Is this rude of DD’s violin teacher?

[Mrspeanuts]

DD (8) started violin lessons in school with her teacher who works for the local music service. She kindly sends regular updates on WhatsApp about progress and homework etc.

DD took her violin in to school on Wednesday this week (the day of her lesson) and the teacher wasn’t there. I sent an email via the music service asking why there was no lessons. I got what I thought was a rude response saying something along the lines of why would you think there was a lesson? Music tuition always starts back the second week in? I responded with ‘well I didn’t know that’ and the response was ‘well you do have my phone number, maybe should have checked first?’

she has since told me she won’t be posting any more updates on WhatsApp and any further correspondence from her will be via email through the music service.

have I upset her? I’m not sure if I’ve done anything wrong?

Oh, I can just imagine how you behave in restaurants . . .

I don't work for you so I'm more than happy to tell you, you're bloody rude. Sort it out.

Have you seen the message that OP sent? That was the first correspondence and set the tone.

'Hi music teacher, hope you enjoyed the summer break? DD said you wasn't at the school today, did I get the dates mixed up?

You were rude.

No not really it just allows people to think it’s ok to be rude to anyone they are paying. Quite frankly if you’re rude you should get it back. Make you think twice next time

You were rude. The other thing is that a parent teacher relationship is not that you are a paying customer and she the employee . Parents are supposed to show respect to teachers as someone with knowledge/ skill passing this on to their child hence calling them
Mrs or Mr X usually.

You were rude.

You have also not actually posted exactly what the teacher said at any point, just 'something like'... so we have NO idea if she was rude or not.

It is not rude to limit communication to just the official channels from now on though, she's simply withdrawing a favour she was doing for you that she is not obliged to do.

Obviously, that wouldn’t be a good message either, so don’t use that as an example.

Sooooo rude! Not surprised she was blunt back. She will have an extremely low opinion of you now!

Music teachers are like gold dust round here so they don’t have to put up with being spoken to rudely by paying customers.

As a private music teacher who has done a lot of peripatetic work in my time, I would have found your email terse to say the least. I would not have responded in the same way the teacher but can understand why she did. In any case, I don’t understand why you didn’t contact the school first.

this is a lot more eloquantly put than I managed

Xenophobia is only one step down from racism, I really don’t think this line of questioning makes anyone look good. I’d drop it if I were you.

I once taught a kid of a parent like you. Dealing with the parent made me so anxious, in the end I had to stop her child from attending my activity for the sake of my MH. Despite it being London, the activity has very few teachers so my waiting list was long and this child was easily replaced. That child however could not find another teacher to do this activity. Very sad for that child but I have enough respect for myself to not be spoken to like that. It sounds like she feels the same and she's done what's necessary to protect herself.

Violin teacher here, both employed by a music service and self employed.

1. The Music Service usually emails teaching dates out. They also have them on their website if one ever needs to check.
2. Your message was rude and accusatory.

It is up to you to organise your child and their lessons, teachers don't have the time to check each parent/student is prepared

No.

But the ! was the problem, OP.

Oh dear, this was very rude. I'm not surprised she responded in the way she did.

@UppityDIL , honestly it's not snobbishness, it's just a different understanding of standards. Music teacher here - for full disclosure, I do actually work in a state school - and I'm afraid there are vanishingly few local authority music teachers I would entrust my child's instrumental tuition to.

In this country it isn't an expectation that an instrumental teacher has a conservatoire training, as it is in some other countries. In fact, rather the opposite - the fairly untrained teacher that can muddle through teaching five instruments seems often to be more highly prized than the teacher with a high-level training in one instrument, or two instruments at most. This is because the local authority music service can deploy the five-instrument teacher more efficiently - by their standards - than they can deploy the better-trained teacher of just one instrument. There is no real 'official' standard of training for these peripatetic teachers, and unless you ask what training they've had - and know how to interpret the answer - you won't get told.

The list of 'good teacher' attributes you give includes things that are valuable to have, but it doesn't include the most important thing - a secure technique. If they don't have that - and most of them don't - they may be good at imparting confidence, giving a basic introduction to music, etc., but their pupils' options will always be limited in the long run. If any of these pupils are gifted and later decide they want to train properly, it is often by then too late for them to catch up with their peers who have had the proper teaching from an earlier stage. This isn't very fair on the child - they won't have known this, and often their parents won't have understood it either.

This isn't to say that all private-school teachers are highly-trained and can give a child the training they need - they may not be wonderful. I'm also not saying every local authority music teacher is bad - I know this isn't true (I did used to know a very highly trained teacher who had ended up teaching for a local authority music service through a combination of circumstances - and that teacher's pupils got an incomparably higher level of teaching for the same price). But generally speaking, in local authority music services, I find there is too much of a culture of prioritising the wrong attributes when appointing instrumental teachers. This isn't snobbishness - it's just unfortunately true.

To the OP - I would apologise. It would have come across as rude. She could have responded more politely, but if she is actually a good teacher, you need her more than she needs you!

Depends on whether the paying customers are being polite and courteous in the first place.

Part of the problem with the OP’s message is that she said to us here that she asked a question- why there wasn’t a lesson. But in fact she didn’t ask a question at all -as we can see from what she wrote.

Yep, rude.

Also to add, I don't interpret the questions about the OP's background to xenophobia/racism. I did wonder myself whether she came from elsewhere. If she has written an email that is 'normal' in style for her home country, and implies no impoliteness, merely directness, I would cut her some slack if I were dealing with her myself.
If she has lived all her life in this country, she should be aware that in this context the exclamation mark/style of email is rude.
THis isn't to do with being 'British enough', it's merely an acknowledgement of differing cultural norms.

Definitely, the misunderstanding could have been avoided however that's not the issue. The issue is how rude the OP was in her communication with the teacher.

Exactly this, however automatically jumping to racism is much too tempting for some people.

or an accusation^ of racism rather.

It’s not particular to state instrumental teachers, private ones are equally bad. You can sometimes get a fluke good one though.

Instrumental teachers in U.K. schools the don’t need any serious training, anyone can set themselves up as one with a bit of musical education.

There’s a whole world more to music teaching than boosting confidence.