All students, regardless of their natural abilities, backgrounds, or starting points, are capable of growth and success. There are two words that encapsulate my teaching philosophy: empower and enable.

To empower students, we give them opportunities in the classroom. That’s not to say that classroom management is invalid or nonexistent, but quite the opposite. Your expectations are so firmly set in place that the students feel overwhelmingly comfortable knowing that your classroom is a space where they are structured, safe, and, most importantly, held accountable for their actions. That allows students to take control of their actions and, in turn, the class. The students, in having control of your class, control how quickly we rehearse in the music classroom and how quickly we can move towards teaching depth and understanding instead of just breadth and memorization.

When you earn students’ respect and they buy into your class, you can begin to enable them. Enabling someone often has a negative connotation. I want to reframe the idea as something done to help develop someone. Giving students agency and choice Differentiation for a common goal. For example, you may choose a piece of music that can challenge students while having rewritten parts available for less developed students, or you may send certain students with a section leader to work on a certain skill or piece of music during rehearsal. Both of these

The biggest aspect of my teaching philosophy is that regardless of the student or situation, I will strive to make sure that all of my students are empowered and enabled, but more importantly, that they are allowed to be people first and students second.