Teacher Interview with Miss Kendra Chow Conducted February 24th 2017
Over the February reading week, I had the pleasure of conducting an interview with my high school music teacher, Miss Chow, who received her BMus with Honours Specialization in Music Education at Western University. She currently works with the HDSB school board at Craig Kielburger Secondary School, teaching both voice and instrumental classes. I am very fortunate to have had Miss Chow as a teacher in high school from grade 10 through 12, and as a private voice teacher from 2015 to 2016. So much of who I am was influenced by how wonderful of a role model she was to me, and I can never thank her enough for igniting my love and passion for music.
Getting to speak with Miss Chow was an awesome experience. I loved listening to her stories: how she got to where she is now, what inspires her, and what she's learned, seen, and experienced in her years of teaching. We spent a good hour just having a chat, and it really opened my eyes to a whole world of possibilities when it comes to music education. I wish I could cover it all, but you can find the condensed version here:
There were two main things that I really took from this interview:
1) Teachers have the most profound, lasting impression on their students. Even teachers are a product of all the teachers that came before them.
Talking to Miss Chow really put into perspective that teachers, just as any of us, were once students. There has always been a teacher/mentor to guide us to where we are now. From my interview, I learned so much about what background she was coming from and how much that affects who she is today. I posed the question "what are you most thankful for in terms of your whole musical life, and teaching, and being a student... what are you most thankful for of all of your experiences?"
Her response was how grateful she was for all the teachers in her life: "I think that everything - the way I am now and the way that I teach and my philosophy, that's all inspired. I don't think I came up with that on my own... the other aspects of teaching is all drawn from the teachers that I had... In terms of what I feel is the most important of part of when I was a student and all of that is the teachers... To be able to see from different perspectives, to be able to see past what music is, to be able to know how to inspire students, that was all inspired by people that were in my life, teachers that were in my life."
I feel like a lot of us in our class are here in this class "Introduction to Music Education" now because of teachers who have inspired us. Sometimes, we forget that our teachers have had equally as influential people in their lives that shaped them into who they are. For me, it's really sad to think that there are teachers out there somewhere that negatively influence students' lives. After all, not every teacher in the world is a great one. Just seeing how much my own teacher, who has inspired so much of my life, has been affected by her own personal teachers is just a testament to how important a teacher is in people's lives. Teachers shape who we are, help dictate the kinds of people we grow up into. If we want the world to be full of sensitive, kind, and caring people, we first as teachers must reflect that behaviour to our students. If we can model that behaviour, our teaching will inspire others to instil that same compassion and positivity to their students. Everything teachers do has such an impact on their students, and the resulting world that these students create. To me, that is a very beautiful, amazing thing.
2) Music education is so much more than just learning "how to play music". It's about learning a tool box of skills that people can use for the rest of their life. One reoccurring theme that I noticed through my interview with Miss Chow was despite the fact that her main teachable is music, it wasn't so much about the music she was teaching, but the life lessons and skills students learn in the music classroom that can be applied everywhere else. She said, "A lot of what I teach is to give students the tools that help them become better musicians as a whole, but also helps them to become more well rounded people as they move forward in society."
I think that lately, in our society, the arts are under fire. They're treated as less important, irrelevant, and almost unnecessary in comparison to core subjects like math and science. Think about it, high school students are required to take math for 3 years, science for 2 years. Arts? They only need one arts credit to graduate from high school. Along with society's ever prevalent impression that the arts are 'not as good' as STEM subjects, not many people learn the benefits of a music education. What I learned from Miss Chow is that music is so much more than learning to play an instrument, or learning to sing. It's more than just scales, intervals, and arpeggios. It's life.
Music encompasses so many skills that we take with us for the rest of our lives, and for the most part they instil something beautiful in people. Miss Chow said herself, "[Teachers] see students on a day to day basis, changing in different ways... changing in level of confidence, courage... but also as just people. Their outlook on life changes, their interactions with one another changes."
Students learn so much about themselves in music. I remember who I was at the beginning of high school and who I was at the end. I spent so much of that time engrossed in music and the arts, and it really changed who I was, and I'm so much better off because of that. Music builds confidence, community, respect, and passion. Teachers see it over and over again, "Combined with, you know, encouraging them to open up; combined with all these activities where they're kind of forced to step outside their comfort zone... I see a lot of the students gaining confidence and being able to handle themselves a little bit better in various situations."
Music education has such a great impact on people that follows them into other paths of lives: doctors, lawyers, engineers, just to name a few. I've always wanted to be a teacher to inspire people, to create a world where people are successful, strong, passionate, and believe in their own worth and beauty. I think that music is such a great medium for that, and I see that same passion, that same drive to share that within so many of the music teachers I've met. If I could inspire even just one student the way my teachers have inspired me, and help build a student's character just like so many teachers have build mine, I would be the happiest girl alive.
Overall, there was so much in my teacher interview that I could talk about forever, but these are two of the main things that spoke to me; moved me to tears really. I will always be thankful for all the teachers I've had in my life, and I'm thankful to all the teachers that made them the person they are when I met them. Teachers are some of the most underrated people in the world, and I hope that one day at a time, I can pay forward all their hard work by reflecting it in my own life.