THE IMPORTANCE OF MY TEACHERS
“I became a teacher because of my teachers. It's interesting to me because I have some colleagues who didn't have the same connections with their teachers as I did and I often wonder, ‘How did they become teachers?’ I think it's bizarre that they didn't have that connection with any of them (…) But I had a group of teachers my whole life. At first I thought it was just my high school teachers. And then, when I became a teacher, I thought to myself, ‘Is it just my high school teachers?’ Because my wife is a middle school teacher (….) Oftentimes kids will forget their teachers once they're on to the new teachers, so they'll forget their middle school teachers—not altogether, but they'll forget how important they were. They'll forget the things that they did for them once they connect with another teacher in their high school years, or they'll forget their elementary school teachers once they connect with their middle school teachers.”
“But I thought to myself, ‘Was it just my high school teachers?’ I went back, and I was like, ‘No, I have a teacher that I've connected with at every grade level that loved me and cared about me, and who really took me under their wing.’ And they were all strong women and very secure feminist men. And it was really cool.”
“I'm still friends with them. I've sung at their children's weddings. We still have dinners, monthly.”
“I send them text messages.”
“My office is designed around [things from my old teachers]. My Music teacher had a recliner and I have a beanbag that size in my office. She had a green lamp. So do I. I still have the bookmark that my English teacher gave me in my senior year. I have it right here. I just took a picture of it last week and I texted it to her (…) I still have my choir folder from high school right here and I stole all of the music that I liked. That was my favorite music from my teacher. I tell them constantly.”
“I have a trauma background. I often think my teachers saved my life. And I think, and I have often said, the best way that I could have ever paid it forward was to do [that] for my students—or be there, or be a figure for my students that my teachers were for me.”
“ So I became a teacher because of my teachers.”
BECOMING A MUSIC TEACHER IN THIS SCHOOL
“I kind of knew that I would be good at it and I knew that that's what I wanted to do. I didn't know what I was going to teach, because there are a couple of things that I could have done. But I knew that Music—I knew that I was good at it and I knew that it was a passion of mine. So then I knew it was going to be Music or it was going to be English. And so I married an English teacher and I became a Music teacher.”
“So I've been teaching for twenty years. I love it. I have been teaching Music. I've taught middle school for the entire duration and for the last fifteen I've taught middle school and high school. I've taught in 2 districts. The first district I taught in (…) I did middle school (…) In 2009 we had four Music teachers cut. And then in 2010 we had four more Music teachers cut. I was in that cohort. So then I found myself [here].”