My History with Piano Teachers

My earliest memories of music would be the piano lessons I had as a kid (and still have now). I started piano when I was in around 5th grade. My teacher was a cranky, old woman who lived in a small house with pink and green walls. I’d always be nervous going to piano lessons with her, because, being a cranky person, she’d get mad at me often. She gave me candy after every lesson, though, if I played well that day. One day she noticed I was nervous about the lesson and she told me I’d get stomach ulcers if I was nervous. I don’t know if that was supposed to relax me or what. Eventually, I had to stop having piano lessons with her, because we were moving to another town. When my mom told her the news, the teacher didn’t show any understanding of the fact that we were moving; she got mad and said she had to pay for her bills for all her surgeries. What a strange lady.

My next piano teacher was a nice young woman in Champaign. She gave us prizes for doing well, and had a dog and a cat. Sometimes I’d ask to go to the bathroom just to pet them. The only problem was I didn’t learn a lot from this teacher. She got married and retired from her job as a piano teacher, so we stopped having piano lessons with her.

After this teacher, we looked around, searching for a good piano teacher we could go to. My friend recommended me to her piano teacher, who was Russian. We visited the teacher. She was nice and seemed like she knew her stuff. However, she lived too far away for us to drive there every week, so we had to keep looking.
Some other friends of mine, who are really good at piano, told me about their piano teacher; they were going to the same teacher. I visited the teacher and she seemed nice enough. She lived nearby, too, so we wouldn’t have to drive far for lessons. So, I started having lessons with her. It was going well and I was learning a lot, but I noticed the teacher was getting a bit less nice as time went on. If I made a little mistake, she’d sigh and get mad. Also, she was very attached to her dogs. She trained her dogs for dog shows, and her dogs often won, so she bragged a lot about them. Sometimes, when I wasn’t feeling it and I didn’t want to do piano, I’d ask her about her dogs and she’d go on and on about them, taking up a lot of lesson time. One time, she stopped me in the middle of my lesson to show me videos of her dogs at a dog show. I told my mom about this, and she decided I should go to a different teacher.

We then found another teacher. She lived really far away but went to her students’ houses for lessons instead of the other way around. This is the teacher I have now. She’s pretty nice, and I’m learning a lot.