payment processing fees, teaching supplies, etc. Take those items into account and a private teacher’s net income is likely an additional 18-33% (self-employment taxes alone are 15.3%) lower than their gross income - now we’re in the range of $36,850-$45,100 for someone teaching 50 30-minute lessons per week, 40 weeks out of the year, which is still a lot of lessons - 2,000 per year!
To make things more frustrating, private lesson teachers are often asked to help with extra classes or events without pay “to gain exposure” or “get more students”. It is ridiculous to espouse the virtues of music as a meaningful and essential activity for students and then refuse to adequately compensate the very people who have dedicated their careers to it.
Even when pay is offered, it is often inadequate considering the level of expertise and years of experience of most teachers - for example, $75 for a 5-8 hour day of judging a competition. At best that’s $15 per hour - at worst just barely above minimum wage.
I found that most repertoire I assigned in lessons that didn’t overlap with the band assignments was often ignored or pushed aside by students who were neither encouraged to follow my private lesson curriculum nor given enough time and space to actually work on it.
Bassoon Curriculum Frustrations
Despite many revisions and updates to my own lesson curriculum over the years, the goals and objectives of most band programs are the same year after year. As a private teacher, I felt stifled and frustrated by these expectations, which didn’t allow for much, if any, customization to meet individual student needs.
I frequently felt obligated to teach students fingerings and notes they weren’t ready for, in keys, time signatures, and tempos they couldn’t master, and in a way that did not encourage good habits, creativity, or sound fundamentals just to help them keep up.
When repertoire assigned in lessons didn’t overlap with band class assignments, it was often ignored. Students were generally neither encouraged to follow their private lesson curriculum nor given enough time to actually work on it.
💻 What I’m Doing Next
I began studying music at 10 years old and started playing the bassoon at age 12. I was fully dedicated to band in Middle School and High School, made Texas All-State three times, attended summer music camps at the University of Texas, Baylor University, and Interlochen, and received 2 degrees in music from Oberlin Conservatory and Florida State University. Deciding to stop teaching was incredibly difficult and took a few years and many sleepless nights.
When I considered how much I have enjoyed working on bluemoonbassoon.com over the years, I decided that Web Design & Front End Web Development would be a great combination of my organizational and analytical skills with plenty of opportunities for creativity and growth. In 2021 I took courses in graphic design, web design, and front-end web development, which I really enjoyed!
After taking some time off to reflect (and therapy, highly recommend), I decided to bring my teaching experience and web design knowledge together. So, I am currently focused on developing online educational content for bassoonists and private teachers. I am passionate about entrepreneurship, communication, and teaching so I will continue to explore ways to contribute meaningfully to the double reed and band communities. My hope is that by focusing on creating new resources, we can make bassoon more accessible and find ways to create more sustainable careers for private teachers.
In 2022, I launched a Directory for Bassoon Teachers & Reed Makers and I have a lot of exciting projects in the works including online courses, new books, merchandise, website templates, and more educational resources.
I believe that private lesson teaching can become a sustainable, vibrant career for those who choose it. With better communication and collaboration between teachers, band directors, college programs, and music parents we can forge a path that encourages innovation and efficiency and rewards expertise in this field.
