"You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks”... that easily.

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008. So teaching the Music teacher, Juffrou (aka Teacher) Poppy, was definitely a hoot today. Poppy is a lady in her late fifties who has never played music before. Still she seemed very determined to do it. Haha… even before I wrote out all the notes for her, she showed me her mini keyboard and said, “You must only teach me songs between these notes.” So all the melodies I wrote out were only in the keys of C or F. Should be simple enough. First, I helped her to properly re-label the keyboard with sticky notes because they used to be labeled “1-2-3-4-5…” If she wants to learn to play these tunes, she should learn them the proper way, right. I had originally planned to look at a few songs from the nursery rhyme book with her, demonstrate how to play them, and then have her try plunking out some notes, but seeing how much she struggled with the first song, Baa Baa, Black Sheep, made me realize that I needed to take things slow and easy. So my assignment for her this week is to familiarize herself with the labeled keys and practice playing and singing Baa Baa, Black Sheep simultaneously. Step by step, day by day… she will learn to play. That’s my rap motto for the day. Word. MishLio out. ;-)