Tuning In…
The Challenging Reality
Let’s face it, online schooling can be depressing for our youth. I’m starting to get a bit concerned about one of my teen piano students whom I have taught since she was four.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful we are able to have school in any capacity and I want us all to stay healthy, but in my deepest heart of hearts, I yearn for kids to be in school together.
Kids need to socialize. Kids needs to use pencils, and hold sheets of paper, and interact with real live humans. My piano student is already a very quiet person and always has been. She is fiercely intelligent and can play piano like nobody’s business.
Lately, when we log in to our lessons, her hair is all disheveled. I found out that she is doing her online learning from her bed. She is full of one word answers. She rarely cracks a smile. She is extremely obedient and keeps up, but I can’t help but wonder if she is feeling any joy in our lessons.
Finding the Positive
During the first Piano Flow class this week, I had the participants try a positive visualization. We closed our eyes and went through the rest of our day and imagined it in a positive way. I channeled each of my students and asked myself, “What do they need?”
This dear child came to mind and I thought, she needs to work on some creative improvisation or composition today and we need to stay away from all of her technical studies and her classical piece.
For the first half of the lesson, we did our usual routine, messy hair and all. Then, the magic started to happen.
I have been working on Halloween inspired improvisations with students all week. Register here if you want to join me in a free training next week to learn about what we did. I gave her a few parameters, and before I knew it, she was off. Off into the land of creative flow.
A Little Soul Food
She came up with the coolest left hand accompaniment with an intriguing, spooky melody and was creating a piece as cool (if not cooler) than I could have composed.
And for the first time in months, something happened. A smile appeared on her face. I was so overjoyed to see her spark return.
My idea worked! I shook her out of her routine and added some creative juices to her day. I also insisted that we start the lesson by having her show me one of her beautiful paintings and we talked about the power of painting.
Teachers, parents, caretakers… Take a moment today and ask yourself, “What does this child need?”
Improvising and feeling the flow. Here’s an example of one of my spontaneously relaxing “Musical Meditations”.
