Written by Sophia Stuart

The Tuesday before last, April 2nd, I sat down with our very own Orchestra teacher, Mrs. Samson. We talked about her outlook on music education, how she approaches teaching, and her own personal experiences in her first year teaching. In bold, are my own words and questions and in normal text, is Mrs. Samson’s own words, edited for clarity and length. 

What was your first experience with music?

When I was five, I took violin lessons. I do not think that they were not very memorable to me at five though. My first knowledgeable experience was in 6th grade. When I was like, “I’m going to choose violin a second time.” And that was the first time that I selected the violin. 

What’s your teaching philosophy going into this year?

My teaching philosophy is, and remains to be, the most important thing in any classroom is the culture of the classroom. If you don’t have culture, you don’t have a baseline of student investment and interest in the things you are teaching. 

In terms of music education, I think the most important thing is to create a classroom of advocates for music that when you students go off into the world and become doctors and lawyers and parents and cousins and whatever else you become in your lives that you will advocate for music and advocate for the arts. 

So if some young youngster comes across your path in 15 years and says, hey should I join the orchestra? You can be “yeah I had a fun time in orchestra.”

What do you love about music? What made you teach music education?

I really appreciated the culture that my orchestra and band director had up in my K-12 education. I met a lot of my really close friends through music and just the atmosphere, the encouragement and the connections. I felt that as I grew older, that’s what I wanted to provide for students to have that outlet and to have that space to be creative and have friends. 

What’s something you wished your students knew going into teaching everyday?

Is this more on a philosophical level or on a how to count quarter notes level?

If you have more than one thing you wish they knew, if you have a whole list, I’ll let you say whatever you need to, man. 

I think that the thing I wish I could say every single day is that regardless of all the talking and all the side chatter that happens every single day in every section, (nervous laughter from one of those who chatters every single day) I am truly grateful that they have friends in this orchestra and that they feel the need to connect to people because that’s the goal of everything. 

But I will never say that in class. 

Teachers don’t want to have to quiet students when they’re socializing with their friends. But I do wish to communicate that it’s very good that people have friends in the orchestra and feel the need to talk to friends. That’s fun. Philosophically. 

It’s philosophically fun. (Laughter) What’s your advice to anyone wanting to join our music program? You should. You’ll find lifelong friends. Maybe an instrument you like, maybe an instrument you hate. But friends for sure- and greater appreciation for the arts, I think. That’s why you should join the orchestra.

What would you say to anybody who would want to go into music in the future or teach music or something like that?

It’s really easy to get burnt out on things. Especially, I mean, in a lot of ways, just everything right? If you contribute or if you give 110%, you’re not going to have anything left for yourself. This is advice especially for music people, but also just in general, don’t burn yourself out. Let music be something that you enjoy. Don’t push it so far that you feel like you hate it, because it’s a great outlet and it’s a great way to connect to people. 

I think that for me going into music as a career, I had a really strong picture of why I wanted to do music and that changed a little bit. You know, originally I was like, “because it’s cool” and now I think, “because of culture and because I can shape the connections that people have with somebody that they might not have met if they weren’t in an orchestra.” 

But there’s a lot of ways that you can just keep pushing yourself and you should push yourself, but not to the point where you don’t like it anymore because that just defeats the whole purpose of it. Don’t let people push you to that point. Value yourself. I think that applies like all art, too. I think that there’s a really big obstacle in the way people don’t put enough value on self-care and being realistic with what you can commit to and all of that sort of, you know, fun stuff. 

They’re like, “you just need to keep working as hard as you can”, but you don’t. There are many cases in which you should work hard, but you should not work so hard that you are running yourself ragged and not able to do things that recharge your battery. As per the Centennial recharge… something Chargers. Go Chargers. 

Are you being forced to say that?

No! But I do think that at this school, I really appreciate that there is a- one of the things that were always told in our staff meetings is “What are the ways you can recharge? You know, what are the celebrations we can have? Despite the fact we have the SAT on Thursday, what can we celebrate? What can we look forward to?”

I really appreciate that there’s such a big focus on that because I think it’s very valuable to people and to teach for us as teachers but also teach students how to take time for themselves. 

Like taking a five minute nap before class on Friday or talking through the entire nap and making Sophia mad.

It’s not my fault the rest of them don’t have any classes to do. I have classes to survive, actually. So… fun questions! If you were not going to teach Orchestra and you still had to be a teacher, what subjects would you teach? 

Do I have to be a teacher in this case? Or can I just work in a school. 

You can just work in a school.

I have a fiery passion for helping students figure out what they’re going to do for college. I love research, and I love “you need on this date, you need to do this on this date, you know, make sure you do this”. I love college and career readiness sorts of things, building resumes, proofreadings. I love helping with that, and I like doing it too. But fortunately, I have a job and a college degree. 

I guess my next article is how will Mr. Chun respond to someone coming for his job. 

I would be assistant to the college and career counselor. 

Last question, what’s your current favorite artist? When you open up Spotify, what’s there?

Spotify Wrapped will tell you Sammy Rae and the Friends, which is… it’s kind of jazz. And also kind of funk. And a lot of things they do. It’s an all instrumental group, and a singer. So not all instrumental. 

But it’s just like a group of friends that started making music and now they tour and make music, which is really cool. 

I do think that it is of note, though, that my 5th favorite artist for 2 years in the running is Antonin Dvorak. He’s old and a composer. Two years in a row, 5th spot. 

You have a… not intense, but just an attachment to this guy. 

But why is it the fifth spot, two years in a row?

I don’t know, you can’t argue with Spotify.