Piano Teacher for Life
I have been teaching piano lessons for pretty much my whole life. I went to a small private school, and as a high school student, I made a poster to distribute asking if anyone wanted piano lessons. I had a handful of families respond. I think I charged $5 a lesson. Here is an old photo at my very first student recital. As you can see, classroom management has never been my gift. Luckily, weekly lessons are one on one, and that is where I do my better work.
My desire to teach comes mostly from having great teachers who were incredible role models. Here were my childhood teachers, Lucille Suelflow and Helen Wambeke, my musical cheerleaders.
Following highschool, I went to college at University of MN Morris where I majored in Elementary Education and minored in music. During college, I taught students in the campus practice rooms and then after college, I had a teaching space in the side room off of the town laundromat. Super weird, but at the time, I thought it was great. I had snack vending machines for breaks and could do laundry between lessons. Some of my favorite students were the adults wish special needs.
We moved to Minneapolis in 2006 and I answered an add in the Star Tribune for a piano teacher at a studio called All 12 Notes. I started in a little teeny tiny practice room with 2 students and expanded to about 25 students over the next few years. I loved working in a shared space with other teachers. Unfortunately, that studio closed. I wanted to keep my students, so I started traveling to their houses each week for lessons. It was stressful at first keeping to a schedule, timing things right to get from Minneapolis to St Paul, especially during snow on bad weather days. In 2012 we moved to St Paul and then the driving became much smoother.
I have the rare opportunity of spending 30 minutes a week one on one with the same student for sometimes 5-10 years of their life. Going to their homes, I meet their parents, grandparents, neighbors, siblings, and pets. I get a glimpse into their lives and routines. I often observe families going through life transitions as well as just the daily grind of homework, meal prep, sports, and extra curricular activities. I get to see the slow and steady growth in both the student’s musical ability as well as their personal growth in other areas.
I love the challenge of teaching to the individual needs of each student. It’s exciting to figure out what makes a student light up and what types of sounds they are drawn to. I have to discover how they learn best and what motivates them. One young student this week told me “I’ve always dreamed of playing Bach” and another student only wants to play songs from Star Wars. I’ve been teaching piano for over 20 years and I’m still learning new things.
I love that I get to be a caring, interested adult in the life of my students.
Today I overheard my two youngest kids as we were driving in the car. They were talking to each other about their favorite teachers. My youngest said, “I really liked my 1st grade teacher best because I knew she cared about me.” That made me smile. That resonated with my teacher heart. Letting kids know that an adult in their life other than their parent truly cares for them and is cheering them on – that is priceless.
