for my students

If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have my Mary Poppins-esque purse filled to the brim with erasable colored pencils and music alphabet flashcards. I wouldn’t know anything about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (or how to simplify the themes for beginning piano), and I wouldn’t know how to make an origami hamster.

If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be tying your shoes just before you walked onto the recital stage to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” because, well, your shoelaces were untied and you asked me to tie them at exactly the last second. I wouldn’t bring a stuffed animal brontosaurus to every lesson so that you can give him a hug and he can “teach” you correct piano technique. I wouldn’t have “Hopelessly Devoted to You” from Grease stuck in my head all week because you really wanted to learn a show tune you could sing along to.

If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have learned that dancing around the room to the music is much more effective than just counting out loud. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t play the Jeopardy theme song to make you laugh while you tried to recall the correct answer to a music theory question, and I wouldn’t know that you lost another tooth yesterday and that the tooth fairy better remember about it tonight.

If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have thought I would ever hear the following during a piano lesson:
“Wanna know how I get my bunny to play the piano? I put its food pellets in between the keys!”
“It was lower than my expectations, which actually was my expectation, so that means it DID meet my expectations!”
Intensely whispered: “Wanna know something crazy? My cousin lives inside of Japan!”
Practically shouted: “I like pandas HEY you like pandas too?! EVERYONE likes pandas! GuesswhattomorrowI’mgoingtowriteabookaboutpandas and it’s gonna have ONE HUNDRED TEN THOUSAND chapters!!!”
“If a raindrop collapsed, it would be like a puddle falling from the sky.”
“When I was in Costa Rica, I loved playing with the spiders there!”

If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t know that your baseball team won the regional tournament, or that your choir got to sing with Michael Bublé at his Christmas special in NYC, or that the brass section of your middle school band always comes in at the wrong time, or that your science class released a kaleidoscope of monarch butterflies this spring.

If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have had tears in my eyes when a fellow teacher gave a congratulatory farewell to one of his graduating seniors, because I know that one day I will be in his shoes, wishing you well as you step into the next chapter.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be quite the same. Because as much as I hope to impact your life for the better in some small way, as most teachers do, knowing you has changed me, too.