During my first year of service, I saw my personal artistry and teaching artistry as separate practices...[but] I’ve recently started to reconcile my personal artistry and teaching artistry, noticing that the concepts in the lessons I teach spring out of the ideas that drive my personal practice.
Part of studying Phillis Wheatley is studying art as a form of belonging and agency...I want my students to see their own writing as a way to make themselves at home, even when in a school, or a class, or a community that may not be a comfortable place.
Here, there are no grades or rubrics, just time and materials to try and fail, to readjust and discover.
Participating in a service year has given me the space to identify my own purpose for teaching music, and how my teaching and my artistry are connected.