Peri Life
The peculiar realities of working as a visiting instrumental music teacher. Missing pupils, disappearing classrooms, questionable teaching spaces and the everyday challenges of teaching music in schools. Occasionally everything goes according to plan.
Nobody Trains You to Be a Peripatetic Teacher
Being good at your instrument doesn’t automatically prepare you for timetables, parents, invoicing, safeguarding and everything else involved in teaching music in schools. Nobody tells you quite how much there is to learn.
Teaching Contracts: The Boring Bit That Might Save You a Lot of Trouble
Missed lessons, unpaid invoices and awkward cancellations. A clear teaching agreement can prevent a surprising number of problems. Here’s what to include.
Why Should I Have to Justify My Teaching Rate?
£40 an hour sounds reasonable. But what about preparation, administration, travelling, school holidays and unpaid cancellations? An instrumental teacher’s hourly rate isn’t their hourly wage.
Your Instrumental Teachers Need To Know
Instrumental teachers occupy a slightly odd position in schools. We might teach at the same school every week for years. We might know some pupils from Year 7 right through to sixth form. We work with them individually, often for longer than almost any other teacher in the school. And yet we can be remarkably…
I’m Sorry, They’re On A School Trip
There are certain pieces of information that are useful to an instrumental teacher. Term dates are useful. Changes to the school day are useful. Knowing that Year 8 are spending Tuesday at a castle is particularly useful if you have six Year 8 pupils on a Tuesday. Unfortunately, this information doesn’t always make it as…
The Strange Places Schools Put Music Teachers
There is a particular moment when you arrive at a new school as a visiting music teacher. You’ve signed in. You’ve been given a lanyard. Someone from the music department says they’ll show you where you’re teaching. And you follow them down a corridor. Then another corridor. Through some double doors. Down some stairs. Past…