Category Archives: Personal

Are You On Pinterest?

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Pinterest is an intriguing concept. Here’s their official description, “Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.”

In addition to other ideas, I thought it sounded like a neat way to collect and share teaching and studio-related inspirations. I’ve just barely started using my pinboard, but I’m excited to [hopefully!] put it to more use in the future. If you’re on Pinterest, let me know!

Quotes from the First Week Back to Lessons

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Or…Things You Love to Hear Your Students Say. :-) Here’s a snippet of what I’ve heard this week:

“I think I’ve gotten better over the summer. I’m trying to make sure I practice one and half to two hours a day.” ~16 year old boy

“I think this year is going to be really fun!” ~11 year old boy

“I kind of had trouble with the rhythm, so let’s clap it first.” ~5 year old girl

“I’m really excited! This is a lot more creative than my other piano lessons.” ~15 year old girl

“[She learned] 25 new songs on her piano over the summer.” ~about a 7 year old girl

“Oh yeah, we’re coming back for that!” ~9 year old girl whose family is moving and continuing lessons via Skype (in reference to the big studio Christmas recital when we were discussing upcoming events)

Wow, I love my students! (And this is why I think it’s good to take time off; we are all so refreshed and ready for another year of working hard together to become better musicians!)

And this Year’s Practice Incentive Theme Is…

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An Italian Intrigue: Musical Adventures in Heart, Mind, and Strength

Last month I had the amazing experience of spending three weeks in Italy! I decided to do double duty and use the trip to do reconnaissance work for this year’s theme. It was a ton of fun and now I’m excited to take my students along with me for a journey through the country! Along the way they’ll be racking up Complication Coins, trying to identify the hideout of the Mystery Musician, traveling covertly at times to get double earnings, completing Italian language lessons, and  learning to play the piano beautifully, excellently, and naturally.


I made the official announcement at the September Surprise! last Thursday. To start off the event I gave each student a strip of paper with several measures from a familiar tune. They had to try to find all the other students who had excerpts from the same tune. Once they all found each other they laid out the measures in order and then did something to get my attention. After all the groups were formed each one took a turn humming, whistling, or otherwise vocalizing their tune for the rest of us and then telling us what the name of it was.


After a round of students played their prepared “surprise” selections, I had the groups from the introductory activity re-form and spend time working together to come up with a musical way of playing their pieces. Every member of the group had to be involved in some musical capacity in the performance. I had a box of rhythm instruments and a xylophone available for them to use in addition to the piano. This group did a lovely job with their rendition of “Ode to Joy.”


“Jesus Loves Me” was the perfect selection for this group that included quite a few young and/or beginning students. I was really impressed at how well they all kept the beat together on their instruments!

Whistling, playing piano, and a few rhythm instruments made “Spring” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons sound great!


This group ended up being all girls. They had the tune “Greensleeves” and did a beautiful job playing and singing it together – harmony and all!

The evening was a great reunion after our month off and we’re all super excited about the year ahead!

September Surprise is Tonight!

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All year long we anticipate and prepare for this occasion. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of overkill, but the September Surprise! is definitely a highlight in our studio. Since I take off the whole month of August for brainstorming and planning our theme, selecting new repertoire, and traveling (more of that than the others this year!), I haven’t seen any of my students for over a month. The September Surprise! is my clever way of conning them into continuing to practice hard even when they’re not taking regular lessons fun way of welcoming everyone back and gearing up for an exciting new year of hard work!

We will be playing interactive games, listening to each other play their surprise selections, and, of course, announcing the theme for the year! I’m quite proud of myself for not slipping up and letting out anything about this year’s theme, so it will be a complete surprise to all the students. :-) And tomorrow, I will let you all in on it too! If you’ve got a theme for this year, I’d love to hear about it. Maybe we can even compile a list of themes/practice incentives that teachers are doing all around the world. Wouldn’t that be fun?!

