Preparing for Maternity Leave
Preparing for maternity leave can be stressful for anyone, regardless of what their job is! Take a look at some of the considerations private music teachers may want to keep in mind as they approach these special times in their studio!
What Things Can You Do Ahead of Time
Share Your News!
Take a moment to share your exciting news! A private music studio creates such a unique community. Week after week we work with our students and their parents, we celebrate their achievements, we are proud of them for their hard work and cheer them on through all the challenges music presents to us. This is in addition to all the stages of life, when we might see students starting school, graduating between school to school, trying out new sports and learning new skills… We get to see a person grow up and develop! It’s amazing.
Don’t be afraid that your studio won’t be eager to celebrate with you, too! My husband and I have been so touched by the excitement and joy we’ve felt from my students and their families. My own extended family openly wondered if some students would leave the studio when the news broke, and I’d been worried about announcing our pregnancy and causing my students or their parents to stress about how this would impact future lessons. In my experience, these concerns were not valid. So take a moment, take heart and celebrate with your students!
Set a Maternity Leave Schedule
Have an idea for how long you will be away from teaching ready for share with students. This does not need to be concrete when you first share your news, but do set a timeline for when they can expect further details and have a summary to share with students! Feel free to take some time to sit down and really envision what your ideal maternity leave would be. Be specific. I would even say be greedy. As teachers it can sometimes be difficult to set boundaries How long would you like to be home with your baby? What will your family’s needs be after delivery? I’ve found my studio families to be incredibly understanding and encouraging about taking the time I need. One of my own mentors pointed out early on in the pregnancy how lucky we are to work with families who understand the needs in this time. Make sure you think through your needs and go from there!
Start Saving for Emergency Fund
Downside of our job? We are self employed and as a result, we are used to anticipating any time off, health care and more on our own and saving accordingly. However, most of us don’t typically take off quite as much time as we might need for maternity leave, so this will take more preparation than we are used to. While I’m far from a financial expert, do start to plan as soon as possible so you can continue to pay yourself through maternity leave. Some of this will depend on how you pay yourself out of your studio income and what your personal finance needs are, but it is something you MUST take care of as soon as possible. Set up a plan to cover whatever your typical month’s income would be and do what you can to reduce business expenses, increase your income and build up a reserve to prepare for the time you will be out of commission.
Set Long-Term Goals for Studio
What will your studio look like after maternity leave? Any major life change is a good time to re-evaluate what you want your studio to look like. I’ve been through this before at times like college graduation, when I bought a house and when I got married. You’ll face your own situations and I suspect adding a child to your family is one for you, too. Be specific.
As for myself, I love teaching private lessons and working on an individual basis. The improvement for each unique student is important for me and the best part of my work. My long term goals for the studio are largely the same as they have been, continuing to give my students educational experiences and supporting my family at the same time. I see that happening through weekly lessons, workshops with guest teachers or on special topics, field trips to our local orchestra and several solo and group performance opportunities a year. What needs to happen to make that a sustainable reality? What gets you and your students the most return on your time investment? These are worthwhile questions to ask and start figuring out early on, so you can make decisions in your own time and clearly communicate them with your studio before maternity leave begins. You will need to consider what is a realistic expectation for the demands on your time as you add a new member to your family as well.
Seek Out Advice From Other Music Teachers
This was invaluable to me as I started thinking ahead to maternity leave! I was incredibly lucky to have several people to check in with about maternity leave and it made a world of difference to me as I prepared for this time in my studio. Having a community of like-minded teachers is already something I value and recommend, but it was truly invaluable to me in the nine months leading up to my maternity leave. I really appreciated hearing others’ experiences of sharing the news with their students, how they planned their time away and what happened in the studio as a result. Make sure you find ways to be in community with others so you can learn from them and then be available to help them when you have the opportunity, too!
Communicating About Maternity Leave
Communication is huge to the success of a studio. I do want to caution you because there is always going to be a student, parent or family member who can’t be bothered to visit your website, read the email you sent out or doesn’t have reliable phone service – You cannot do anything about those families and they are responsible for their own choices. But I do believe that if you train your students and studio families by being consistent in your own efforts and using the same platforms to share information and reminders, you will be successful in working with your studio families. One quote I keep in mind for communication is from Dave Hollis, who often says “People only get upset when they’re surprised.” So do your due diligence, decide what methods you can keep up with for informing your studio and then do that consistently. When your studio knows they can count on you and where to find the information, they will not be surprised and appreciate your reliability!
Here are the things you must communicate with your students:
Start Date and End Date
Students need to know when you will be ending lessons and when you will be in contact about starting lessons back up. They should know how they will hear from you, have a timeline for when that will be and what will be included in that . For example, my students know I will be in touch with them via email at the beginning of August with details on our first week of lessons, a copy of the schedule preference form they are to fill out and return to me, and details on what our studio will look like moving forward for the rest of the year. This can be a great time to introduce any new policies as well and give them their first heads up on any changes as a result of coming back from maternity leave, like schedule needs to accommodate breastfeeding, child care and more. I am also in the process of considering best practices as we hold lessons in the world of COVID-19. These are just some of the considerations you may want to consider as you plan your own maternity leave and return to teaching.
