Piano teacher

I have always wanted my children to love music and learn to play an instrument. Piano makes the most sense, since I can teach them myself. In the past couple of years we have begun our journey of piano lessons. My mom taught beginning piano lessons for many years. When I was going through her music to find lesson books for Ellen and Jack, I found a notebook she kept with recital programs and a picture of her students and herself at the recital. What most amazed me was that every single youth in my ward who has some musical knowledge appears at some point in a picture at a piano recital with my mother. They were eight-, nine-, and ten-year-olds in the pictures, and they are now college students or finishing up high school.

Mom taught piano right up until she was too sick to do it anymore. Almost as soon as we moved here, friends were asking me if I was planning to teach piano. When I didn't have a piano of my own, I went to my students' houses. My kids played in the back yard with siblings while I taught. Two of those families have since moved away, and we miss them! Now that I have my own piano, teaching Ellen and Jack (and soon, Rose and Elijah) is my number one priority, but I have several other students as well.

I held a recital at the end of May, a first-time experience for all but one of my students. It was short and sweet, and I am really proud of how much these kids have worked and learned. I took a picture and kept a recital program to slide into the next empty page protector in my mom's notebook.

I love everything about this picture. The extreme concentration, the long, skinny fingers, the fact that Jack is walking music. If you sing it to him, he'll remember it... I just had a little epiphany. I may be singing a lot more as the summer goes on. Jack despises practicing and is a little resentful of the fact that I am requiring him to develop his musical talent. But he has lots of good role models and understands that there are things we excel at because we like to do them, and there are things we excel at because we work hard at them. He is a natural, and I am stubborn, so we will keep at it. Even Jack gets excited about being able to actually play a song after he has put in the hard work practicing.