Get to Know Mr. Henry

It's such a pleasure to get Henry Music & Arts going, and I can't wait to share what we have in store! 

I've been itching to get back into teaching music. As much as I've loved and still love teaching English, my teaching career began humbly in music. As an American from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I was first plunged into teaching drums privately when Hurricane Katrina destroyed everything in my area in 2005. I was sixteen years old at the time, and, with my return-to-school date a mystery and my fast-food job totally obliterated by floodwater, I decided to answer an ad recommended to me by a bandmate who worked in a music store. Like many locals, the drum teacher at this shop returned home to find it destroyed and chose to move away. So, while I had never taught before, enrolled students needed a teacher, and I took that opportunity. 

I fumbled through my first few - slowly handwriting notes sloppily on bar lines while singing to myself what I was trying to communicate. Some students even gave it to me hard, suggesting I "get a better system" or "develop a curriculum" with expectations and goals. While I had enough chops for my age, teaching was something I genuinely didn't understand. 

So, once I returned to school, I asked for advice from my band directors and took notes on what I thought worked from my classroom teachers. Still, I was a kid who thought, "The best teachers are the nicest teachers." It still took me a while to realize that not only was I wrong, but that being a good teacher was actually a great balancing act: motivating through discipline but maintaining enough empathy to know when you're pushing students too hard - understanding their level of dedication and keeping the learning environment comfortable while still respectful. The best teachers, it turns out, are people with whom you share mutual admiration and respect. The best teachers I've ever had possessed these qualities, and I still apply this system flexibly in my own lessons. 

I taught in this shop for several years before teaching at a collection of local private studios. I ended up making my biggest impact, I feel, at Myhres School of Music in Biloxi. In this place, coworkers and students became family, and many of them worked and studied there for so many years that even their own children started either taking lessons or working there as instructors themselves. This school is still around, and I admire these people greatly. 

Since moving to Japan in 2018, I've been teaching English and loving doing so. Through all the kinds of centers, schools, and students I've taught, I've learned so much about teaching that working in my hometown never taught me, and I've developed a method and confidence I never knew I could have. Like in music, all students have a reason or motivation to study. Whether it's just to pass a test or develop a new life in a new country, studying another language doesn't have to be torture. I'm still proud of my ability to maintain a comfortable classroom environment where learning can happen, without judgment, only conquering the next steps together to climb the ladder of the students' goals. 

The same smiling face I saw on a kid who couldn't wait to tell me he had finally developed the technique to play a double-stroke roll is, to me, a similar brightness found in a student who couldn't wait to show me their EIKEN score or that they got into their number one choice of junior high school. "Now I can keep studying art and go to the same school as my friends! It's a miracle!" Nope, no miracle. It took hard work and dedication, and a nudge in the right direction is sometimes all anyone needs to realize that self-discovery is their real gift, and a good teacher knows to ask more questions than actually give answers. 

Can't wait to see you out there, everyone! -RH