"I taught at all levels in the public schools for 36 years. There are a lot of things I learned the hard way that I wish somebody had told me when I was an undergraduate—for example, that you can achieve great things at all levels, not just high school. I had to develop a vision for what students at all levels can achieve and search out resources. There are also organizational tidbits that nobody ever tells you, like what you need to know when you take a choir out of the school to perform. These are the kinds of things I give my students to make their road easier."
"Although I'm primarily a choral person, I also started kids on brass instruments, taught strings, and taught music technology. So music education students need to be prepared to teach a lot of things well. My objective is to give them the tools they need to be resilient and succeed in all educational scenarios. I want my students to be lifelong learners, because the more we teach, the more we realize what we don't know. And it's important to keep learning the art of teaching and to be an excited learner."
"It's really exciting to observe student teachers and see them connect with a class in the making of music and in the teaching of music. If my students at Berklee can be passionate about music and share their passion, they can teach for a thousand years and never burn out. For teaching is the most noble of all professions. You can change thousands of lives during the course of your career and affect those lives into adulthood."
"In my senior year in high school, our choral conductor chose me to be the student conductor. Once I got on the podium I knew I'd found my niche and thought, 'I'm going to do this for the rest of my life.' If the conductor had been the kind of teacher who never let a student do anything, I never would have found that niche. So letting students develop to their greatest potential has always been part of my teaching. The focus is on the student."
