Ms. Jones

In my opinion, compassion is one of the most important qualities that a teacher can have.  It has been my experience that students learn the best when they feel a connection to the teacher that is in the front of the classroom.  This experience came to me during my sophomore year of high school, when Ms. Jones stepped in as the new choir director of my high school.  From the moment I entered her classroom, I could just feel that Ms. Jones was going to be different from the majority of teachers that I have had during my lifetime.  She was genuine, classy, and most of all, compassionate.  Her passion for choral music was obvious to anyone who took choir that year. She loved to sing, and she loved even more to teach singing.  It was not only her goal to make all of her students receive a passing grade in choir; she truly wished that each and every soul in the room could feel the beauty of choral music and learn alongside her the joys of high school choir.  She took the time to know her students, inquiring about their lives and passions outside of music, and she truly cared about the answers that they gave.  She specialized her teaching to her choir, making every lesson interesting and even allowing the students to choose some of their own repertoire. This was a very effective strategy: the entire class absolutely loved coming to choir.  Because of Ms. Jones, I was even personally inspired to pursue music further, and today I attend one of the most prestigious choral music schools in the country.  Compassion for students is lacking in many cases this day and age, and in order to better our teaching and education in America, we must all learn from teachers like Ms. Jones who truly care about the students that they teach.