-: Get into as many schools as you can.
Make connections with music teachers
and ask to observe in their rooms.
Ask to work with students, with small groups of students
or with individual students.
Talk to them.
Build relationships with them.
Really, the best thing you can do
is just actually get into school
because the School of Music
and the Music Education Program here is wonderful,
and I'm so happy I got to do it and go through the process.
But there's not time to teach you everything.
So get into classrooms so you can experience
the administrative stuff,
so you can experience what it's really like
to have a choir of 50 students in front of you every day
or to have a choir of 40 students
that are doing a really nice job
and three students who are trying to beat each other up
and one student that can't match pitch
and one student that has special needs
that can't dance in show choir.
Just get into real experiences and real settings.
So you need a degree
and you need proof that you have a degree.
And then, you also need to get a state teaching license.
And for different states, that means different things.
In the state of Indiana, you have to have your license
and background checks and CPR training.
Additionally, if you have some sort of online portfolio,
that's really helpful so you have artifacts
and you have examples to say,
"Well, I've done this in a school
"and this is what I learned from that,"
or "I've done this in a school and it wasn't great,
"but I know that that was learning experience for me
"and I would like to continue doing that."
The more examples that you have, the better.
That you can show them.
Show them a video of you conducting or you teaching.
That would be wonderful.
Talk to people a lot.
Do as many mock interviews as you can.
When you get into schools
and make connections with teachers, you are also inevitably
going to make connections with principals.
And expand your horizons.
Do something you never thought you would do.
That's how I ended up in middle school
and it's really wonderful.