Maine Motif Issue 1, Vol. II (Fall, 2017) | Page 5

From the President
October 2017
Dear Maine Music Educators,
Welcome to the first edition of the Motif this year!  Many thanks to Heidi
Anderson who puts this publication together for MMEA.
It is my hope that you had a chance to relax, recharge and reflect this
summer. I hope you found some time for yourself, your family, and your
passions. I am the only teacher in my family and I am often reminded of
how lucky I am that I have the summer off by my siblings, parents and
extended family. As I have aged I have realized that rather than reacting
defensively to such a statement I am in agreement with them. I am
fortunate to have summers off to change up the routine and explore
different interests that seem to evade me from September to early June
annually. I am fortunate to have summer afternoons to walk with my
children, have lunch with friends and even have time to visit my parents on
the lake. Summers are a perk of our job and I hope you enjoyed yours.
Now that we are into October, it is my hope that your school year is off to a
good start! I suspect it is busy and there are some challenges but I hope you
are finding rewards as well. I try to remind myself often to step back and
reevaluate. Am I smiling and am I welcoming to all who enter my
classroom? If the answer is a no then I work to adjust my attitude and my
actions. There are so many reasons to be grateful and sometimes music is
one of the only positives in my students lives. Just recently one of my
students lost his mother unexpectedly; another student is a resident at the
local homeless shelter. These students sit shoulder to shoulder with others
who have no idea because together we are working to create music; the
work at hand overshadows our differences and our many challenges. Is that
not an awesome responsibility? In an exit interview, I had a senior tell me