Reflections on returning to teaching, choosing to be present, and whether centralized decisions reflect what schools need.
The last few years have been one for the books.
After nearly fourteen years in Nashville, I moved back to Florida in 2020. I continued touring through the end of 2023, and performing on the road remained my primary source of income. It was a career I had spent years building, filled with experiences and relationships I will always value.
Then, in 2023, I became a dad.
Before my daughter was born, I had watched fellow musicians navigate touring while raising families. Their children were older, but the challenges were still there: exhausting travel, stretches away from home, and important dates and events that happened while they were somewhere else.
I respected the effort they made to provide for their families and stay connected. Watching them also helped me understand what I would want if I ever became a parent.
By the time fatherhood arrived for me, I had already enjoyed more than twenty years of performing and pursuing professional opportunities. In some ways, I had done things in the opposite order from friends who were raising children earlier in their careers. I had spent those years saying yes to travel, shows, and experiences that would have been harder to manage with a young family.
Now I wanted to be home.
I wanted to share the responsibilities, know the routines, and be present for the ordinary days as well as the milestones. Making that choice meant rethinking how I earned a living.
Returning to the classroom offered a possibility I could feel excited about.
A future I could picture
Teaching had been part of my professional life long before Nashville. The years since had given me more to bring back: experience performing, composing, arranging, collaborating, and making a living in music.
An opportunity at a local K–8 charter school seemed to bring several things together—meaningful work, a chance to build a music program, and a daily routine rooted in the community where we were raising our daughter.
The K–8 setting was especially compelling.
I could potentially meet a child in kindergarten and remain part of that child’s musical education until high school. I had never had the opportunity to guide such a long stretch of a student’s development.
I imagined helping children discover a steady beat, find confidence in their singing voices, and eventually learn to read music, play instruments, and create something of their own. Each year could build on the previous one. A hesitant participant in the early grades might become a confident middle school musician.
That kind of program takes years to develop. It requires consistent expectations, relationships, resources, and someone prepared to keep showing up.
I was beginning to see myself as that person.
The early mornings, planning, learning names, and thinking through the next day’s lessons were becoming my routine. I was considering rearranging my performance schedule or stepping away from many of my playing opportunities to make room for the commitment.
Our family was making room, too.
With a three-year-old at home, a full-time school schedule meant reorganizing drop-offs, pickups, household responsibilities, and existing work. My wife was very supportive. We took on those changes together because we believed this could become a lasting part of our lives.
One especially encouraging detail was that our daughter’s daycare was right next door to the school. There was something wonderful about helping children learn while my own daughter was learning and growing just a short walk away.
We were already organizing our days around that future while my longer-term compensation remained unsettled.
A month of teaching and documentation
I agreed to begin at a substitute rate of $20 an hour while the school’s management company reviewed my qualifications and determined my compensation.
I understood that this was an interim arrangement, and I accepted it. It lasted approximately a month.
During that time, I worked to obtain and deliver the requested information. I obtained my Florida Statement of Eligibility and a Florida Department of Education verification letter documenting 4.5 years of teaching service. Four of those years had been completed continuously in one county under a professional teaching certificate.
I was told that three years would count toward my compensation.
I questioned that calculation. Even setting aside the additional half year, a full year of documented service remained unaccounted for in the placement communicated to me. Still, I probably would have accepted the three-year calculation.
What ultimately prompted my resignation was the explanation I received about my master’s degree.
Orchestration, in the classroom and on the diploma
My master’s degree in orchestration was awarded by the University of Chichester, based in the United Kingdom.
Because it was earned outside the United States, HR requested a third-party evaluation to determine whether it was equivalent to a U.S. degree. I agreed and paid the $109 fee.
The evaluation established equivalency.
I was then told that the degree would not be recognized for additional compensation because its title did not contain the word “music.”
HR already had copies of my degree documentation when it requested the evaluation. The institution and the degree title were available to review from the beginning.
Equivalency and eligibility for additional compensation are separate questions. I understand that distinction. But if the title independently disqualified the degree, that requirement could have been explained before I was asked to purchase the evaluation.
The evaluation could establish equivalency. It could not change the wording on my diploma.
The timing made the explanation particularly difficult to understand.
The day before I received that compensation information, I had taught a basic orchestration lesson to a middle school music class. The students seemed to connect with the material and enjoy the activities. I was drawing on knowledge from the very discipline whose relevance I would then have to defend.
Florida’s own published music course standards made the contrast sharper. The clarification examples accompanying benchmark MU.68.O.3.1 include “harmonic structure, timbre, rhythm, orchestration.”
Orchestration. Without “music” in front of it.
Within a music curriculum, the meaning is understood. Yet I was told that the absence of that word from my degree’s title prevented its recognition for additional compensation.
A curriculum standard does not establish eligibility for a salary supplement, and one well-received lesson does not settle a credential review. But both illustrate why the substance of the qualification deserved consideration. The connection was visible in the curriculum and in the work I was doing with students.
That was where I would have hoped the review could meet the school’s needs: with an informed examination of what the degree involved, how it supported instruction, and why the administrators wanted me to remain.
I resigned before a formal compensation offer was presented. I gave the administration a full week’s notice, with the students’ continuity in mind.
