Abby and Eason,
The other thing I did during (mostly) summers in high school was give private lessons. This was something that I learned about in high school, but in college it became a pretty significant part of my job plan.
A private lesson is when a parent hires you, through the gymnastics center, to teach just their child a lesson. The parent pays a premium price to the gym and the teacher makes more money than they would teaching a regular class.
All of the gymnastics instructors loved private lessons because of the increased pay. You typically were selected to teach a private lesson because you either had a strong connection to a child and parent or you had figured out how to help a child learn a skill that other instructors could not teach that child.
The potential of private lessons pushed instructors to do their best to make children successful so that parents would want to hire you to teach them privately. Most gyms, at least back then, put caps on how many hours you can teach private lessons so that the instructors still teach classes too. Having great instructors helps the gym attract new students to group instruction.
Anyway, I loved private lessons for a different reason. (I liked the money also, though). What I loved most was getting to see a child’s progress. I loved the pride they felt when they accomplished something that they felt was impossible at one time. In private lessons, kids learned faster because they got to do more repetitions than they would waiting their turn in a group lesson.
But, I also loved the investigation. There is always a reason that you can’t do something. Figuring out that reason gives you the ability to attack the problem. If I wanted to be successful helping the child, I had to be successful figuring out what was preventing them from doing the skill.
Sometimes, though, the thing that was preventing them from doing a skill was mental, not physical. In those cases, I had to teach the child not only how to do the skill but also how to believe they could do the skill. Teaching them to believe in themselves was much more difficult than just fixing a technique problem that was preventing them from doing a skill.
The other thing you have to carefully manage in a private lesson setting is expectations. Parents and children invest in private lessons because they have expectations. Most of the time there is a reason the child needs to learn something and most likely there is a timeline associated with it. It is easy for frustration to grow if expectations are high, so you learn that communication is very important.
So, what did I learn:
- Investigation. In life, we have to slow down. We have to look at problems and be willing to study them and figure out what needs to be done to overcome obstacles.
- The power of thinking. Our minds can be contributors to our success or can hold us back from success. It is important that we be real with what we are thinking and feeling so that we prepare ourselves mentally for the task we need to do.
- Expectations. Every job will have expectations. People are investing in you financially and know what they desire out of that investment. Sometimes there are gaps between what is expected and what is achieved. This is just part of life, not a failure. But, communication is critical. Ongoing communication, even before a problem, gives people time to alter their expectation if that is needed.
That was my last high school job. But, I am going to write you one more letter about high school jobs before I move onto my college jobs.
What I want you to see in this job, though, is I took on more expectations. The pay was higher but so were the expectations. Success was more black and white. Did the child learn a skill in the timeline they needed to learn it in?
Don’t be afraid of expectations that a boss might put on you. You don’t have to be perfect. Just communicate and try your very best every single day.
I love you guys!
Mom