I have been pondering how best to share the needs of my piano student. After some time, I realized this is not my story to tell, it is her story. I will only share the details of her story as it applies to my experience teaching her. Suffice it to say, she was only able to play piano with her left hand.
The piano curriculum I learned and taught from started teaching songs for right hand at the very beginning of the book and students were playing notes with both hands before the end of the book. Obviously, if I used that curriculum, there would be too many songs I would have to skip.
Following several days of poking around on the internet, I found a piano book for the left hand. The only problem was the book was filled with highly complex exercises for advanced pianists to strengthen their left hand. Obviously, this was not the right book for a beginner piano student.
I concluded that I would write my own piano curriculum. The musical notation software I had at my disposal was google slides. I had some experience writing lesson plans for my early childhood education class and I had written a few silly little songs. But I was woefully underprepared. I did not want to breach a single copyright law, so I found open source songs and attempted to write my own.
Here is a glorious example of one of the songs I wrote for this curriculum. It is probably by far the most creative and original melodies in existence.
Obviously, I lacked the abilities to write a solid piano curriculum. However, I could not find another piano curriculum written for the use of one hand. I saw a need and decided to fill it to the best of my abilities. Was it perfect? It couldn’t be further from perfect! But this was a building block. I am so grateful for my student’s patience as I learned how to adapt lessons. She gave me the gift of this building block. And maybe in the future, after I have more experience and have taken a composition class or two, I can revisit this curriculum and make it better.
To my readers, do not let your fear of imperfection stop you from creating something. Life is not about creating perfect things, life is about learning and growing. And I can speak from experience, the clumsy little curriculum you attempt to write in high school can be the foundation to so much more.
My senior year of high school took me on an unexpected path. I did not teach piano or take piano classes. Since the events of that year don’t really apply, we’ll just skip to my freshman year of college in How I Got Here, Part 3. Until then, go create something!
