Letting kids lead the way

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being yourself, Jane Butler, joy, piano lessons, teacher

Last night one of my piano students, my very youngest and most wiggly, played his piano piece entirely with his nose! He did not get tired of how hard it was, apparently finding it preferable to struggling through the difficult fingering I was looking for. His nose is tiny, too! He is a little guy with a little nose, but he persevered. I allowed it because it was the most focus I’d gotten out of him the entire lesson, and he was hitting the right keys. He tends to dash around the keyboard playing whatever he’s learned, showing off and enjoying the thrill of knowing what to do with all those eighty-eight keys. Granted, it is pretty basic stuff since he’s only had about five lessons so far, but I see the joy in his actions and know he is having a great time. So once he was done playing Mississippi Hot Dog with his nose, I proposed we try it again, this time with the right hand.

He conceded, but at the end of that ordeal he laid his head down across middle C and told me he was really tired.

I bet!

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Singing children

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being yourself, Jane Butler, piano lessons, singers

Recently I have noticed some of my piano students singing, just bursting out quite unself-consciously with all the words to a song. I sit back and watch, delighted at the joy of youth.

One little girl sang every word of a piece she came upon on her way to the one we were about to practice, while I sat back loving the moment. I couldn’t help but feel a little wistful at the idea that this little girl is so secure and happy that she can sing out her joy.

A six-year old’s first impression

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being yourself, express feelings, Jane Butler, piano lessons, relationship, teacher, trust

The mother of one of my piano students came to me last week and asked if we might start her six-year old boy on lessons on a trial basis. We’d do a fifteen-minute lesson and see how he took to it. After all, he’d been asking for lessons and copying his sister for weeks now.

So, after his sister’s lesson I sat down with him at the piano and we started. All we do at the first lesson is touch every key and name it, spell some words on the keys like DAD and CAB, and then I usually do some silly quizzes about which hand is which and which finger is which. It gives us a chance to get to know one another and to introduce the piano, and it is easy.

In just fifteen minutes, I can decide whether the student is ready and able to take lessons. For instance, this little boy stayed focused and engaged with the process the whole time. He didn’t get frustrated, and he did know which hand was which. It’s hard to teach kids piano if they are unsure which is the left hand or if they keep looking back at their mom to see if they are getting the right answers. But he was willing to trust in the process and allowed a fifteen-minute relationship with me all for the sake of learning piano. They say first impressions are real so I am counting on it, and I feel this guy is ready.

The crazy thing about this experience is what he did next because it is a reminder that kids are just as capable as adults of sizing up the situation. His first impression is valid, too. After we were finished and I told him he’d done a good job, he ran right over to his mother. I got a perfect look at his back as he spoke to her.  In a clear and loud voice, as if I couldn’t hear him he told her, “I want piano lessons.”

Kids are great. They know how they feel. And there is such a short line between how they feel and what they say without a lot of smoke and distraction in-between, that if the adults in their lives are good stewards of that we can trust them to be honest with us for a long time.

Just south of F# is a whole new way of seeing things

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control, fear, Jane Butler, piano lessons, teacher

One of last week’s piano lessons was unusual in that light bulbs went off in MY head. My little friend did not like the idea that I cover her hands with a book as she tried to play a piece, pushing my book away and pulling it up to look under it. She did everything she could to thwart my efforts to encourage playing while reading the music rather than looking back and forth between music and keys. It got to the point where I was ready to give up because it was getting a little physical for a piano lesson, and she said outright it was too hard. She really believed it. It was just something she COULD NOT do.

So in my usual way we wrote that in the lesson book,”This is too hard to do” with an arrow pointing towards the name and page number of the piece. She agreed wholeheartedly this was indeed too hard to do.

I told her that I did not see it as too hard for her. She does hard stuff all the time, and this was just one of those things. I am confident you can do this, I told her. She did not like this plan at all.  This is a student that is cautious. She checks everything before she begins. I urge her on, saying, let’s go, no more stalling, do it. She wants to readjust her seat, crack her knuckles, give heavy sighs and mention the weather, coming up with all manner of distraction rather than try the difficult task.

Ho hum. Get on with it. Eventually it occurred to me that fear was driving her actions or should I say, inaction, and I decided to break it down to its component parts to demystify the project. I think she feared making mistakes and hitting the wrong keys if she couldn’t look down and be sure of what she was doing.

