Miss Esslinger is a veteran of Greater Latrobe High School, with this being her second year. She has always loved singing. She began her musicianship journey as a violinist and a pianist. “Music was always a little bit challenging for me. And so I would have to work through it. And when I got to the part where I was successful at a task, it made me feel very fulfilled,”she said.
The challenge she had with music is what led her to love it. Becoming a teacher was something that the teachers she had throughout her youth helped her realize she strived to do. “I became a teacher because of other teachers. So I had some really inspirational teachers, music teachers specifically, in middle and high school who just took me under their wing.” The thoughtfulness of her teachers in middle and hig h school was the reason she decided to become a teacher. The generosity they showed her by being there for her at all times compelled her to do the same.
Miss Esslinger spent her college years studying at Penn State University. She studied to get her master’s in music education and her bachelor’s in musical performance.
Greater Latrobe is the first school that she has taught at. She instantly loved how the school ran and felt that this would be her second home.
“I’ve found a lot of support. The foundation is really wonderful,” said Esslinger.
Having this foundation made it a lot easier to focus on learning at school and how to become a fellow generation leader.
Her first year felt very successful to her. She really used her first year to learn how the students learned without putting much of her own intelligence into it. To be generation leading, she realized that although her first year felt successful, there were a couple of factors she wished could have a little bit of a change.
One major improvement is getting more people into the music department. The more students that join the choir, raises up her engagement and excitement in teaching, while the students who have been there in the music department will be filled with a new kind of excitement that will reignite their love for music. “I would like to see our numbers continue to grow. So, we’re up by about ten students this year, but I would like to see those numbers continuing to increase in the classes I teach, of course, but also in the music department in general,” she said.
She also expressed that she wishes to get the music hallway out of its little shell, it seems to be in. The F hallway is tucked back in a far corner of the school, where only people in art classes and music classes walk to. The music hallway is all the way at the end. This leads to it really only being visited by the occasional passing student, which is very sparse, and the music students. She really wishes for this to change. “I think it’s really important for choirs to be visible. Really often, I’ll ask the students who are coming down to help me with something if they know much about our music programs we have for students, and I frequently get the response that they have never even been down here in the F-wing, which is crazy to me, as it’s a part of the building. So, I think if we can get out of our little F-wing bubble into the school a little bit more and into the community, I think that helps make us visible,” Esslinger said.
Although she wants to see a change in the choir’s visibility, she does believe last year showed that the choirs have been working on this for some time and try to immerse themselves the best they can. “Things that we have been doing, like getting to sing the Star Spangled Banner and alma mater at homecoming, and singing/shouting in the homecoming parade, as well as Valentine’s Day grams, which are a very wonderful way to get many smaller groups in the school to see our work.”
Along with the great things the choir did to immerse themselves beforehand that Miss Esslinger still feels have a big impact.
There were many other things from her first year that she wants to keep relatively the same. One thing is the time she takes picking the choir’s music selection. “Last year, I spent a lot of time picking repertoire. Because that is what you spend the most time working on. And so I try to be very, very thoughtful and diligent in picking music that has variety in tempo, in speed, in language and time period, as well as in the composer. Along with including variations of African American composers, female composers, and composers whose stories may not otherwise be heard in the Greater Latrobe culture.”
Warm-ups have always been in her strong suit. While she believes there is always room for improvement with them, she also does a good job at ensuring her students’ voices are as healthy as possible. “I’ve definitely become more thoughtful with how I structure warm-ups. So our choral warm-ups typically look like some sort of physical engagement. And that simply might just be a stretch. It might be some sort of body percussion.” Body percussion can simply be tapping the beat of something on your chest or it can go deeper with using things like lip trills to create a sound and melodic movement whilst using the body and not the voice.
One thing that she found to be different during her first year here that has grown on her is the Greater Latrobe block schedule. “I never expected to teach on a block schedule, so that was something that was new for me to learn how to do. And now I really like it. I think that we can keep the momentum going for those 85 minutes really well if we are thoughtful about pacing.”
One last thing that she talked about was what changes she wants to see in herself. “We as people, students and teachers alike, are always growing and are always learning, and are always trying to find new and improved ways of doing things. So I hope to never do the exact same thing that I did one year for another for the next thirty years. I hope to always find ways to better myself and my classroom, even through small changes and especially through big ones when I come across the ability to make a change,” she said.
One of Miss Esslinger’s students Grace Jamieson knows a good amount about how Miss Esslinger runs her classroom, as she has had two choir teachers throughout high school. She got to experience not only her teaching style but also the person who came before her. “Chamber choir is my favorite class because of the environment. When you walk in, everyone is excited and happy! Miss Esslinger is lively and makes us all feel welcome.” Her students view her as a light in the music department and hope she knows how much she is loved by them. They feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to be her first-ever students.
From year one to year two, Miss Esslinger has seen change that not only she has experienced, but also largely that she has changed firsthand to ensure her classroom and teaching environment is the best environment possible. She has also seen change through being able to find more events for her choir to attend.
Miss Esslinger seems to have made a lot of amazing changes in her second year as a teacher, while also having a lot of strong things from her first year; she didn’t need to change. She hopes that the changes never stop and that she can continue to find ways to better herself and her students year after year during her time as a teacher.
