I'm passionate about education because of my mother. She is a middle school educator in the St. Louis area. Growing up, I watched her build relationships with her students and make sure that they knew that she was more concerned about their well-being than their grades. That's not to say she just threw all classwork out the window. If anything, she's one of the most structured and serious teachers I've ever seen. Even with that rigidness, she nurtured her students in a way that most teachers didn't. My mother was the teacher that would drive kids home when their parents couldn't make it from work. She was the teacher who raised money and found sponsors for field trips when the lower-income schools she taught at wouldn't fund them. She was the teacher who spent countless hours at games, recitals, and performances to support her students because, oftentimes, she was the only support they had. This is the example I grew up watching and I knew very early on, this is the person I wanted to be. While I have attended the same school where my mother worked, she was never my own teacher. I had my own set of people who I looked up to. The most recent one that I would say impacted my career aspirations was my last choir teacher, Heidi Buch. In 2021, I walked into the choir classroom to find my most recent choir teacher, Ms. Buch. I had never been so relieved. In 2021-2023, she took the dying choir classes and turned them into a flourishing program. I watched her plan and prep shows, make concert plans with college choirs, market towards the middle schoolers to boost our numbers, etc. She turned something so broken into a beautiful program. In the time that I was under her amazing leadership, we had many conversations about where I wanted to go, as far as my participation in music. Time and time again, she urged me to consider being a choir director myself. Ms. Buch saw the potential I had, as she was the one who watched me take on leadership roles in group projects and rehearsal times. During our final concert of the year, Ms. Buch had sent the Honors Chamber Choir to the choir room to rehearse while she practiced with a younger choir in the auditorium. While we rehearsed, I ended up conducting a song called Mon-ke-ya. When we were finished, my classmates were ecstatic and told me that I should conduct that song during the concert. Now, I had never conducted a real choir before, let alone at a concert, but I told them that if they could convince Ms. Buch to let me conduct it, I would. She came and found me right before the concert and asked me to show her what my conducting looked like. I gave it my all and she let me conduct that song during the official concert. If she had never given me the opportunity, I would have never decided to switch my major and I probably would be stuck in a Pharmacy job that held no significance to me. She and my mother are the reason why I am where I am.

The person that has influenced how I've shaped my next path in life was my high school choir teacher, Heidi Buch. She's a 26-year-old choir director who teaches at O'Fallon Township High School; the high school I attended. From 2019 to 2021, I had a different choir teacher, Jodi Jones, and she was nothing short of a mess. Unorganized and chaotic, she would waste time in class, not teaching the fundamentals of choral singing. She managed to kill the love of singing for so many of my peers. Most of the people I started singing with quit, but I decided to ride it out because I did love music and I didn't want to let her take that from me. In 2021, I walked into the choir classroom to find my most recent choir teacher, Ms. Buch. I had never been so relieved. In 2021-2023, she took the dying choir classes and turned them into a flourishing program. I watched her plan and prep shows, make concert plans with college choirs, market towards the middle schoolers to boost our numbers, etc. She turned something so broken into a beautiful program. In the time that I was under her amazing leadership, we had many conversations about where I wanted to go, as far as my participation in music. Time and time again, she urged me to consider being a choir director myself. Ms. Buch saw the potential I had, as she was the one who watched me take on leadership roles in group projects and rehearsal times. During our final concert of the year, Ms. Buch had sent the Honors Chamber Choir to the choir room to rehearse while she practiced with a younger choir in the auditorium. While we rehearsed, I ended up conducting a song called Mon-ke-ya. When we were finished, my classmates were ecstatic and told me that I should conduct that song during the concert. Now, I had never conducted a real choir before, let alone at a concert, but I told them that if they could convince Ms. Buch to let me conduct it, I would. She came and found me right before the concert and asked me to show her what my conducting looked like. I gave it my all and she let me conduct that song during the official concert. If she had never given me the opportunity, I would have never decided to switch my major and I probably would be stuck in a Pharmacy job that held no significance to me. Conducting that song as a senior during that concert was my favorite experience in the arts because it showed me all of what I was capable of.