The Gift of Showing Up: Lessons That Last a Lifetime

A few months ago I did some rearranging in my house. With visits from grandparents on the horizon, I wanted to create a cozier guest room for them. The addition of a cozy chair and a cute corner desk meant there was no more room for the keyboard. So I shuffled things around the living room and found a spot for it under the window. And now I find myself drawn back to the stool and keys, again and again.

As I play the songs from my childhood and youth, the music carries memories long tucked away.

I grew up playing piano. Not because I had a passion for it. But because my parents decided it was the one extra-curricular activity that all their kids would do and that they would invest in. As the youngest of four, it was simply what we did. Piano lessons were thirty minutes every Thursday for years before it increased to one hour, and then to ninety minutes. From Kindergarten to Grade 12, in the downstairs of my piano teacher’s house, in that front room with the grand piano and the picture window looking out to the ocean.

Our piano teacher was Ms. Blacklock. And she was incredible. She is incredible.

What made her incredible? She was a phenomenal classic piano player. Her technique was impeccable, her ear finely tuned, and she took it seriously. Playing the piano was not just a skill she was passing on. It was an extension of who she was. When she would take to the keys, her hands glided seamlessly. She was one with the piano, creating beautiful music. It was a gift to learn from her.

And honestly? I didn’t see it at the time.

I enjoyed reading the Archie comics in the little waiting room while my siblings had their lessons. I dreaded my turn. Ms. Blacklock had very high standards, and I didn’t practice nearly enough to meet those standards. My little homework notebook was full of her notes on what I should work on each week and spoke to everything I failed to do. I felt guilty, ashamed, like a disappointment. And yet at the end of every lesson, she let me pick a sticker for my notebook. (The smelly ones were the best!) At recital season, even when the missed notes gave away the days I'd left my books unopened, there were creamsicle popsicles and a printed certificate waiting. A break in the summer, and then right back the next year.

There were lessons where I stared out that picture window, willing it to be over.

Now 25+ years later, there is nothing I’d like more than thirty minutes on her piano stool. I learned to play. I can read music. I can open up a piece of music and figure it out. Though it was a bit rusty at first, the runs are coming back. My fingers remember the keys.

But Ms. Blacklock taught me something else too. She taught me the power of showing up, of consistency, patience, and never giving up. She was a constant in my life. The teacher that watched me grow up. The person who believed in me more than I believed in myself. Who gave me a gift I hadn’t fully earned and trusted I’d one day understand its value.

I came across this poem recently and it said what I’d been trying to say better than I ever could:

Why We Teach Music

- Author unknown

We teach music:

Not because we expect our students to major in music,

Not because we expect them to play or sing all their lives (although that would be lovely),

Not so they can relax and have fun (also admirable goals),

But:

So they will be human, and recognize beauty,

So they will be closer to an infinite beyond this world,

So they will have something to cling to,

So they will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good, in short more life.

For of what value will it be to make a prosperous living, unless they know how to live a rich and fulfilled life.

Why share all of this on a tutoring blog? Because when I read that poem, I thought of our tutors.

Matt might help your student write a stronger essay. Brandon might unlock algebra. Amelia might help a child find their words on a page. But what they're really doing — what all of our tutors are doing — is showing up, week after week, with patience and consistency and a genuine belief that your child is capable of more than they realize. They care about partnering with you to build something that lasts longer than the next test: confidence, perseverance, and the knowledge that hard things can be done.

The subject gets learned. But our hope is that students walk away with something bigger — a little more resilience, a little more belief in themselves, and maybe, someday, their own version of coming back to the piano stool.

Kudos to my parents for making that investment, for finding Ms. Blacklock, and for not letting me quit.

Written by Anne Wang