Piano Lessons

Miss Pam was one of those people that we saw so often, I guess we sort of took her for granted.  Well now that I've spent a month looking for a new piano teacher for the boys I really, really appreciate that she is a truly rare and awesome lady.

Miss Pam was not only the boys piano teacher but also our family friend.  She came to my house every Wednesday for what we joked were marathon piano lessons.  She would teach my boys before the Parays got out of school and then teach the Parays after.  So for over three straight hours we had piano of lessons every Wednesday.  For Mae and I it was our time to talk and connect.  For the kids it was mid-week play time too.  I say over three hours because often after the lessons Mae, Pam and I would talk for a while too.  It was nice....we miss Wednesdays.

When I started looking for a teacher here I had a really hard time.  I ran into piano snobs that wouldn't teach the boys because we didn't have an acoustic piano and then there were the Theory Marmes who seemed to care more about how the kids did in theory competitions than if they learned to love playing the piano.  I talked about my frustrations with Miss Pam and she suggested we get a real piano stand for the keyboard, boys were getting too tall to stand with proper arm alignment anyway and think about getting some theory books.  Then she offered to try to teach the boys over Skype.  It wasn't ideal but I wasn't having much luck finding a local teacher and I definitely wanted to boys to keep playing.

New set-up looks rather fancy if I do say so myself

I also voiced my frustration to our friend Dawn here and she gave me the name of a friend who she assured me wasn't a "snob" and liked kids.  Well do to illness we didn't get a chance to try out Skype before we had a chance to meet Dawn's friend Miss Kat.  The fact that she liked being called Miss Kat (instead of something more formal) was a good sign, but the fact that she taught theory as a part of the lessons instead of giving them books with homework was a major plus.  We had been so spoiled by Miss Pam teaching theory using all these fun games. Theory books really intimidated me because they did not come with an answer key and I had no idea how I was going to help the boys do the sheets during the week since I had no idea.  The final good sign was that Titus liked her (He had actually ran out of the room when asked if he was ready for his lesson with one of the teachers we met).  So we are going to give Miss Kathy a try on Mondays.   Wednesdays remain special time with the Parays when the kids spend a few hours talking and playing over Facetime.  I'm so thankful for today's technology.