Kayla's Blog

Kayla Sealy, music major at UAB and member of MYO, has written a three-part series on her career goals. I hope we can make Scrollworks into the kind of school where she'd like to work:

I’d like to teach elementary through high school kids. If I was still interested in doing so (and had time), what if I could also teach basic music theory and/or music history classes to these students? What if I could work with kids in playing in chamber ensembles? What if I could teach some kids who wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to take music lessons because they couldn’t afford it?

Often, I will read articles about how the audiences for orchestras (and all classical music) lack having younger people in attendance (in addition to my own observations when I attend concerts). To me, it seems like the best way to get more people interested in attending those sorts of things is to have them learn about classical music by doing it themselves. In teaching, I wouldn’t (and don’t) have a goal for all of my students to go and be music majors and have some sort of music career, but for them just to enjoy music. They can continue playing their instrument for the rest of their lives if they want to, they would have more of an appreciation for and interest in classical music by having done some themselves, they can go and have other careers, they can come to concerts just because they enjoy it (not because it would somehow make them look better in the eyes of others that they went to a cultural event of some sort).