Last year some of you may remember that I reviewed a piece by Wendy Stevens called Tangy Tango and royally bombed as a teacher in preparing my student to play it well. Ever since then, I’ve been determined to try again with a another student to see if I could pass my own self-imposed good-teacher-or-bad-teacher test. Well, I’m happy to say that I finally succeeded! The occasion presented itself when I needed to select a piece of repertoire for Makayla and me to play as a duet for our local associations Marshmallows and Music festival. We needed something fun, but easy to learn.

When I presented it to her, I was quick to inform her that this was an experiment because so far I hadn’t had a student learn and play it successfully (I confess, I tried it one other time between Caitlyn and her…). This was sufficient enough motivation to propel her to a week of intense practice and religious counting so that she was sure to master the crazy tango rhythms. And she did! We had a ton of fun playing together, and can now sleep better at night knowing I’m not such a bad teacher after all.