kayre | Special lessons

I've been teaching all my piano lessons on Zoom since March. To my delight, they've all done very well. Musically, my inability to reach over and poke the right note has helped them develop a healthy independence. And to my surprise, the two younger students, both girls, clearly felt socially more comfortable interacting with me via Zoom rather than in person.

Josie has always been very shy with me, to the point that I discussed it with her father early on. He asked me to continue to teach her, with an eye to both teaching piano and helping her interact one on one with me. We had some good lessons, but others where she'd get overwhelmed and turn to him. Via zoom these last months she's been working more directly with me, much more of the time. Last week, for the first time, she told me that she felt 'very stressed out about school' and we agreed that she needed an easy, fun lesson.

Every week when we turn on Zoom she has a surprise waiting for me-- sometimes herself in costume, often a stuffed animal at the keyboard. Today it was a stuffed cat just peeking into the corner of the screen. I asked if he was a particular cat from a cartoon or something, and she responded, "His name is Zig. He's very shy and afraid of everything." So I told Zig how happy I was that he came to meet me. And we went on to have a very good lesson.