About me . . .

I grew up in a rural Michigan farming community, population approx. 3500. Very small and very cold in the winter. Summers were great though. My six siblings and I would ride horses, swim, canoe, sleep in tents we set up in our backyard, play hide and seek, build forts in the woods, and in general, have a great time on our farm. There was also work. Lots of work. My dad, a commercial photographer and visionary, had decided to take his clan out of the suburbs and into the country. I was four years old and just remember moving to our “new” home which looked like a shack in the middle of lots of snow. Thankfully, my visionary father, had “seen” his dream home and went to work on it right away. He, a talented, yet amateur carpenter, rebuilt, restored and redesigned parts of the house while his brood took care of the gardens, the animals, the lawn and anything else that needed to be done. There was always work to be done.

When I was seven years old, my mom decided to enroll my sisters and I into piano lessons. Each week she took us to the piano teacher’s house and dropped us off. Since there were so many of us and we each had a 30-minute private lesson, we got to hang out at our teacher’s house for a few hours. I especially remember the peanut butter and graham crackers she’d have waiting for us. For those of us who weren’t having a lesson, we would take our snack and retreat to the basement with her two kids and we’d watch afternoon T.V. And because T.V. in the afternoon was forbidden at our house, this was surely the best part of having piano lessons.

After college, I started teaching on the side. I was surfing the Internet one afternoon looking for ideas on teaching piano in groups and I came across a method called Simply Music. I had never heard of such a thing, but wanted to see if anyone was doing it. After spending several moments combing through the website, I fell in love with the philosophy of the program that EVERYONE IS MUSICAL. The testimonials gave me chills and I knew I had to look into it further. I spoke with a few SM teachers and eventually spoke with the founder of the program, Neil Moore. It was soon after that I became a Simply Music Teacher and began to really see music education in a whole new light.

Today, my student base continues to grow and each day that I get to teach this exciting program is a blessing. The smiles on my student’s faces and their delight in being able to play beautiful pieces in such a short period of time, is what it’s all about for me. My work certainly doesn’t feel like work. Had I not seen my parent’s example, I may not have had the drive to seek out a profession that gives to me in the same proportion that I give to it, and really, most times, it gives much more.

Learn to play piano quickly and easily!