To anyone interested in starting piano lessons with Leanne:
Hello. My name is May. I’m the mother of two kids who had piano lessons from Leanne from July 2014 to June 2015. My husband saw her piano teaching advertisement in Kijiji, and since she was a student from Western University where we work, we decided to try the free initial consultation/lesson from her.
From the first meeting, Leanne was professional, knowledgeable, and very understanding to our kids’specific needs. Our son was a complete beginner who had rather a short attention span. When we started the lessons, I was not even sure that he would make it through a 30-minute lesson. For him, Leanne made each lesson fun for him in order to keep his attention. They played games together; my son’s favourite were rhythm cards and seeking-object-with-high/low-notes (you’ll have to ask Leanne for what these are about!).
Our daughter, on the other hand, had one year of lessons prior to seeing Leanne, but encountered an obstacle shortly after lessons started with Leanne. She could play okay if it was one hand at a time, but both hands together seemed to give her a mental blockage and brought quite a few teary moments to the lessons. Leanne, through this ordeal, remained calm, positive and encouraging with our daughter. And she did find a way to gradually remove our daughter’s mental blockage by handpicking pieces of music that worked very well for transitioning from one-hand to two-hand play.
As you can see, Leanne was great with our beginner and novice kids. If you are more interested in piano at a higher level, Leanne is more than capable of teaching students at a high level because she is an accomplished pianist herself and I have seen another student of Leanne play at the end-of-year recital. The student was only about 8 or 9 years old, but she had completely memorized 4-5 different pieces of music and played them all very well.
If it wasn’t for Leanne’s master’s study at University of Toronto, I am sure that we would have continued piano lessons with her. Our kids really liked her.
Kind regards,
May Tajima
Mom of 2 kids who had lessons from Leanne
London, Ontario
Leanne started teaching piano when my daughter was 4.5 yrs old and I was happy to see how comfortable my daughter felt with Leanne from the start and how much she has learned from her. My daughter looks forward to Leanne coming to our house every week for piano lessons. Leanne is very good and patient, and she has a lot of creative ways of engaging kids and helping them focus, learn and have fun at the same time. She is an excellent piano teacher. I highly recommend!
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Jenny Wong
Our 7 year old daughter was taught by Leanne for her grade 2 piano. We found that Leanne was able to motivate our daughter to want to play and practice because she wanted to impress her skill set went up rapidly under Leanne's teaching. Leane was able to do exactly what we wanted motivate our daughter and make her love the piano, and now she does. Thank you Leanne.
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Leon Koch
She is a great teacher who is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about her students. Thank you!
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Danielle DiPaola