The school’s administrators wanted me to stay
I have deliberately left the school unnamed. During my time there, I saw teachers and staff who cared about their students and took their responsibilities seriously. From what I observed, children were learning, and the school had the familiar mix of challenges, successes, and daily adjustments I had encountered in other school settings.
The teachers and administrators were working hard with the time, resources, and support available to them. I respected their efforts, and I do not want my experience with the compensation review to overshadow the good work I saw happening inside the school.
My concern is how well the management structure supports those people in doing their jobs—including their efforts to retain teachers they want to keep.
That is what has stayed with me most: the school’s administrators wanted me to remain.
They were working with me, managing the daily needs of the school, and responsible for keeping instruction moving. They could see the possibilities for the program and understood what another staffing transition would require.
My experience with them was different from my experience with the centralized compensation review.
That distinction is the reason I am writing about this.
How closely connected are the people making centralized employment decisions to the needs of individual charter schools? And when on-site administrators want to retain a teacher, how much influence does their judgment carry?
Centralized policies have legitimate purposes. Schools need responsible budgets, consistent standards, and fair processes. Every request cannot become an exception simply because someone feels strongly about it.
But a sound process also needs a way to examine circumstances that deserve closer review. It should be able to explain a disputed experience calculation, evaluate an unfamiliar degree, and consider the judgment of the people responsible for leading the school.
A principal’s desire to retain someone should not automatically settle a compensation question. It should carry enough weight to warrant a substantive conversation.
From my position, I could not see every internal discussion or constraint. I could see administrators who wanted me to stay and a review whose outcome led me to decide I could not.
Would the subject have changed the urgency?
I also found myself wondering whether the process would have unfolded differently if I taught a subject measured through frequent standardized testing.
Would the same questions about my qualifications have arisen? Perhaps. But would there have been greater urgency to resolve them, more willingness to seek a subject specialist’s opinion, or a stronger effort to find a workable arrangement?
I cannot answer that from my experience alone. I do not have a comparable case that would establish different treatment.
It remains a question worth examining: when staffing decisions are made, how much weight is given to a subject’s educational value, and how much to the visibility of its test results?
Music instruction requires knowledgeable teachers, thoughtful planning, and continuity. Its contributions to students deserve serious consideration even when those contributions do not appear in a tested-subject score.
Where the consequences land
A staffing transition reaches beyond the employment relationship.
Administrators arrange coverage and manage the change. Colleagues may absorb additional responsibilities. Teachers and their families adjust their plans.
Students experience another change in the person standing in front of them.
In music, continuity allows learning to accumulate. Routines become familiar. Skills develop through repeated practice. A teacher learns when to challenge a student, when to slow down, and when encouragement might make the difference between participating and withdrawing.
The program I imagined depended on that continuity. It would take years to discover what those first kindergarten experiences could become.
I do not know what instruction followed my departure, and I am not judging whoever came next. My concern is whether the employment process gave sufficient consideration to the school’s effort to establish something lasting.
The financial cost of compensation is visible. The cost of another transition is harder to calculate: administrative time, interrupted plans, repeated introductions, and relationships that must begin again.
Those costs still belong in the decision.
I also recognize my part in the outcome. Leaving was my choice. I accepted the interim arrangement, and I ultimately decided to end it. The administrators who wanted me to remain were left managing that transition.
Taking responsibility for my decision does not eliminate the value of examining the process that preceded it.
Supporting the people we ask to lead
The experience left me with practical questions.
Could compensation reviews be completed before someone starts, or within a clearly defined period afterward?
Could applicants receive all eligibility requirements before being asked to purchase evaluations?
Could specialized qualifications receive review from someone familiar with the discipline?
Could experience calculations clearly identify which service was accepted, which was excluded, and why?
Most importantly, when school administrators identify someone they want to retain, is there a meaningful path for their assessment to influence the decision?
These are questions about how management supports the people it asks to lead. If administrators are accountable for developing programs, supporting teachers, and maintaining continuity, their judgment should meaningfully inform the employment decisions affecting that work.
What I take from it
I am not writing this in the hope that someone from the organization will read it, apologize, and offer me the position again. That chapter has closed.
I am reflecting on an experience that revealed a gap between what school leaders wanted to build and the process determining whether I could make a sustainable commitment to it. That gap deserves attention beyond my individual circumstances.
Personally, though, I have come to see the outcome as a sign that I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing.
I teach private lessons, where I can work closely with students and help them develop at their own pace. As a music clinician, I work directly with programs, supporting students and the educators leading them. Through composing, arranging, and orchestration, I help bring other people’s ideas to life. And when the opportunity comes, I perform—on my own, with an artist, or with a band—playing music that people enjoy hearing.
Each role draws on a different part of the experience I have spent my life building. Together, they allow me to keep teaching, creating, collaborating, and connecting with people through music while being present for my family.
I was sincere about returning to the classroom. The excitement was real, and so was my willingness to commit. I can acknowledge the disappointment of how it ended while recognizing the value of the work already in front of me.
A private student finding confidence, an ensemble making progress, a score taking shape, an audience enjoying a performance—these are meaningful places to put my energy.
I had imagined building something lasting at that school. I still intend to build something lasting through the students, programs, projects, and performances I have the opportunity to be part of.
The setting has changed. The purpose is still there.
