Payment Issues
So I’m sure every teacher runs into payment problems with at least one student at some point. I have a student whose mother is working out of town because she is finishing up some school requirement for nursing. She’s a single mom and my student is living with grandma. In my lesson policy my students pay monthly at the beginning of the first full month of lessons. Previous to that they pay weekly to make sure we are a good fit. For most of my students this has worked out very well.
With this student it took an entire month of each week telling them we need to pay monthly (the grandmother’s English isn’t great). Once we got that worked out I felt it would be fine. Well this month she didn’t have the money and told me the mother would be giving it to her this week and she would pay me next week. I feel bad because this isn’t an issue with the student but rather the parent. I know their situation is difficult and I really don’t know how to handle this. As I generally collect the payment at the end of the lesson I had already provided the lesson.
I am thinking I will have to ask for it up front next week and leave if it isn’t there but this really pains me and I’m not sure if that is the right thing to do. Any ideas out there on how I should handle this?
