Christian Howes

We want this guy to be able to set a good example for these kids.

And, you know, whether it's explicit or whether it's implicit, I see part of the work of being a music educator as also influencing positive character development.

Right.

You know.

And there's been a lot of times when people have asked me explicitly to speak about character issues or tell my story and impart the messages to kids to try to not necessarily scare them straight, but to inspire them to do good things.

But most of the time when I go to schools, I'm just a music teacher, right?

I'm, I'm being, I'm like a guest music teacher.

And some, sometimes I worry that like, if you know, these teachers, they might, they might not want to hire me if they know my backstory because not everybody does, you know?

And so that kind of like,

You know, this thought that what you said about it depending on how other people are responding to you.

I can relate to that.

But in general, I feel like it's work that I just have to keep doing.

Like even if that brings up, if one experience with a person brings up shame in me or guilt or triggers me, I just see that as evidence that I need to keep doing work.

To get to a zero, ideally as much of the time.

And it's about, I do believe that we have the ability to respond, you know, and that we have to cultivate that ability and that choice to respond to situations that might trigger us today.

So I'm working on that.

Oh, it's fine.

Yeah.

When I first got out, um, I remember I applied for this thing to go to, um, some teaching and,

And it was like a music slash whatever.