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.

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.

Teaching kids to look to themselves for the answers

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being yourself, control, fear, goals, inspire, joy, listening, piano, play, teacher, trusting yourself

One of my piano students yesterday was playing a piece we’d just started and she struggled to remember just how it goes. She debated over keys to push and haltingly made choices and eventually produced the music. Along the way she could have done what some of my students do, and that is look at me to see if they are doing it right, or for a clue as to whether they have their hands on the right notes. Some children look to me, but I do not give them much. I put on a poker face or look away because it has to come from them. I want them to dig deep and find what they have inside to trust in themselves.

It seems some kids are prepared to trust their own opinion, their own intuition, their own ideas about what to do next, and there are other kids who need to look outside themselves to see what to do. Maybe it’s something I barely recall from a psychology class an eon ago: the external versus the internal foci of attention. Do you need validation from outside, or can you validate yourself? Parents surely have a lot to do with this.

So I see it clear as a bell that some children do not ever look to me to help them figure out how the song goes that they’ve worked on at home and now much show. They trust they can find it in their mind somewhere and I applaud them when they do it. I point out that they have wisely trusted themselves and how proud I am of them for doing that.

I love seeing children who’ve been taught to trust themselves because eventually in life, if you are healthy, you will stand on your own two feet, and to me, there’s no time like right now to get started on that.

But I can teach kids things and so I am

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, goals, inspire, joy, mother, piano, piano lessons

Next week I will welcome a new piano student. Her mother wants lessons for her while her daughter is regularly singing in the house. She is apparently just like her cousins who are very musical and this has been noticed and valued and action is being taken to address it. I love it when parents read their kids’ actions and make executive decisions like, ‘you need to learn an instrument’. I love her already too because she is seven, a great age for learning piano because she will be able to read already, and that means she understands the concept of a symbol (such as a letter of the alphabet, or in this case a note on a staff) representing another idea. Learning to read music is learning a foreign language, and kids who can read already know the basis of language. She’s a great student for me too because she’s never had piano lessons before and that means I get to enjoy the thrill of introducing her to the 88 keys and showing her how she will become the master of them.

Teaching kids to play piano makes me happy because it means I can show them how to accomplish a long term goal in tiny, fun, collaborative steps over time. It is a low pressure experience with me because I want to delight in the playing of duets, for me and for my student, even as early as the second lesson, that show the potential at hand rather than forcing goals that seem to skip over the joy of playing music.

I told the grandmother of one of my students this morning that I am doing this by the seat of my pants. I don’t have a teaching background or a music background beyond having taken lessons myself. But I can teach kids things and so I am.

Loving my boy from afar while he is still right here

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being yourself, express feelings, inspire, joy, listening, love, mother, parents, piano, relationship, spirited child

It’s gotten to the point where every time I see my son in the house I get nostalgic about him leaving home for the upcoming year. I go to him and hug him and say I am storing up such moments. And I’m trying to get him to store up some moments himself. Yesterday I told him to try to capture the spirit in the house as it was just then, to smell the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies wafting up our noses, to hear his sister’s sweet piano playing lilting through the house, to note his father working in the yard and me hugging him, dripping wet, just recently out of the pool. Hang on to this moment I told him, and call it forth in a few months when you are far from home wondering if you’ve done the right thing, or just thinking longingly of us, which I know you will surely do. Hold this moment dear and appreciate it now, so it can be in your head to be enjoyed again later, again, if need be. Know that your loving family is still in place, wishing you well, loving you from afar.

This kiddo has been inspiring me as a parent for as long as we’ve had him in our lives. When he was in preschool he prompted me to explain my love for him and to tell him, then as well, that I hold him in my heart all the time. To see my post about this go to February 11, 2012 My Spirited Child.

Balance dictates we play some too

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being yourself, change, dreams coming true, express feelings, friends, inspire, isolation, joy, mother, parents, piano, play, teenager

Every time we go to the beach house my father left me in charge of when he died, I feel the pull of the ocean a half mile away. I have driven the three hours south at times and not ever walked over to see the big elephant in the room, the blue-green sea, just down the block. I’ve gone and done work on the house, getting lost in chores and in the satisfaction of accomplishments. But it isn’t enough to go there and never see the ocean. It isn’t enough to go there either, and not play the piano I had shipped down from my parent’s house once they were gone. It was nearly left behind but I claimed it last minute, and hired fly-by-night movers to drag it a few hundred miles south to our house at the beach.

It’s not enough to only work. The balance required in life, the balance required to be happy, dictates that I must at least go see the ocean every time I am within proximity. It dictates I sit at the piano and play at least one piece of music every day I am there. It dictates I not take for granted the joys staring at me, begging me to notice and feel them. It dictates that I consciously appreciate the great good fortune of such a house at all, one that can be shared and enjoyed in so many ways.

Growing up in isolation, with not-particularly social parents who regularly taught us the value of a hard day’s work, it has alluded me at times how folks appreciate the little joys of life. I am trying to be conscious of my opportunities. Trying to be conscious of my dwindling days to play with my children, teenagers and beyond now. So today I made a list of the great good fun we will have together, and with friends, in just a few weeks, at the house near the sea, just because I want to be sure I do.

A kiddo trying hard

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being yourself, inspire, joy, piano

My little boy piano player who has so much energy my main instruction to him is to try slowing it down a bit, put his head down today and worked like crazy. He was so intent on getting the piece we were working on correct that he tried it over and over again, unsatisfied to move on until he mastered what we’d covered together. He knew he could do it, but each time he hit a wrong note or used an incorrect finger, he assigned himself the task of trying it again. I could not have asked for a better work ethic. He held himself to a standard I could not have expected in that he wanted to do it.

The kiddo is a handful of energy but when he gets it in his mind that he wants to accomplish something, he does.

This is what I think of as helping rammy kids ‘organize their energy’ and I love it when it happens.