Q: I don't understand your fee schedule. Why wouldn't you just charge a 30-minute lesson at half the rate of a 60-minute lesson?
A: Although the lesson hour (or half-hour) is the most important time spent in the music development of the student, the lesson only represents a tiny fraction of the work a teacher spends on a student each week. As an instructor, I spend enormous amounts of time researching repertoire (we had a secret-agent-themed recital this fall, and I literally spent dozens of hours researching that style of music written in the instrumentation I needed for all ages, abilities, and interest levels), attending professional development workshops and conferences, planning performances and special events, driving all over Timbuktu to find the exact supplies I need, planning lessons to help remediate each student's weaknesses (we all have weaknesses!), finding appropriate supplemental material for individual or group study (we are doing a unit on Baroque music this year, culminating in a Baroque recital in the fall, which requires playlists of music, worksheets on composers, and pdf examples of fashion, notable historic characters, and events from the era).