Why a new make-up lesson policy?

During the last few years, we have had the same make-up lesson policy: For all of our private lesson students, we allowed one make-up lesson in a 3 month time period and we asked to be notified 24 hours before. Even though this was our official policy, we have always been trying to go beyond this and reschedule as many lessons as possible so we didn’t have to limit you to only one rescheduled class every 3 months.
During this past year, this system has become more and more challenging to maintain. When we started this policy, we had about 120 students and it wasn’t too difficult to find available times within our schedule for requested make-up lessons.
We currently have almost 400 students and the schedules for many of our teachers are completely full. Even though we want to reschedule lessons for you, we oftentimes can’t find available times in the teachers schedule, which results in longer waiting periods until something opens up. Once we realized that our make-up lesson policy will not work for much longer, we started thinking about a possible solution for this problem.
When we started thinking about how we can solve this, we set our goals high. We wanted to come up with a system that offers unlimited make-up lessons and doesn’t require an advanced notice for any missed lessons. We understand that schedules often change last minute and when you or your child start to feel sick on the day of your lesson, it’s just not possible to give a 24 hour notice.
Additionally to offering unlimited make-up lessons with no notice required, we wanted to find a solution where you have access to all available times online, which would allow you to book your make-up lesson on your phone or computer without needing to send an email or talk to a staff member on the phone or at school.
Creating something like this for almost 400 students and about 20 teachers was not an easy task…... but we figured it out!
Welcome to our new unlimited make-up lesson system!

How does it work?

From now on you are able to schedule unlimited make-up lessons without needing to give us an advance notice when you are missing a lesson. You will be able to schedule your make-up lessons in our online sign-up system from your phone or computer using our MMS Student Portal.
In order to create enough lesson openings for all make-up lesson requests, lessons will be taught in very small group classes divided by instrument, age and skill level. All make up classes are kept small so that each student has one-on-one time with our instructor and also gets the opportunity to play music with other students. Our teachers utilize group activities to reinforce current student curriculum, allow students a new perspective in musical learning and an opportunity to share and learn with other musicians.
Additionally we created what we call “Explorer Classes”. Those classes are designed for you to try something new instead of scheduling a make-up class for the instrument you are currently enrolled in.
We offer explorer classes for songwriting, DJing, music production, different instruments and our new blues jam!
Benefits of our new group make-up classes: 
  • Unlimited make-up lessons
  • No notice required when missing a regular weekly class
  • Weekdays and weekends available for make-up lessons
  • Convenient online scheduling
  • Ability to reschedule your make-up lesson online
  • Specific lesson plans created for group make-up lessons with worksheets and handouts
  • Make-up lesson credits never expire (while enrolled)
  • Option to use your make-up lesson credit to try a new instrument or an Explorer Class (Songwriting, DJ/Music Production or our new Blues Jam!)
  • Learning with new friends in the same age, which makes the lessons more fun!
  • Longer lesson times (45min group class = 30min private lesson) **except for students 6 and younger
We created a detailed FAQ list in case you have any questions about our new make-up lesson policy.