Rainy Day Teaching Cupboard

A confession:

I am good for nothing from 1-3pm these days. Nothing, I tell you.

It’s the heat. The general world inertia. The widespread ennui. 

I meet friends for drinks after a day of teaching and practicing and the conversation is not witty and pretty and bright. We don’t discuss the interesting books we are reading, or our next fantastic travel plans. No one is talking about their gardens or their latest craft projects. We don’t mention politics or last week’s presidential debate (God help us all). Instead, we talk about how tired we are. We strategize about energy flow and work habits. We exchange ideas about diets and exercise and vitamins to beat the afternoon slump. We admit to making lists that are ridiculous in their simplicity and directness: Eat protein bars! Sweep the kitchen floor! Did you remember to call your mother?

God help us all.

This makes me wonder if there isn’t a place for the Rainy Day Cupboard in summertime piano lessons. If Rainy Day Cupboards are essentially a grand to-do list to direct our aimless moments and nudge us forward, then I need this assistance not just in my low-energy afternoon hours. I need it pretty much all the time right now.

Many of my students take hour-long lessons during June and July. This is great; it allows time and space for new concepts to be taught, and deep dives to be done during the lesson. But it also reminds me of what a colleague once said. We were talking about lesson length and practice requirements and all the stuff, and Jeremy said: If students have practiced, 60 minutes is a lot of time. If they haven’t practiced, it will never be enough time.

So wise.

But let’s assume for a moment of magical thinking that the student in question has practiced. Or at least did some. Let’s say we’ve worked through assignments, asked a lot of leading and educational questions, primed the practicing for the next week. I know, I know. Magical thinking here, but go with me.

There are 10 minutes left before little 7-year-old Sophie slides off the piano bench, and gangly 15-year-old George slams his music and notebook on the desk (I’m sure he doesn’t mean to “slam” but alas, in his teenage awkwardness, he always does.). It might actually be raining because, lately, it often has been.

Ten minutes, I often remind myself, is precious. In ten minutes, I can sweep the kitchen floor, put in a load of laundry, return an email, or water my houseplants. I often get overwhelmed by the pure number of tasks I need to do, because I don’t have a very accurate assessment of how long many of those tasks will take. Or in a piano lesson, just how much learning we can still manage to squeeze into the remaining minutes if only I have a plan, or at least a Rainy Day Teaching Cupboard to fall back on.

This summer I have divided my Rainy Day Teaching Cupboard into three categories: drills (note/rhythm/theory), creative fun (improvisations of some kind) or Name That Tune games. This is hardly brilliant, because these are pedagogical things I want to include in every lesson anyway, but the Rainy Day Teaching Cupboard not only gives me quick ideas—Do this! Or this! Or how about that?—but the simplicity of the three categories provides a quick check on the lesson: what didn’t we do today? Or: what could we use some extra work on? Note identification? Rhythm drills? A new Name That Tune? Q&A improvs?

If there has been any takeaway this year, it might be that there is a season, a container, a moment for anything: for our Rainy Day activities, for our 10 extra minutes of musical education, for the mundane tasks and routines and work that make up our days and our hours. There are days bursting with obligations, and days that feel empty, the hours stretching before us endlessly. The trick, I think, is to lean into the natural rhythmic shifts of our lives and our seasons, to gracefully ride the rollercoaster of energy flow and inspiration, instead of assuming that something is wrong if it isn’t always a perfect 72 degrees both inside and outside. Yes, the lethargy of 1-3pm comes every day, but so does the brightness of 7am, when it feels like the world is bursting with possibilities. We need it all.