Summer Musings

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I didn’t really mean to let the blog go so quiet as soon as summer hit, but it just sort of happened. Have you missed me? :-) I’ve missed blogging every day, but with lots of traveling and other projects, blogging seems to have opted for a summer break along with some of my students. Do you let your students take the summer off? I give my families the option – they can take the whole summer off, or take a mixture of regular lessons and/or piano camps.

This year, though, I’m not really doing piano camps per se. Inspired by one of my students, I launched something new that is open exclusively to middle school and high school students. It’s called, “Kick-It-Up-A-Notch!” The goal is to focus intensely on specific skills to help students become better pianists. We’ll be meeting for two hours each day for a week, and every participant is required to practice 1 hour between each session. Based on the responses I received from my students, I have three separate classes scheduled with anywhere from 3-5 students per class. Specific plans are still underway, but I’m super excited about the possibilities! I think the main difficulty will be fitting everything I want to cover into such a short period of time. If you have any suggestions for what you would include in such an endeavor, please feel free to let me know!

Summer travels provide the best time during the year to get a lot of reading in. I’ve got a never-ending selection of books to read, but one that I bought recently that I’m excited to read is called, My Life with the Great Pianists by Franz Mohr with Edith Schaeffer. Hopefully I can also catch up on the last several issues of American Music Teacher and Clavier Companion, along with a new magazine I’ve been receiving called, Listen – Life with Classical Music. Not sure if it’s any good, but I’m curious to check it out. Any music books on your summer reading list?

I also have dozens of studio projects I want to tackle – like playing through all the books that are overflowing from my file cabinets and just getting rid of the ones that I don’t think I’ll ever use. Anyone want the box when I’m ready to haul/ship it off? And then there are games to make, apps to research, materials to re-design, a practice incentive theme to develop, repertoire to plan, prospective students to interview, etc. I long ago came to the realization that time will always run out before my list of things to do. But such is life. It’s exciting to be working on projects and doing whatever possible to make the most of the time that is given. Someday it will run out for good and my deepest desire is to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Hope you’re all having an enjoyable and productive summer! Stay tuned for sporadic posting throughout the rest of the summer… :-)

Check Out My Latest Tech Toy!

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Yes, it’s true. I am just now getting into the latest mobile technology. And really through no fault of my own. I’ve been contemplating the purchase of an iPod Touch or iPad for a while now, but hadn’t settled on which path to choose. The folks at YourVirtuoso.com made it easy for me. At the MTNA conference this year, one of the coupons in our little coupon book had info about their website with a link where you could visit and be entered in a drawing to win a free iPod Touch. I had completely forgotten about it until I got an e-mail last week saying that my name was drawn as the winner!

My beautiful 32GB, 4th Generation iPod Touch arrived at the end of the week and I’ve been in love ever since! :-) It’s been great fun exploring some of the available apps, synching it with my iTunes account, configuring all the settings, and using their new Facetime feature to chat with my sister across the country. So, so cool!

And now I’m trying to rack my brain and remember all the great apps that everyone has told me about over the past several months. Any suggestions? What are your favorite apps? Any fun music education ones that you like to use with your students? I can’t wait to put this to good use in my studio!

Happy Memorial Day

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Today is a good day to remember. In the midst of much tragedy and suffering, we remember those who have lost their lives, those who have willingly sacrificed their lives, those who have spent their lives on something bigger than themselves. Sometimes I wonder if the loss of things and people we hold precious in this life is designed to reveal that there is Someone bigger than this life. Someone who will never leave. Someone who will be the rock on which we can stand and find security in the midst of the storms of this life.

This weekend, I’ll be directing a children’s program and I thought I would share with you one of the songs that I wrote to go along with our sea-faring Voyage theme:

In the Midst of the Storm
There are days, blessed days,
that are happy and bright,
when this life seems the best-
all is going right.

But the trouble will come
in this world, Jesus said,
so take heart, hear the truth,
don’t forget-

In the midst of the storm, in the midst of the sea,
in the midst of the waves crashing down on me;
God is there in the night, God is there in the gale,
God is there when I fall down and when I fail.

