Margaret Runaas finds Washington community supportive of arts

Margaret Runaas recently moved to rural Ainsworth with her husband Jonathan and now teaches private piano lessons at St. James Catholic Elementary School. She was born in Boone and grew up in Des Moines and Knoxville. When she is asked where she is from, she simply answers, ?central Iowa.?

Margaret studied piano performance at Wartburg, from which she graduated in 2009. She went on to graduate school in piano performance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, from which she graduated in May. Margaret said that she loved working with kids but knew that it would be difficult to teach piano in a school. She said those who teach music in school usually teach large choirs or bands instead of individual students.

Jonathan teaches music at St. James and also teaches choir at the Washington Junior High School. When he and Margaret moved to Washington this past summer, he asked St. James principal Teresa Beenblossom if she knew of a place where Margaret could give her piano lessons.

?She said, ?Would you like to teach here at the school??? Margaret said. ?That was a dream come true for me. You can get kids in the morning. You can take kids during recess time, and you can take them immediately after school.?

Margaret said she instructs a wide range of pupils from four-year-olds to adults.

?I love working with adults because they bring so much experience and so much desire to learn,? she said.

At a young age, Margaret was fairly certain that the piano would figure prominently in her future. When she was 3 years old, she liked to line up her stuffed animals on the piano, put a toy cell phone to her ear and pretend that she was calling them to tell them it was time for their piano lessons.

?Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and for all of that time I?ve had the desire to teach,? she said.

Margaret became a piano teacher at a very young age, when she was a freshman in high school. Under the direction of her mother, who was also a piano teacher, she opened a studio from which she gave lessons.

?I gave lessons mostly to students but also to an adult my mom?s age,? she said. ?This woman wanted lessons for her daughter, but when her daughter said she didn?t want to learn piano, the mother said, ?Well, I?ll take the lesson.??

Even though she was giving lessons in ninth grade, Margaret said it was not until her sophomore year when she became ?serious? about the piano. She started taking piano lessons from Karen Langstraat in Indianola. Before then, piano was just another fun thing to do. Langstraat instructed Margaret to practice two hours a day, which seemed unbelievable to Margaret at the time. In her undergraduate program at Wartburg, Margaret was expected to practice 20 hours per week. By the time she was in graduate school, she was playing the piano four hours a day.

When Jonathan heard about the job openings in Washington, he called his friend and former suitemate Joshua Evanovich for information about the community. Evanovich is a native of Washington and is an accomplished keyboardist and song writer.

?We got to hear from him about how nice a community it was before we visited,? Margaret said. ?One of the things that has impressed me is how supportive the community is of its students. Every student I teach has parents who are willing to help them practice and bring them to lessons whenever they need to be here. The whole community is very supportive of the arts, academic and athletic programs. As a piano teacher, it is an ideal place to work.?