Ron:  My name is Ron, and I'm the orchestra teacher at Laramie Middle School. And, I wanna tell the story of how I got here and how I became an orchestra teacher. If you'd asked me when I was young whether I'd end up in Wyoming or become a music teacher, I would've told you you were lying.

The summer after my eighth-grade year, I hopped in the car with my brother, we pull into the school, he goes inside, and he's in there a really long time. He comes back and says, “Ron, the band director, told me that one of their drummers isn't able to play in the upcoming parade and they need someone to play the bass drum. Will you do it?” And I thought about it for a second, and I was like, “Yeah, okay, I'll do it. When is this happening [since I’ve never played an instrument before]?” And my brother said, “Right now”, and I went in and was like a deer in the headlights, fish outta water.

All of a sudden, all these people start coming in. And when the band played and made its first sound, I had never heard anything like that before. Just the intensity of being around that many instruments playing at the same time. The drums are pretty physical and pretty loud, and so the whole thing was just like, it really just enveloped you. Right? And I fell in love with that. 

Fast forward a couple years. So, um, as my senior year is starting to wrap up, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with my life—definitely wanted to have music in my life. Definitely wanted to go to a music school. And as I was getting ready to go to music school, I was trying to decide, am I a drummer? Am I a bass player? And that was the moment I was like, I'm gonna be a bass player. 

So, I show up on the first day of student teaching, and it was just exactly like it was in the band room back in [my hometown] of Grove City, PA. Just my eyes were popping outta my head. I felt like a fish out of water. It was imposter syndrome, uh, for sure, and we go into the music room in Boardman, [Ohio], and in there was a full orchestra, winds, percussion, and strings, and it was a 250-member group. I had never seen anything like it. My high school didn't have an orchestra. In fact, I had never touched a bow until I went to college. So my training started very, very late compared to most people who do what I do.

So I go in there and again, the sound that that orchestra made just blew me away, and I told myself after seeing that group, “I need to get everything out of this student teaching experience that I can because I don't have the background that other people do.” I didn't come through a program; this is my one shot to see what an orchestra program is like. 

Teaching in Boardman was such an amazing experience because the orchestra was so big, and it was so good. I really credit Boardman with showing me what was possible. That programs like that one existed, and that I could always strive for that. So, I was there for several years, and the upside of Boardman also had a downside, which was that the number of hours I was putting in was incredible. We had seven concerts a year, with 200 and some in our middle school group and 250 in our high school.

And it was just hours and hours for that. After a while, I don't know, another pivotal moment happened. So, my wife and I had taken a road trip, a summer vacation to Wyoming. We were planning on going to Yellowstone, and friends of ours said, “Well, if you're going all the way out to Yellowstone, you have to stop in Grand Teton” and, again, another magical little something that somebody said that changed the course of our lives. The people who live in Wyoming know, the first time you ever see the Tetons, it just blows you away. We fell in love with that, then went back home and went back to our lives and our jobs.

[After a year or so], my wife applied for the Teton Science School graduate program and got in and said to me, “I'm going to Wyoming. Are you coming?” And again, one little phrase, but it carried a lot of weight. On the one hand, I was feeling very successful at what I was doing. I was feeling very grateful for this work opportunity, and I was also feeling complete and utter exhaustion.

So, you know, the decision wasn't a hard one to decide, but it was a hard one to execute, and I decided yes, I'm going to Wyoming. Now I have to tell hundreds of students and my colleagues that I was leaving. That was really hard. But in the end, in hindsight, absolutely the best decision I could have ever possibly made.

We loaded most of our belongings in a storage unit and the rest of what we needed into the back of a pickup truck, and we drove all the way across I-80 to get to Teton Science School.

I just lived in a 250 square foot cabin with [my wife] at the foot of the Tetons. I tell people I worked at a t-shirt shop for beer money, which is basically true [chuckling], and I told myself that if I missed teaching, then I would return to it. But if I didn't miss it, then I would find something else. There were ups and downs through all of it, but in the end, I absolutely missed teaching.

I ended up teaching guitar and orchestra at Kelly Walsh High School [in Casper, WY], and I was there for three years. Even though we had friends and we had jobs, we weren't in love with Casper. So knowing that we enjoyed Laramie more, I told my wife if ever a job comes open there, I'll apply. So an email comes through that says there's a job open in Laramie, teaching orchestra at Laramie Middle School. Again, I felt very blessed and very lucky that I got that job…and also very hard to tell the families and the students, and people in Casper that I was leaving.

And that's how I ended up in Laramie Middle School teaching orchestra, living in Wyoming, loving every minute of all of that. I've been there, now it's my 13th year teaching at Laramie Middle School, and I feel like every year it just gets better. Right now, I get to have my own son in my orchestra playing violin, which is deeply meaningful for me. And, I don't know if there's a moral to my story or anything other than just be open to stuff and, you know, follow the breadcrumbs and the universe is gonna put you where you need to be, whether you know it or not.

I'm grateful for all the people and all those pivotal moments along the way–they got me where I am right now. I’m just grateful to Laramie and the community for giving me so much love and support. 

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.