I’m a big believer in empower students to own their schedule. In my high school ensemble, I communicate almost exclusively with students – parents are not invited to join our Facebook discussion group, and I would be surprised if I emailed parents as a group more than five times in any given school year.
But this is often a big adjustment for high school students, who are used to parents managing (or micro-managing) their busy schedules. As such, they are definitely going to slip once or twice along the way to calendar mastery.
Here’s a line that students should have in their arsenal, but is somehow often lacking:
“I’m sorry, I’m unavailable at that time.”
The chances of students double-booking during a rehearsal are not small, and they increase if a parent has partial calendar control but the student is being empowered elsewhere. There’s a disconnect. But if a person learns to use that line, and if they are vigilant about learning to know their commitments and honor them, then they are well on their way towards being functional adults managing their own time.