Skating Coaches Blog

Today a teenage student asked me to switch her lesson to a different day.

Her reason was that the day I gave her a lesson was not good because the session was short on her lesson day.

She then told me her family had to cut back on expenses in order to get by and she needed to do her part by giving up one day of practice time. She wanted me to put her lesson on a long public session so she would not have to return to the rink just for a lesson on the following day.

I told her she would not progress if she cut down her skating practice, but she explained that in order for her family to buy food, she had to do her part.

I called her parents later that day to discuss this and found out she had told me things she shouldn't have told me and she really had not been permission to reschedule her lesson at all.

She had also told me that her family could not afford to pay for a test we'd been working for and the test had to be put off for another month. I found this not to be true either.

How should I deal with this student who seems to wish so very much to be in control of her skating?

Concerned Skating Teacher in Chicago