80. Motherhood Panel #1

So working side by side with Lori all these years in such a supportive environment with a female colleague who had children and whose children were several years older than mine has been transformative for me and has really helped me thrive.

feel out how to do this as a mom conductor and also how to motivate the young women whom we work with and who we impact and the ways that we can show them how to balance these parts of our lives.

Yeah, I think just verbalizing the fact that you are a parent is huge.

We live in a time where I think just sharing honest truths about ourselves, our positionalities is important for our students to know about and just opens up the possibility for students to say, oh yeah, I do remember that my collegiate choir director was also a mom and she did all these things.

And like, you can have some of all of these things in your life if that's something that you desire.

So I love that you shared that thought of, hmm, Maybe they were, but maybe they just couldn't talk about it.

Yeah.

And I was just thinking about like further back, I think before sort of like the formal training at a collegiate level, you know, I sang in children's choruses and there were some female conductors then.

So I think that's also just kind of like, I don't know, stereotypical gender roles, especially when we were children, you know, like of female teachers tend to work with the younger children and not so much after their certain age.

You know, maybe I was just kind of thinking about that.

Exactly.

That was my same scenario that I grew up in as well.

My church choir conductor was a woman who had not had children yet, but then did have children because that's very accepted in the church community.

And then my high school choir director never had children, but was a woman because Beyond that, my experience at the collegiate level and beyond has been mostly with women without children.

So interesting, right? I think we're changing the tide though, ladies.

Agreed.

I think that's a common experience too, at least for McKenna and I growing up.

Our mom was a high school co-director and ran a fantastic program.

And when she had McKenna, she was able to still have a young child and maintain this job.

But as soon as I was born, it became pretty clear that having two kids four years apart was going to be really difficult to manage just with schedules, picking up a child at 3pm when elementary school gets out, but you have musical rehearsal till 10 became really, really difficult.

And so she took a job at the elementary school level.

And she was just saying I was just home with her how her first day of school, she came home and just wept.

Because it just wasn't what she was really called to do.

But she made that sacrifice in order to have us and to bring us to school with her.

And she became our music teacher.

So working side by side with Lori all these years in such a supportive environment with a female colleague who had children and whose children were several years older than mine has been transformative for me and has really helped me thrive.

feel out how to do this as a mom conductor and also how to motivate the young women whom we work with and who we impact and the ways that we can show them how to balance these parts of our lives.

Yeah, I think just verbalizing the fact that you are a parent is huge.

We live in a time where I think just sharing honest truths about ourselves, our positionalities is important for our students to know about and just opens up the possibility for students to say, oh yeah, I do remember that my collegiate choir director was also a mom and she did all these things.

And like, you can have some of all of these things in your life if that's something that you desire.

So I love that you shared that thought of, hmm, Maybe they were, but maybe they just couldn't talk about it.

Yeah.

And I was just thinking about like further back, I think before sort of like the formal training at a collegiate level, you know, I sang in children's choruses and there were some female conductors then.

So I think that's also just kind of like, I don't know, stereotypical gender roles, especially when we were children, you know, like of female teachers tend to work with the younger children and not so much after their certain age.

You know, maybe I was just kind of thinking about that.

Exactly.

That was my same scenario that I grew up in as well.

My church choir conductor was a woman who had not had children yet, but then did have children because that's very accepted in the church community.

And then my high school choir director never had children, but was a woman because Beyond that, my experience at the collegiate level and beyond has been mostly with women without children.

So interesting, right? I think we're changing the tide though, ladies.

Agreed.

I think that's a common experience too, at least for McKenna and I growing up.

Our mom was a high school co-director and ran a fantastic program.

And when she had McKenna, she was able to still have a young child and maintain this job.

But as soon as I was born, it became pretty clear that having two kids four years apart was going to be really difficult to manage just with schedules, picking up a child at 3pm when elementary school gets out, but you have musical rehearsal till 10 became really, really difficult.

And so she took a job at the elementary school level.

And she was just saying I was just home with her how her first day of school, she came home and just wept.

Because it just wasn't what she was really called to do.

But she made that sacrifice in order to have us and to bring us to school with her.

And she became our music teacher.