I recently had a friend ask me why I loved teaching piano.  I’m not sure anyone had ever asked me that before, so I spent quite some time thinking about it before I responded.  I decided to share my thoughts here. 

First, I suppose I love others enjoying the piano.  The piano has been a huge part of my life since I was small, so sharing that love with others is exciting.  In addition, I love teaching.  I definitely enjoy private teaching more than classroom teaching for lots of reasons.  (Mainly there are much fewer discipline problems.)  I enjoy sitting down with a student, one-on-one, working through music.

I think my deep desire to teach private piano came in college.  Until that point, I was teaching a few neighborhood kids during high school, but I really didn’t know what I was doing.  I could share musical knowledge, but had no understanding of how people learn differently, how to introduce new concepts, and how to encourage and motivate students to practice.

When I started college, though, my piano professor inspired me.  She was not only my advisor who helped me choose classes each semester, but she was my piano teacher for weekly lessons, as well as my professor for the numerous Piano Pedagogy classes I took.  By the time I finished college, I graduated with not only a Music Education Degree, but also a Piano Pedagogy certificate.  The requirements for that certificate helped develop my love for teaching piano too.  Simply put, the program taught us how to teach piano.

I’ll never forget that first fall starting piano lessons with my professor.  She was always carrying loads of music, books, and files to and from her office.  She worked quite a bit, but seemed to thrive on it.  She also practiced every chance she could.  In her office were two baby grand pianos and often while walking down the hall I would hear her playing.

During piano lessons, my professor really came alive.  She was animated, excited, and truly wanted to share her love.  She would often take notes on a yellow legal pad of paper while I played; my notebook from piano in college is stuffed full of yellow sheets.  (This must be where I obtained my love of legal pads; I usually filled an entire one for each program I planned at ECA.)  I loved her handwriting, the way she dressed, the way she was organized, and most of all, the way she played.  It was truly amazing, and as the years went by in college, studying from her, I eventually wanted to be just like her.  Really.  She was a role model in so many ways and I dreamed of having my own studio with two baby grands right next to each other so I could properly demonstrate to my students.

She taught me how to take a new piece of music and tear it apart – not only notes, rhythms, dynamics, & tempo – all of the surface stuff – but also how to dig even deeper to understand what the composer intended based on the not so obvious clues.  The period the music was written, the style of writing the composer used, his/her personal life information that may have influenced the piece, etc.  I absolutely LOVED starting a new piece and diving in to discover all of this.  We spent months and months working on pieces to prepare for performance and she taught me how to take a piece literally from beginning to end.  THIS is why I really love private piano teaching.  I LOVE helping a student do this.

I’m not always great at it anymore when I’m trying to give James his bottle while teaching or chasing after him in the living room while students are playing.  Lately he’s contained in the pack-n-play because he won’t leave the piano or the students alone.  He wants to play too, wants to play with the pedals, or their feet, or stand and pound on the bench while they play.  Hence, baby prison in the pack-n-play.  My concentration as a teacher is definitely less with James around and some days I feel like I’m not able to give my students all that I want to.

One other point I should make is my own practice time.  When I go days and days without playing (or weeks and weeks), I tend to lose sight of this love of teaching.  Then I sit down with a piece I’m currently working on or one I have studied in the past and it all comes flooding back.  I’m trying to build practice time into my day again, teaching James that alone time in the pack-n-play is fun while mama gets to play and take a break.

I still have a dream of having a piano “room” in our house one day with two baby grand pianos next to each other (or maybe just one), students coming and going, and days where I practice consistently and am able to share that love with others.

March 2009 Spring Piano Recital