Choose to Teach - June 2023

Yeah, there have been days, especially in that first year of teaching, where I was like, all right, maybe I should go find a remote job like all my other friends and work from home and, you know, play video games while I'm supposed to be working or something like that. So there have definitely been days I wanted to quit the profession. I got through it, I think by talking to the students and seeing how they are excited about music making and seeing how meaningful it is to them. And I think even through this year, those thoughts have occurred. Maybe I could be doing something else with my time or with my resources, but then I see kids going to audition for music school. And I see kids going to audition for drum core and for youth orchestra and for, I have a tenor saxophone player that just sang in the musical at our school, as like, in Greece. He was Teen Angel in Greece and just seeing them enjoy musical experiences like that, it reminds me of my high school experience and how grateful I was for that. So that's really kept me going. I want to, I want to help make a program where kids can feel empowered to go and do the music making once they leave my program. You know, I don't want it to stop when they graduate from Lebanon.