Ugh.
Incidentally, the worst part is when it's my private students who forget. Because clearly you won't need the instrument that you are paying someone to tutor you individually on. Sigh.
But I digress.
I have been trying to come up with a solution to this problem since day one of my teaching career. I've written letters home, sent home form notes, sent home handwritten notes, sent emails, made phone calls, written student names on the board, included it as a comment in report cards, had face-to-face conversations with parents... You name it, I've probably tried it. I even had kids copying out of the dictionary (regular and the Harvard Dictionary of Music). Nothing seems to truly work.
So I am going to try something I just stumbled across. The No Instrument Binder. This is less a means of prevention (which I am still looking for) and more a means of tracking. This was originally intended as a No Homework Binder, and the idea came from the blog "Teach - Bake - Love." The original idea was to have each student write their name and the reason why they forgot their homework, and then put their homework in the binder. This helps with organization, tracking student work, keeping up with grades, etc. The only catch is that as a music teacher, I really don't assign "homework" per se.
So what I am going to try is to have kids write their name and the date in the binder, along with the reason why their instrument is not in class. I think to start out I will allow students to write "I was in a rush." as their reason, but I suspect that once it becomes obvious how many of those lame excuses I get I will require a little more thought to go into it. Hopefully this works better than my patented "Mr. Earley is disappointed and frustrated by your lack of responsibility" look that I give. We'll see. Check back for developments, I plan to create this over Spring Break and give it a limited run to the end of the school year.
