What I love.

I've spent this whole past week saying goodbye to some of the people I love most in this world. But today, I think, hurt most of all.

Today was my last day of work. 

And I have the best job in the world.

Over the past few years I have been so incredibly immensely blessed to get to spend several hours a week teaching some of the most wonderful kids to play an instrument I've fallen in love with. Teaching piano has been my dream job, something I've loved from the day I started and have never stopped loving.

Altogether, I've taught piano to over 20 kids. I can't even begin to tell you all the things these kids have taught me, or the impact they've had on my life. They've helped me learn things like patience. Like how to be encouraging yet firm. How to be a good teacher, to make the confusing understandable. How to make learning bar lines and measures interesting, enjoyable even.  How to be flexibile.

They've taught me about sports (I finally learned that baseball games don't have an intermission after multiple elementary-school boys rolled their eyes at me. Yes. Thanks to them I now know the meaning of a "Seventh-inning stretch"). They've taught me creativity (who knew that Musical Mother May I could be one one of the most effective ways to master new notes?). They've taught me how to run a business (juggling my own schedule plus the crazy schedules of multiple children? Sending out regular studio update emails to parents? Doing my own accounting, keeping track of everyone's bills? Learning marketing techniques to get new students? Things I definitely wouldn't have learned otherwise). They've fostered my sense of humor, helped me laugh at myself.  And most of all, they've taught me joy. I just can't not be happy after teaching one of these guys a lesson. They are just soo enthusiastic.

("I love piano I shouted on the mountain!")

I would be happy if my students had half as much fun learning as I have teaching them. I get so much joy and fulfillment out of teaching. The kids are so funny, I absolutely love spending time with them. They let me into their lives for a half hour every week. They tell me how their week went. They get so excited and proud when they master a new song. They put their own touches into each piece they play. I get to learn about their individual personalities and how to help them learn best, and I get to try to think like them and look at music through their eyes and figure out new ways to teach them things. It is one of the best gifts I've been given, to have these kids looking up to me and to be able to give them just a little part of me and to hopefully help them see how wonderful music really is and how enjoyable it can be.

And trust me, we have a lot of fun in the process. I don't know if I ever laugh as much as I do while I'm teaching. The kids love to make fun of my utter lack of sports knowlege, my horrible drawing skills, the way I always forget the date.

I love it when they come to a lesson soo excited because they practiced a lot this week and they know I'll be so proud. Or when their moms tell me they won a contest at their school because they knew so much about the different music periods and composers. Or when they go home and teach their whole family everything they've just learned about time signiatures. Or when they write their own song and bring it to the lesson, every note precisely placed on an oh-so-carefully drawn staff.

I'm so proud of all of them. I'll miss them all so much. And my heart almost broke in two today when 7 of my current students and I had a final group lesson, and everyone was giving me cards and flowers and hug after hug and telling me, "I'll miss you so much, Miss Alaina," and not believing me when I told them the absolute truth, that, "I'll miss you more!"

 So to my absolutely wonderful piano teacher of 10 years who has spent so much time giving me her expert advice on piano teaching, introducing me to fabulous curriculum, always so wisely answering all my questions, and giving me everything from business tips to piano magazines to books for my students...

To my parents who have so generously allowed their den to become a piano studio complete with shelves of books and a giant whiteboard and have listened to Old-MacDonald, Row-Row-Row Your Boat, Hot Cross Buns, and so many others countless times...

To the very first neighbor mom who so very bravely let my middle-school-aged, very inexperienced self teach her daughter piano, just for fun (never once thinking that I'd take more students or that eventually, this would be my job)....

Thank you. I've been so blessed.