The following was written by my late wife Elaine. She wrote a long book, a diary really, from which this is one passage:
Notes from a Teacher’s Diary
Students express hilarious, profound and honest thoughts at their piano lessons – and sometimes their personal grief – when one-on-one with a teacher they know well and trust.
Kids say whatever comes into their heads. Sometimes what they say is wise. Sometimes it’s touching; often funny. So I kept a notebook of interesting ideas students expressed in the Union studio during the years of teaching as many as 46 kids a week. I loved the opportunities I had to talk to my piano students and my homebound students also, one at a time. Can’t do that, teaching in a classroom!
One day, L. came for her lesson after just having four teeth pulled, with gauze pads between her teeth. During the lesson, there was bleeding, playing, bleeding, playing, bleeding… and I thought to myself: This must be what “The Show Must Go On!” means!
I often ask students questions to make sure they understand a new concept, and here are some questions I asked, and their answers:
- What does a tied note mean? “Plus signals.”
- What is a waltz? “A slow dance; they did it in the old days.”
- What is your own word for Maestoso? “Proud.” (Abstract sounds aren’t easy to define with words; this was good!)
A student was starting on a piece called “Moccasin Dance,” and I asked her if she knew what moccasins are. R.’s reply: “Snakes.”
The same piece was learned by other students, too, and M. answered, when I asked her what piece she liked best in her book, “Moccahesion Dance.”
One day when J. first used all five fingers in a little song, he said, “That takes up my whole hand.”
S. had studied piano lessons for two and a half years, and then her mother started lessons. After the mom’s first three lessons, I said to the girl: “I hear you’re helping your mother.” She replied, “She makes me so mad! She won’t do it right… she won’t hold her notes long enough… she won’t play even… she won’t play smooth!” (All said with a big frown.)
A new young student worked hard and learned fast. One afternoon after I gave him a long list of things to do the next week, I said, “If you have too much to do, just leave something off.” He said, “If I have too much to do, I’ll just practice longer than 30 minutes.” Words to make a teacher’s day!
Sometimes I ask students to keep track of how long they practice; I do this when I’m trying to show them they aren’t practicing enough. Usually when a practice record is written down for me, Monday will be in pencil, Tuesday with a pen, Wednesday with a colored pencil, etc., with an assortment of assigned minutes per day. One student, however, turned in a list of seven numbers, for the seven days, in a straight column, lined up very neatly, all were exactly thirty minutes, all written with the same color pen. Oh, really?! Another student’s list included this entry: “1:45 to 2:12.” Guess which of these reports I believed.
The Funniest Kid of All
In September 1982, a young boy, S., came in with a brand new assignment book. “I had to get a new one because my old one got ruined. My mom spilled coffee on it, my brother wrote car parts in it and my dad writes down how many cows he has.”
The same boy, who usually came in wearing a baseball cap, lost his place on the page one day while playing a repeating theme, so he kept on playing that part over and over, and I let him go on a little while, to see what would happen. Finally, not taking his eyes off the music and continuing to play, he said, “Mrs. Blakeslee, am I done yet?”
One of his new pieces required that he move both hands from the “middle C position” to the “G position” several times (five keys higher), and he said, “I’ll be worn out!”
One day, in the middle of playing a piece, he asked me, “When do you do your housework? You’re here all the time.”
There are more from S.:
- January 1981: “I wonder if I’m comfortable.”
- June 1981: “I’ll start there on the second paragraph.”
Once when Dave delivered firewood to the studio, he tried to make the little fellow laugh by “playing the fool” – as West Virginians say – dancing around and making faces. S.’s response to me: “Is he hard to live with?”
Fond, funny memories! It’s 20 years later now, and S. owns a string of auto parts stores and is as likable and friendly now as he was back then.
To be continued…
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee (1931 – 2024) built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
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