Get to Know the Teachers: Tiffany Leever

Get to know music teacher Tiffany Leever

Watch the full interview here

"Hi I'm Tiffany Leever! I teach music at Oakhill and this is my first year here and it's my 12th year teaching."

Q: What do you want students to takeaway from the classroom?

"The main thing I want my students to leave my classroom with is a sense that music is for everyone. It is something that you can enjoy no matter what age you are. If you have some skills in music but you don't decide to go that route, you can still enjoy being a part of a community chorus, a community band,  or you can be in your own garage band. If you don't have musical skills per se, but you know you're still gonna be an enjoyer of music as a lifelong thing, you're going to consume music and be able to enjoy it for life. So I hope that people leave with a sense of appreciation about music, but also I hope that they learn some life skills here too. We have to work together as a team, we have to sometimes try things that are out of our comfort zone, and it's okay. There should be a sense of safety here that it's okay to mess up, but I hope that they leave here with a sense of more confidence and also just a sense that they can really do anything that they put their minds to.

Q: How did your life experiences shape the way you teach?

A: "The best experience I've had that has helped me with a lot of teaching situations is becoming a mom of four boys. When I left teaching [a few years ago] they were about middle school age. I've learned a lot about just, you know kids making mistakes, kids need the freedom to express kids need to be wrapped in flexibility and grace because not everything is perfection there's a lot of messiness and growth that happens, but a lot of my experiences have been shaped by my parenting for sure.

Q: When did you know teaching was right for you?

A: "I've always been a teacher at heart, I would say. I've always known that I get a lot of positivity from just helping people. I also had great teachers in my life growing up, I had people that really invested in me as a student. Even like with my voice teachers and everyone through time you know made an imprint on me and it's something that I always knew could go well with my personality and helped me feel like I was making an impact to share my passion for music and just my passion for growing young people's confidence."

Q: Tell us about your life before Oakhill

A: "In my life before Oakhill, I did a variety of other jobs. I taught for several years, but most recently I was working at Nebraska Furniture Mart in the living room department in sales selling furniture and I got to that job through real estate. When I left education, I was teaching at the real estate school Keller Williams for a few years and I was also doing home staging and that's what got me to Nebraska Furniture Mart. Then along came the opportunity at Oakhill and I decided to come back to teaching. 

Q: What called you back to the classroom?

A: "What called me back to the classroom? It was really just I had kind of been seeking out ways to get back into musical things because music has been my lifelong passion and also teaching the two of those things together. I don't know that I was necessarily looking to come back to a teaching role but the way it all happened, a friend had mentioned that they were looking for someone at Oakhill and I just took the steps to look into it and decided it would be a great fit for me. Truth be told I had been missing teaching. The world of teaching has continued to change and it wasn't something that I had considered until the Oakhill position.

Q: What is a core part of the way you teach?

A: "I think one thing that really has become a core of my teaching is that I have a variety of experiences, I've even left education and come back, I've done a lot of different jobs. Most of them working with the public in some way and I hope that kids in my class really learn life skills that there's an emphasis on that and everything I do. It's not just about teaching music here. It's not just about that I'm passionate about music, but I really want to impart on kids things that they can take with them into the rest of the world and the rest of their lives. They can understand the connections between why we do what we do in the classroom and that it really does have an impact on their character as a whole.

Q: What sets Oakhill apart?

A: "The level of activities at Oakhill sets everything apart! The school culture is amazing but when people ask me how I love, or what I think about my job at Oakhill, I tell everybody there's a level of intensity here. I think the focus on the kids education is intense, the level of of activities, but just the the passion and the care that all of the teachers and staff put into everything that we do here, it really does make it truly unique. You don't really see people walking around burnt out and just hating their jobs. Everybody is just all in bringing their A game and I think that's a pretty amazing quality to have in education, especially seeing all the other things I have in other classrooms or other schools."

Q: What has been your favorite season at Oakhill?

A: "I don't know I would have to say the jury's still out on that because we still have half a year to go and it's my first year. I've just been amazed at the the level of quality and excellence that Oakhill does everything here."