Teacher of the Week: Morgan Sturdevant Inspiring Kids to Explore Music
Morgan Sturdevant is in her ninth year teaching General Music and Chorus. She started her career at Chenango Forks and moved to Jennie F. Snap this year to teach sixth grade.
It was a full circle moment for her as she's a Union Endicott alumnus who fell in love with music in her early school years.
Sturdevant says, "I have loved music from an early age. I joined band in fifth grade, I joined chorus in fourth grade, and I started in musicals in sixth grade and I fell in love with musicals and theater."
Sturdevant helps teach kids the basics of singing, how to read sheet music, and other standard courses on music and instruments.
She hopes that by teaching kids about all different types of music, they will begin to find what they like.
"I like to send the kids off into the next phase of life, having heard of Beethoven and listened to some jazz music, and they've listened to The Planets by Gustav Holst, exposing them to a wide variety of things, because these kids aren't going to go out and seek these things. So if you expose them to it, they'll be more likely to go find it themselves later," says Sturdevant.
She says sharing her love of music and helping students explore new interests is one of the best parts of the job.
And it's easy because music is a door that is open to everyone.
Sturdevant said, "There's something in music for everybody, whether you like rap and hip hop, or do you like classical music, playing instruments and singing songs. And I like that."
She continued, "It's the universal language. Everybody has music all over the world and it's been around for so long. It's just so ingrained in our history as a nation and a world that I liked that everybody could be involved in music no matter what. "
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