I showed her how she could feel, with her fingers alone, where on the keyboard there are three black notes in a row. We practiced both looking at three notes in a row and looking away and feeling three black notes in a row. I showed her how just south of one of the black notes, F#, is the F we’d be needing for the song in question. She was delighted to see that she could do it. So we tempted fate and I had her wave her hands in the air and swing them around behind her, close her eyes, look here and look there, and then close her eyes again and then place her hands on the F. With no problem at all, there it was, under her fingers where she needed it to be, without any looking at all. F!

Next thing you know, playing the song with a book over her hands made not a difference. Now that she knew where F was without looking, and how the other notes related to those, because we of course walked through a conversation about that, she was golden. All the fear seem to drift away.

I was not that clear on how my little friend felt about all this until her father walked in at the end of the lesson. She called out for him to be awed by her ability to close her eyes and miraculously locate F on the keyboard and she grandly demonstrated this new ability. He had no idea what this meant or why it mattered but he applauded her success and celebrated in her great achievement.

Phew! I told him, even if he doesn’t understand, he should know for sure that he got his money’s worth today.

Twinkle twinkle little star

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Jane Butler, piano, piano lessons, teacher

All my piano students are excited right now because we are planning a concert. I do not want to call it a recital because that sounds too much like a judged event with pressure and pain, just like all those piano recitals of my youth. Someone from the guild was always there and you had to dress fancy and curtsey and otherwise behave abnormally.

Those childhood recitals really turned me off to the whole idea of playing music for other people because there was an inherent threat in them. You might get it wrong and disappoint or embarrass someone, like your parents, or your teacher.

My concert will be as free of stress as possible. We will put names in a hat at the start of the program, including parents and siblings and anyone who wants to play. So I know already there is one mother-daughter team working on Heart and Soul. Former students of mine, siblings of my present kids, will be there and if it is anything like last time, they will fight the younger kids for their chance to show what they can do. We draw names from the hat and if you want to play something when your name comes up you can and if you do not you may pass. Dads got in on it last time and plunked out a Mary Had a Little Lamb to everyone’s delight.

The idea is to celebrate music and that it can  bring us together.I want my living room, full of kids and parents, to be a happy place where we showcase our ability to connect through music.

Piano lessons for kids is a gift of connection

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Jane Butler, piano, piano lessons, teacher

Some of my piano students come in the door, sit down and start playing away, anxious to show me what they can do. And since duets are a real mainstay of piano lessons these days frequently we jump right into those. All the books have duets even from the very first one finger song, and that’s because there is a thrill and a sense of accomplishment in creating music together. Parents are delighted when on the very first lesson they hear their child make beautiful music with the new teacher! And these are not gratuitous. The teacher’s part is background only, and modest, designed to highlight the students latest skill. We all feel accomplished!

At the very first lesson, and on the first song in the books that I use, the student plays one-finger ascending up the keyboard one note at a time. That’s it. Even little brothers and sisters who come along to wait can do it, and everyone is charmed because the teacher’s part under it is a delightful little ditty. This might not sound like much but learning to play piano means learning to control the fingers so they only hit one key at a time and this piece challenges kids to do that. Piano lessons are so much better than they used to be!

My students are excited to show me what they can do because the sense of success comes quickly and we celebrate that every time. Giving kids the chance to learn to play piano is such a gift of connection with others not only for the duets, but for the charming music they offer us all every time they play.

Why kids are our best friends

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being yourself, control, fear, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, listening, piano, piano lessons, teacher, words

My little piano girl heard me say she should play the G scale with two hands and she immediately said, “I can only do one hand.”
“That’s funny”, I tell her, “because you were doing two hands just fine last week, so let’s just check, try it with two hands.”
“I can only do one hand,” she tells me.
“I heard”, I tell her, “but let’s just check and try it with two hands.” So she tries it with two hands and of course it is more than just fine. “Didn’t you just say you could only play it with one hand? And didn’t you just play it with two hands?”
“Yeeeees”, she admits.
When we open the lesson book and look at the latest assignment she says, “Bleck.”
“Bleck?” I ask.
“Yeah”, she says, “bleck.”
To make a long story short she of course played that one just fine too and I reminded her of her proclamation ahead of time, and that it didn’t really fit.
On the next page I see her check herself before she says anything. I ask, “Would you like to say something really negative and then we can cross it out after you play the piece real well, or would you like to say something positive.”
“I don’t want to say anything negative.”
I just wish there was someone following me around reminding me every time I attempt to sabotage myself or sell myself short, because it is surely as frequently as this little girl. Dang.

