Working: the piano teacher
April 10, 2009 by Adriana Janovich
Filed under Stories
By COLLEEN FONTANA
UNLEASHED STAFF
Carole Franklin can’t remember a time when she couldn’t read music.
Having played piano since age 5, she feels like it’s something she’s always known.
“When I was 5, my brothers were taking lessons and I would tag along,” she says. “I wanted to be just like them.”
Now, more than four decades later, Franklin is sharing her love of music with children and adults in the Yakima Valley by teaching them the instrument she loves.
Teaching piano is a job she truly enjoys.
“I like that I can set my own schedule,” she says of teaching. With a series of half-hour lessons once a week, her schedule is flexible and can be adjusted easily.
Most importantly, though, she enjoys working closely with her students.
“It’s wonderful to see the kids progress,” she says. “Beginning step by step, they can eventually do things on their own, and it’s great to see that.”
Carole Franklin, 50, looks on as her student, Ali Sellsted plays piano during her lesson Tuesday night on one of the two pianos owned by Franklin.
Ali Sellsted has taken piano lessons from Franklin for about six years, starting in third grade. Now, at age 15, she remains Franklin’s student — and still enjoys it.
“I’ve always taken from her, and I have fun at her lessons,” Sellsted says.
Ali’s father, 51-year-old Tom Sellsted, regards music as something that should not be forced and admires Franklin’s style of teaching.
“Music is supposed to be fun, and Franklin knows that,” he says.
Franklin, 50, says her hope is that her students will fall in love with piano. She also says it’s rewarding when students come in because they want to and not just because their parents make them.
“The only thing I don’t like,” she says, “is when it’s obvious that the student is only taking (lessons) because mom and dad say so.”
Franklin’s teaching career began in college when another piano teacher was leaving town and wanted her to take over the studio. So far, Franklin has taught in Yakima for nearly 20 years.
She charges a monthly tuition of $60. And she says she would like to take on more students.
While Ali’s dad says he thinks piano “will be more a hobby than a career” for his daughter, he also says “she will always have the fundamentals that will stick with her.”
— Colleen Fontana is a member of the Yakima Herald-Republic’s Unleashed team. She attends Davis High School.
