From my earliest days, I have loved to play the piano.
I began the formal study of piano at age 7 (but this picture shows my informal learning began much earlier under the example of my aunts).
I began my University music study at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, studying with Samuel Dilworth-Leslie and Wanda Maximillien. I transferred to Gordon College on the North Shore of Boston following my Junior year, refining my piano skill under the tutelage of Alina Polyakov and earning a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance.
I then moved on to Princeton, NJ, where I attended Westminster Choir College and studied with Ingrid Jacobsen Clarfield. It was here that I began my quest to understand the tools of piano pedagogy. Upon receiving a Master's Degree in Performance and Pedagogy, I obtained a position at Messiah College, where I taught piano, piano pedagogy and other piano-related classes. My experiences during this time led me to The Pennsylvania State University to pursue a Ph.D. in Music Education.
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During my Ph.D. study I was interested in the processes of how children learn music so that we might best teach them. I focused on topics of childhood and child development, learning theory, neurological research, musical development, early childhood music, and what is known as “informal” music learning. What I learned in my classes and the early childhood centers led me to explore piano lesson settings with very young children, as young as two. I was interested in how these children would musically engage in a “lesson” setting, and I designed the lessons to be based in informal processes of learning appropriate for young children. (See keyword “informal learning” on the blog for more information.)
I continued a research path following graduation, and found my interests shifting toward how the children demonstrated their autonomy and personal agency within the lesson settings. At the same time I was appointed the Associate Director of Penn State's Institute for the Arts and Humanities, whose mission was to seek scholarly insight into key elements of the human experience. My experiences during these years led me to think deeply about how I design lesson settings for all children in ways that allow them to claim their own voice and explore what is meaningful to their own musicianship. Combined with my informed understanding of musical development and my continued experiences with children in my piano studio, I now aim to efficiently and thoroughly develop a whole musicianship in the piano lesson setting.
Today I find that I train musicians for who they are as people,
and--in the process--learn to be a far more whole person and musician myself.