My first degree was in Music Education from the University of Illinois. I have gone a couple of other directions in my life since such as nursing, but I ended up circling back to music education. I have always taught to some degree, but started teaching full time right before the pandemic. I then decided to go online to teach lessons, and I have continued to do so online and in person in the Chicago area. Meeting students from all over the country has been amazing, and I realized teaching music was what I was meant to do all along. I engage with students, especially young ones, because I make playing and learning piano a lot of fun. It is a very different way in which I learned, but it has been the key to keeping students engaged who would otherwise have quit a long time ago. I also focus on music theory, and arranging and composing original works. Some of my students have become wonderful composers and have performed their own works at my recitals I hold twice a year online. My focus is not only to teach kids how to play the piano, but to understand what they are playing as I treat music as learning another language. It is one thing to play, yet it is another thing to be literate in the language itself. My students have become part of my family, and they are all ages-including the very young and the older student. I look forward to adding to my musical family.

About Erinn C.