How to Fire a Student. Hint: DON’T

Do you have folks in your studio or business that you’re feeling way down deep in your nuggets need to get the heck out? It’s been a rough year, and those folks who fit with the old you just don’t anymore. You are wondering how to fire a student. Hint: Don’t.

They just feel like #EnergyVampires. (Someone in SECO uses this term, and I likeitalot, and I can’t remember who, so if it was you, please stand up and take your rightful place in SECO hashtag history.)

These students and clients are the ones that don’t understand your boundaries, no matter how many times you’ve communicated them. OR, they are clients who the old them and the old you (yeah, the pre-COVID ones) got on like salt and lime, but now, you’re more like candycanes and soy sauce.

They’re the ones who a little knot gets in your tummy when you think about them arriving, or having their face pop onto Zoom. You feel tired and angsty around them. You feel exhausted when thinking about them.

And because you are nice, they show up, and the session goes okay, you shove your feelings of angstiness way down deep into your small intestine where it gives you insomnia and bloating.

These are clients that find ourselves googling “how to fire a student” over.

Here’s the trouble with that, though.

We don’t do it.

Something inside of us knows that being fired SUCKS. We know that “firing” comes from a place of defensiveness, hurt, and irritation. And because we are nice or codependent or whatever, we don’t do it.

So we sit and stew and experience death by a thousand paper cuts dealing with them. What to do? What to do?

This is where the importance of your network comes in.

Instead of firing a student, you can REGIFT them. After all! ‘TIS THE SEASON!

Help those students toward a better fit of a teacher. And if you don’t know any other teachers, and what they are about, you can’t do that.

LITTLE DID YOU KNOW that this would turn into a blog on networking, eh?

Instead of firing a student, visualize SERVING them.

Take the time to make a grand network, and do them the favor of helping them find a new home studio.

This does two things for you:

1. Combats the whole codependent niceness thing. You ARE being nice by helping them. SEE? The reframe is GLORIOUS!
2. Makes you a BeastyBoss(tm!) and well connected and generous, which is what you are trying to be in the first place.
3. Get’s you out of having to work with the #EnergyVampire

(Okay, that’s three. Leave me be.)

My encouragement to us is to be bold with our networking for both selfless AND selfish reasons.

Serve them by ushering them from your studio to another studio, or your business to another business, and let the new teacher/provider deal with it. (I am so mean.)
Chances are, the new teacher will see it as a boon, and your client will be served, and you will be at peace, and the space you just made will invite the just-right fit next time.

And instead of worrying about how to fire a student, you can rest easy knowing you honored you both by giving them just what they needed.

Multiply Your Talents,

P.S.
To go with #EnergyVampire, there are the #EnergyFairyGodmother and #EnergyGenie

These are the people you wanna hang out with because they make you happy and grant wishes and energy.

P.P.S. Please do not REGIFT students as a way to harm your fellow teachers. If the client is really that horrid, simply suggest sports like rugby or curling.

P.P.P.S Did you see this blog I wrote on How to Make it All Work a few months ago? You may enjoy it! It was fun to write.