Waking up early, studying throughout the night, stacked with academic workload – students often experience these changes once getting back into the flow of school. It’s not only the students who are faced with these challenges; new school staff have their own set of trials.
Among those school staff include the new assistant choir director Mr. Jake Taylor, a former educator at the university level. For Mr. Taylor, the shift from teaching college to high school students has differences in the extent of family involvement in choir.
“[In high school], we have students for several years and get to know families…and be [in a] little bit bigger part of their life,” Mr. Taylor said. “It’s also kind of neat to get to know students, and not just the student, but their families and places like [in] choir.”
Whether it’s teaching high school or college students, Mr. Taylor’s interest in music education runs deep. Growing up, he engaged in many group activities, with the most memorable one joining choir in junior year of high school.
“I really like the group dynamic – the team dynamic of [the] Choir I grew up [in],” Mr. Taylor said. “I grew up as a kid playing lots of sports like baseball…so working together as a team is something that really energizes me.”
Along with enjoying the teamwork in choir, Mr. Taylor also strives to provide a stable, rudimentary foundation for students to build upon. Music, like any other skill, requires constant practice and tailored teaching in order to reach its full potential.
“My job is really to…build their musical foundation so that they can really handle the fundamentals [and] as they progress, either in music here at Seven Lakes High School, or if they go on to do music for fun or for profession later in life,” Mr. Taylor said.
His dedication toward teaching music has clearly made an impact – senior Malachi Balakrishnan and sophomore Ana Macesanu note his detailed and group-oriented approach in teaching.
“He focuses more on the learning aspect,” Balakrishnan said. “He’s…group-focused in the sense that he wants everyone to sound blended…instead of going to the words directly…we sing the song on like a neutral syllable instead of the words, and it helps a lot with technique.”
“Some things that he did was [that] he…helped us with…stressing the beginning of the measures and like important words, and also working on, like pickups to make it more dramatic,” Macesanu said.
Other than his fervent passion for teaching, Mr. Taylor also looks forward to the diversity and school spirit of Seven Lakes.
“You…step in these hallways, and it’s like being in some international airport somewhere: [there are] just people from all over the world,” Mr. Taylor said. “I hate wearing red…so I’m looking forward to wearing more blue and getting all the red out of my closet.”