Some days kids teach themselves

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being yourself, change, goals, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, listening, piano, piano lessons, play, teacher

Today one of my piano students, my most physically active student, dove in headfirst. I feel like it is important to follow the lead of a student like this, one who is tough to engage at times because he wants to stand on the bench, or play too many keys at once, and not necessarily do what I have in mind. Lots of days I cannot get him to join me in the pursuit of learning piano for more than a few minutes at a time, me regularly saying, “let’s slow it all down and try it again”. So when I see him assign himself the task of labeling all the notes of a new piece, I sit back and wait to be needed.

Today he did just that. He started writing the names of each note below them in the Ice Cream Boogie just because that’s what he wanted to do. He had just said to me when I opened the book to this new piece, “I could never play that.” He knows me well enough to realize it was time to remind me to write that down in his assignment book. So after “Ice Cream Boogie p. 18”, I wrote, “I could never play that.” We both know that it is a challenge I am presenting when I repeat back his own words as if they are gospel, us also both knowing full well they will soon be eaten. And that’s what happened. I feel that because he was in the mood to name the notes and was ready to see them in a new way, that he was ready to learn this piece mostly without me. And that’s what he did. Once he’d named all the notes, and believe me that took a while, I even wondered if it was a good use of our time, he just sat and played the thing. We smiled and laughed at how silly we can be to claim such things as “I could never play that”. Then I crossed all that out to remind us how quickly and easily we can change our minds.

Loving life, just as I hoped for my boy

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being yourself, dreams coming true, exchange student, express feelings, friends, inspire, joy, listening, outlet for emotions, piano lessons, play, playing guitar, words, writing

I just watched a video of my son, Andrew, posted with his buddy, Theo from Minnesota, who is also an exchange student, and they are singing their hearts out specifically to their parents from across the globe. For me there is something about hearing singing, especially lone voices, that makes me very happy, and to have it be my own boy, well, that is fantastic.

When I was young I always said my kids would have to play piano, or sing, or dance, or somehow have an outlet for expressing themselves besides just talking. I worried about whether anyone would be listening to their talk, because no one was in my childhood, even though I knew it would be me who potentially might not be listening. So to me, it seems wildly important that kids have some kind of art because unless you are a writer words are inadequate to express the inevitable frustrations of life. I insisted my kids take piano lessons for at least five years because I know that that’s enough to really learn how to play. Being Andrew, after the piano lessons he moved on to learning drums and then guitar, and then singing and athletics, and eventually to flying away to live with people in another world.

Seeing Andrew so far from home, locating a guitar for himself, and a buddy to sing with, and serenading us across the internet could not be sweeter. In so many ways it tells me that he is fine and doing well and loving life just as I hoped for him.

Falling asleep while reading to kids

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being yourself, control, falling asleep reading to kids, goals, high school English class, inspire, joy, listening, piano, piano lessons, teacher, teaching, trust, words

The high school English teacher I work with said to me today, “Let’s go where the learners are”, meaning we should follow the kids in the classroom that show their interest in learning, and then try to teach them whatever it is they are able to receive. This creates a culture in the classroom, of learning.

I know this might sound complicated but really I think it is what we do as parents all the time. When my toddler brings me a book, I see that it is time to read. He is showing me that he is ready to learn about reading even if it is only to hear the story. Do it enough times and more things, things we are not even counting on, are being learned as well. Things like our ability to be close, or how stories are composed, or that Dr. Seuss is an artist and an author, or that sometimes parents fall asleep reading books, or that sentences can be constructed lots of different ways. Frequently my piano students are eager to show me what they have learned over the intervening week….ripe to learn more. “Show me,” I say, and I let them lead the learning right off the bat.

There is little way for us to know for sure what our kids learn when we attempt to teach them, so why worry about it. Let’s just go where the learners are, and offer what we have with the hope they will benefit.
All of this creates a culture of learning and of caring about kids, teaching our children to value and embrace our authority.