Music lessons: violin, viola, piano, beginning guitar
I began teaching private lessons in 2001, and playing in pit orchestras for community theatre in 2002. I've worked with seniors and people with carpal tunnel syndrome, as well as young children. I'm not focused on any one particular teaching method, but as the Suzuki repertoire is pretty much standard for county and state Solo and Ensemble festivals, I use it as a starting point. I like introducing students to a wide variety of music styles, from movie soundtracks to Celtic to pop. For piano, I like Thompson and Bastien, but I'll work with whatever material the student has. For guitar, I prefer the student bring in whatever they want to learn, be it in standard notation or tablature.
I don't have a music degree. I began studying violin in elementary school in 1979 and began private lessons with a certified Suzuki teacher 2 years later. I switched to viola in high school, at which point my teacher suggested I audition for the Maryland Youth Symphony, which granted me the opportunity to tour Taiwan and Hong Kong as a performing musician. But when it was time to apply for college, I went "academic" and chose "pre"architecture instead of music for my major, and took classes in piano, guitar and theory as electives.
Academics: English, Math, Sciences
While preparing my portfolio for architecture school, I took archaeology classes from the anthropology department, as I was interested specifically in restoration architecture. But as I learned more about anthropology and its multidisciplinary nature, I took additional courses in human evolution, cross cultural anthropology, and spent a semester researching the development of creativity in the human mind. When all was said and done, I ended up with bachelors degrees in biology, which included studies in botany, biochemistry and microbiology; anthropology and art. I earned my 3 bachelors degrees in 6.5 years, graduating from UMCP in 1995. Throughout my time at the University of Maryland, I would tutor grade school students on Saturdays for a little pocket money, but it was a teaching assistantship for art theory class that helped me recognize the different ways of learning, and how some teaching methods work with some students better than others. I've also discovered that knowledge is interrelated -- who would have thought that my AFROTC training would help me teach time signatures in music class?
Since graduation, I worked full time in graphic design--desktop publishing, until 2001, when terrorists slaughtered a significant percentage of our clients. I still freelance on occasion, mainly for business development--proposals.
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