Degree of Involvement While Away
Let your students know how accessible you will be during maternity leave. I am still struggling with finding the balance between asking for pictures and videos of students practicing over our break and being realistic about my time, so I suspect it may be an area you struggle with, too. Give yourself the grace to soak up those early days without worrying about checking your email. Make it a goal to only peek in your email inbox once a week if that feels good and balanced to you. If your phone has a screen timer for apps like Instagram, set a limit and adhere to it! This is easier said than done, but I am mindful of the work needed to find this balance for myself and my family this summer. And as always, communicate these expectations with your students and their families. Do we want to help them out with a question over the summer? Of course! Do we want to see students playing music outside with their families? Naturally. But be open and frank with your families about the expected response time to prevent any possible hurt feelings! Remember, people only get upset when they’re surprised.
Platforms to Share It On
As I mentioned above, you dictate what platforms you are comfortable managing and then stick to it! Consistency is more important than being present on each, in my opinion. Keep in mind that you can also start small and gradually add more platforms as you settle on your process for sharing information. One piece of information can also be formatted and shared in multiple ways as well. For my maternity leave, I used my newsletter to get all the information on my maternity leave in one place for students and their families to view. The more you get in the habit of communicating in multiple areas, the quicker and easier it will be, so you may find you have more bandwidth to expand in time! Start small and work your way up. For my own studio, I have a website, Facebook page, Instagram and email. I made sure to share our announcement through each listing online, send out updates and talk openly about our plans as the time got closer. The last five weeks of lessons I also made a point of reminding students and their families in lessons that we were winding down and asked them to brainstorm any possible questions they could foresee. Between all these contact points, my students and their families were aware of the coming change to our schedule!
Now that we are officially on maternity leave, I made sure to have our maternity leave front and center on each of the following areas and in the following ways:
o Studio Website – I have a banner across the top of my page outlining my maternity leave dates and provided a link to my newsletter with all the nitty gritty details on my leave and return to teaching later this year!
o Studio Facebook Page – I have a post pinned to the top of my Facebook page including my maternity leave dates and provided the link to my studio newsletter.
o Studio Instagram – Leading up to our leave, I used Instagram’s visual component to share ultrasounds and calendar reminders with students and their families! As soon as I have some baby pictures to share I’ll be posting a couple of those for students and their families, too. Instagram has the added benefit of easily posting to Facebook, which can help you feel like there’s less to juggle while posting in as many locations as possible.
o Studio Email through Automatic Response – While I made sure to email an electronic copy of the newsletter to students a month before leave started, I have set up an automatic response with both my newsletter with all the details and a copy of their summer resources.
I hope this gives you some ideas for how to best prepare your studio for your time away while reassuring them of your long term commitment to their music education, too!
Ideas for Student Engagement During Leave
We’re all music teachers here, we want our students to learn and engage in music! So one of my biggest goals was to give my students some tools to continue their music education as much as possible while I was away. Given the COVID-19 outbreak in spring of 2020, some of the methods I originally had in mind ended up not being possible, but I am happy to have offered my students two main ways they could continue to learn more about music.
Advertise Other Music Opportunities
This is the least labor intensive for us and can vary depending on the time of year that you are on maternity leave. Since I knew I would be away for the majority of summer 2020, I had already started to compile a list of local summer camps, Suzuki Institutes and workshops for students prior to COVID-19. While the outbreak did cancel any in person opportunities, I did make a point to share any virtual options with my students and I hope some of them are able to fit it into their summer’s routines.
Maternity Leave Workbook
Beginning in my third month of pregnancy, I started putting together the outline of a workbook for my students to cover most of the time I would be away from teaching. It was my goal to provide students with some music knowledge we might not get to cover as thoroughly as I would like during the course of our regular lessons. So I sat down and wrote out ten weeks’ worth of practice and listening challenges, then found some resources on music history and theory for my students. Some of the activities are designed to give information and others are designed to give students experience writing out notation, playing scales and more. I hope to share a version of this packet with other teachers for their own use later in the summer of 2020, drop your email here if you’d like to know when this is available.
Final Thoughts on Maternity Leave
One of the most valuable aspects of teaching privately is our ability to set our own parameters and make our own judgement calls. This means we can look at our individual student and make the decisions we believe will serve them best. It means we can look at ourselves and our families to make boundaries specific to our needs. This is a huge responsibility, but with a little bit of planning and a lot of self reflection I believe any teacher can design their ideal maternity leave! Enjoy this special time and remember that you aren’t alone. If you have any additional questions or tips, I’d love to hear them in the comments below or you can share them with me @shawstrings on Facebook or Instagram!
