Notes from a teacher’s diary
Students express hilarious, profound and honest thoughts during their piano lessons – and sometimes their personal sorrows – when they are one-on-one with a teacher they know well and trust.
Children say what comes into their heads. Sometimes what they say is wise. Sometimes it is moving; often funny. So I kept a notebook of the interesting ideas that students in the Union studio brought up during the years they taught as many as 46 children a week. I loved the opportunities I had to talk to my piano students and also my homebound students one by one. That’s not possible, teaching in a classroom!
One day L. came for her class after having four teeth pulled, with gauze pads between her teeth. During class there was bleeding, playing, bleeding, playing, bleeding… and I thought to myself: This must be what “The Show Must Go On!” resources!
I often ask students questions to make sure they understand a new concept, and here are some questions I asked, and their answers:
- What does a tied note mean? “Plus signals.”
- What is a waltz? “A slow dance; that’s what they used to do.”
- What is your own word for Maestoso? “Proud.” (Abstract sounds are not easy to define with words; this was good!)
A student started a piece called “Moccasin Dance” and I asked her if she knew what moccasins are. R.’s response: “Snakes.”
The same piece was also learned by other students, and M. answered when I asked her which piece she liked most in her book ‘Moccahesion Dance’.
One day, when J. used all five fingers for the first time in a song, he said, “That takes up my whole hand.”
S. had taken piano lessons for two and a half years and then her mother started taking lessons. After the mother’s first three lessons, I said to the girl, “I hear you are helping your mother.” She replied, “She makes me do that.” angry! She won’t do it right… she won’t hold her notes long enough… she won’t even play… she won’t play smoothly!’ (All this said with a big frown.)
A new young student worked hard and learned quickly. One afternoon after giving him a long list of things to do the next week, I said, “If you have too much to do, just leave something out.” He said, “If I have too much to do, I just practice for more than 30 minutes.” Words to make a teacher’s day!
Sometimes I ask students to keep track of how long they practice; I do this when I’m trying to show that they aren’t practicing enough. When a practice record is written for me, Monday will usually be in pencil, Tuesday in pen, Wednesday in crayon, etc., with an assortment of assigned minutes per day. One student, however, turned in a list of seven numbers, for the seven days, in a straight column, very neatly arranged, all exactly thirty minutes, all written with the same color pen. Really and truly?! Another student’s list included this message: “1:45 to 2:12.” Guess which of these reports I believed.
The funniest kid of all
In September 1982, a young boy, S., came in with a brand new assignment booklet. “I had to buy a new one because my old one was broken. My mother spilled coffee on it, my brother wrote car parts in it and my father writes down how many cows he has.”
The same boy, who usually came in wearing a baseball cap, one day lost his place on the page while playing a repeating theme, so he kept playing that role over and over again, and I let him continue for a while to see what would happen. Finally, without taking his eyes off the music and continuing to play, he said, “Mrs. Blakeslee, am I done yet?”
One of his new pieces required him to move both hands several times from the “middle C position” to the “G position” (five keys higher), and he said, “I will worn!”
One day, while I was playing a piece, he asked me, “When do you do your housework? You’re here all the time.”
There are more from S.:
- January 1981: “I wonder if I’m comfortable.”
- June 1981: “I’ll start there with the second paragraph.”
Once when Dave was delivering firewood to the studio, he tried to make the little guy laugh by “making fun” – as the West Virginians say – dancing around and making faces. S.’s response to me: “Is he difficult to live with?”
Nice, funny memories! It is now twenty years later and S. has a series of auto parts stores and is as sympathetic and friendly now as he was then.
To be continued…
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About the author: RD Blakeslee (1931 – 2024) built his wealth by investing only in what he can enjoy at the time of purchase and throughout his life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, such as stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee family
#Grandfather #Continuing #Chronicles #Elaine #Volume