Marian Lamoureux of Hinsdale began teaching piano at sixteen, in Ontario, with a student from down the street whose mother thought she might be patient enough for the work. She taught in the Ontario school system for years, ran a private studio out of her home, and raised three children while she did it. In 1999 she moved her family to Illinois. She has taught in Hinsdale ever since.
Two countries, two school cultures, two generations of students. People assume the teaching had to change completely. Most of it did not.
What stayed the same
A child learning to read music in Ontario in the 1980s and a child learning in Illinois today are doing the same thing with the same hands. The notation has not changed. The instrument has not changed. The way a six-year-old responds when a passage is hard has not changed either.
Marian found that the core of the work travels. A student who slows down and plays a phrase honestly gets better. A student who races through the trouble spot does not. That was true on both sides of the border and it is still true now.
The habits she built in her early years held up. Posture first. Reading from the first lesson. A real relationship with the metronome. None of that needed a rewrite when the address changed.
What actually changed
The school systems were different, and that shaped how she thought about a private studio. In the Ontario classroom she taught music to whole rooms of children at once, many of whom had not chosen to be there. A home studio is the opposite. Every student in front of her chose to walk in.
That changed what she expected from a lesson. In a classroom, part of the job is keeping a room full of kids moving together. In a home studio, the job is to read one student closely and give them exactly what they need that week. She got to slow down and pay attention in a way a full classroom never allowed.
The other change was the families. A private student comes attached to a family that is paying for the lessons and watching the progress. She had to get good at the part of the work that is not music at all, which is communication with parents, clear scheduling, and honest conversations about what a year of study actually looks like.
What the move taught her about students
Moving a studio is a strange thing to do midway through a teaching life. It forced her to start over with a new set of families who did not know her. She had to earn trust again from the first lesson, the way she had at sixteen.
That turned out to be useful. It reminded her that no student arrives knowing the teacher is any good. The first weeks of any new relationship are spent showing a child that the lessons are worth their attention. She had stopped noticing that part of the work until she had to do it again from scratch in a new state.
She also learned that the things that keep a student playing are not regional. Music the student cares about. A teacher who notices when something is wrong. A family that supports the work without making it joyless. Those held in Ontario and they hold in Illinois.
Marian has taught two countries’ worth of children now. The accents changed and the school calendars changed. The thing that makes a student stay at the piano did not move an inch.