Music To My Ears by Makaela

Music To My Ears by Makaela - July 2014 Scholarship Essay

Imagine that you are walking in a community park and you see children playing on the equipment, but you turn your head a see a brown haired little girl standing on the stairs singing and dancing as if this were her own personal theatre. That little girl was me; anything that resembled a stage, I was up on it singing and creating my own shows for anyone who would watch me. I have always loved music and found singing to be the sweetest relief in my life. I never knew that music would influence me as much as it did, nor did I know that my choir director in high school would change the way that I looked at not only music education, but life itself.

At my high school in Kansas, our choir was very well respected and highly successful due to the hard work of Mrs. Laura VanLuween, we called her Coach V for short. She may have only stood a heaping 5'0, but she was mighty enough to hold her own. She worked choirs until they were singing in a way that would make angels stop and listen. The music she picked was always majestic and she wasn't only teaching us the fundamentals of proper singing, but how to take the life we have been given and make something of it. I remember her working my choir on a two second chord for thirty minutes, and then only pausing to tell us that our voices were a gift and we should sing with everything in us. She made me believe that music is part of life and if we don't have music in our heart, we are truly lost. Anyone can teach someone how to spell, or read and write, but to teach someone to feel and show that emotion through vibrations through the air, is an art form.

Not only was Coach V an exceptional teacher, but she she had compassion for all of her students and cared for them each. My junior year, one of my best friends was considering ending her life. This not only upset me, but put me in a moral dilemma. Who can I tell? I ended up turning to Coach V. She listened to me with an ear of sympathy and had words of wisdom. And I feel like this compassion towards me and my fellow students made her stand out as an educator. She cared about her students in a way that a mother cares for her children. She was a role model that I aspired to be like in my future endeavors.

The education I received in that classroom was something that can't be written on a page; it is in my heart when I hear the wind whistle or when I hum my favorite song. Music is what I was there to learn, but I took so much more from Coach V. She showed me a new path through her teachings, and she did all of this in five inch pumps! She was truly an inspiration and I am eternally grateful for the new view on education and life that she enlightened me with. "Life is too short, so sing for today!" -Coach V.