He is real and He’s alive!
He is watching over me.
When I’m pressed on every side,
He will be my Rock and Peace.

[Here's a link to a piano recording of the accompaniment and vocal parts. There's a section where there are two parts going at once, so hopefully it won't be too confusing...:-) ]

May you each have a very blessed Memorial Day!

Remembering Jed…

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Seven years ago today, I penned the most difficult studio newsletter of my life. The afternoon before, one of my wonderful piano students was tragically killed in a car accident. I still think of him often and remember the tremendous legacy that Jed left behind, even at the young age of 12. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures of Jed:


Performing at a local festival in the beautiful Wichita State University Wiedemann Hall.


Having fun working on an ensemble with a group of students.

Memories like this bring tears to my eyes and remind me to love my students and invest as much as I can in their lives. We don’t know what tomorrow holds, but God has given us today!

Note: If you want to read more of Jed’s story, you can download for free the chapter, Tragedy Strikes Close to Home, from my book, Pajama School.

Piano Students in the Real World

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Last December I posted about Students Performing Without Teacher Knowledge. As I mentioned then, I whole-heartedly believe in the importance of letting students use their musical skills in lots of various outlets. My students usually fill me in on events and opportunities before they happen, but either way, I think it’s great for them to be musically involved in the community. As I was thinking back over the spring semester and wondering why I felt worn out trying to keep up with my students, I began compiling a list of special opportunities or situations that my students had this year that have required extra work on both of our parts to locate, acquire, and prepare the necessary music.

I’m thinking this also helps explain why I don’t do weekly lesson planning :-) (there are always new and exciting things popping up and we like having the freedom to adapt within the structure of our yearly practice incentive theme). The more things I listed out, the more excited I got! This is what makes music so much more than just a personal endeavor. This is how we take the talents God has given us and invest and multiply them (Matthew 25:14-30). This is piano students in the real world…

  • asked to compose and play several pieces for a special event.
  • young friend wants to learn to play piano, so student began teaching them the basics.
  • received request to start accompanying the praise band at church, playing from lead sheets.
  • wants to be in upcoming competition; needs flashy piece that can be learned quickly. Oh, and asked to play for brother’s wedding, so needs a collection of wedding songs to learn as well.
  • invited to play for special church service; must learn hymn and several praise songs by following week.
  • heard a cool song on YouTube; wants help tracking down sheet music and learning it.
  • needs two contrasting pieces to learn and memorize for a competition in a couple months.
  • will be playing background music at a community event; needs 10-15 minutes worth of appropriate music.
  • dad signed student up to play special music at church; need to learn several songs and arrange them so that they fill the allotted time frame.
  • getting bored with beginner songs and parent requests some variety to add challenge and excitement.
  • excited about upcoming studio recital and requests a specific style of piece to learn for the occasion.
  • asked to play other instrument parts on keyboard with an ensemble group.
  • church is preparing for an upcoming program and music director asks student to be the pianist; must learn a dozen songs in less than a month.
  • parents request that student be given more hymns to learn and play for the family.
  • found simplified arrangement of Fur Elise and starts working on it, even though it’s a harder level than current repertoire.
  • assigned to play offertory at church in several weeks; needs to have an arrangement learned and ready quickly.
  • friend is getting married and asks student to play for prelude, processional, recessional, and postlude; specific music arrangements written for string and piano ensemble must be learned in two weeks.
  • wants to compile a collection of original pieces and needs help notating and preparing for publication.
  • suffers broken wrist from an accident and must learn to play music for one hand alone.
  • asked by vocalist to accompany for contest next week.
  • wants to participate in school talent show; audition is next week.
  • asked by friend to play duet in upcoming community festival; need to select and prepare music.
  • requested to perform special music for a large convention.
  • encouraged to put together a compilation CD as a special gift for Grandma.

These are the kinds of things that truly make teaching an adventure. And even though it does require a lot of extra time and work that wasn’t part of the original plan, it is so worth it!