Teaching is an opportunity to help someone grow. Working with young students means more than just teaching the content, it's also about teaching them important life skills and guiding them down the right path in life to succeed. I believe teaching music is an opportunity to expose students to many different techniques and ideas. Music can be used to teach students emotions and be an outlet for them to express themselves. Music also creates an opportunity for students to learn important life skills such as problem solving, resilience, and working with others. It's my job as a teacher to give students everything they need to succeed at their instruments and learn from it.

My music teacher identity is primarily based on my own experiences in music. A large part of the appeal to music is the community that it builds. Music draws people together through a shared love and this is something that greatly impacted me growing up. This community brings all types of people together who share a love of music and then you create something beautiful out of it.

Every student prefers to learn differently and succeeds through the use of different techniques. As an educator it is my job to be flexible and adaptable to however they are best set up to succeed. Even after school you are never done learning, especially from your students. It's important to understand this because at the end of the day the goal is to have your students succeed to their fullest potential. The best way to reach this goal is to listen to the way your students feel they learn best and being flexible and understanding of this.

One of the most important parts of being a teacher is being adaptable to your students' needs and interests. Students will be more interested and motivated to succeed if they feel connected to the curriculum. Paying attention to and acknowledging your students' interests in music and incorporating it into everyday learning is a great way to allow them to learn how they want to and keep them involved in class. Every student has a different background and this is something that you need to be understanding of as a teacher. We don’t know what a student does outside of school and music can be expensive and time consuming. It's important to remain conscious of this fact when working with students.

Something I struggle with as both a student and a teacher is being comfortable with the uncomfortable. As I gain more experience and confidence in my knowledge this is something that will certainly improve. This is something that I will continue to work on as I continue to learn by just remembering we all make mistakes and what matters is how we learn from them.