The several days between today's post and the preceding were spent summarizing my teaching career in what felt like ten words or less. Next to playing the piano (I mean really playing) teaching the piano is extremely difficult.

My standard in teaching children is that I will not have them learn anything that they will have to unlearn as adults. That means, not a concept, not a simplification of any kind--rhythmic, tonal, harmonic--that will keep them from experiencing a different version of whatever it is. It also means not a physical motion which will impede ease as they grow into full-sized hands.

Soon after I began to teach I became affiliated with a major music school with three divisions: Preparatory, for students through high school; Extension, for non-matriculated adults; College (or Conservatory). I thought at the time, "How sensible to recognize that music-learning is a lifelong enterprise! How interesting to work in a school where the needs of the young are taken seriously!"