Today we’d like to introduce you to Tom Fitzstephens
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I taught high school and middle school music (mostly chorus classes) from 2004-2023. Those years were incredibly formative for me. Most of all, I learned how to be patient, kind, and to love people even when they behave badly. It’s still a work in progress. Also, I experienced how everyone wants to feel connected to others, to be seen, and to be accepted. The daily grind of teaching gave me the opportunity to build my work ethic and resilience. Knowing I had to entertain and help 170 students learn and grow pressured me to bring my best every day which made me a stronger person in all aspects of my life. I wanted to do everything I could to give students a good experience with education, and with school.
In 2018 I started coursework for a Ph.D. in music education. In addition to working my more-than-full-time job as a teacher in a large public high school, I was driving downtown to Georgia State University for evening classes. I spent my planning periods and weekends studying and preparing presentations. It was a frenetic chapter in my life but I learned a lot and enjoyed my education very much.
After I graduated in 2022, I began a career shift. The reader may be surprised to know that public school teachers are paid far better than college professors. Luckily, when I made the leap to higher education at Oglethorpe University I was able to supplement my smaller salary with a position as director of a community chorus, Harmonia Atlanta, and as a choir director at Oakhurst Baptist Church. Leaving the comfortable world of public school was a bit frightening, but I decided to bet on myself. The one-year contract at Oglethorpe was renewed and I am now applying for a more stable position there.
At Oglethorpe University, I am working to build a music program that shows great potential. Oglethorpe students are intelligent and creative, and the numbers and enthusiasm continues to grow. We are working to build a music major, something Oglethorpe has never had before. At Oakhurst Baptist Church the singers raised money to hire a choir director because the church’s budget wasn’t big enough. I have been welcomed with open arms and love working in such an open-minded, welcoming and affirming community.
In the two years since I became the music director of Harmonia Atlanta, an auditioned community chorus in Tucker, Georgia, the group has grown from about 25 members to over 80. The enthusiasm keeps growing and it is incredibly inspiring. The chorus is very intergenerational and includes teenagers all the way up to people in their 80’s. We partner with other nonprofits to raise awareness of important causes and we tailor our concert themes to the causes. Last year we performed a song about the experience of being a refugee. It was a moving concert about a tough topic and we partnered with The Global Village Project and The International Rescue Committee, two nonprofits that help settle and acclimate refugees to their new homes. This year we are partnering with The Common Market, which distributes healthy food grown sustainably by family farmers. The concert is called Music Feeds the Soul and includes music about both spiritual and literal food (November 16th). For many of us involved in the chorus, having music in our lives is a must, like food and water.
Because of teaching in K-12 schools for 17 years, I have an incredible work ethic and that will likely never change. Working as a high school teacher is a 60-hour per week job, at least. Now that I only work about 40 hours per week, I have some free time on my hands. I have been writing songs. I wrote about 30 minutes of songs for a murder mystery dinner in Times Square called Speakeasy Die Softly. The music and the show are in prohibition-era style, and it was really fun, and challenging, to write the songs. A huge highlight for me was in July of 2024 when I went to New York to work with the actors on the songs. They really seemed to enjoy singing them and we made some changes to make them even better.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Leading groups of people is frustrating, challenging, exciting, and also very rewarding. One of my greatest joys has been to help people find their voice and their confidence through music practice and performance. One of my greatest frustrations has been that few of the singers are as motivated as I am. I spend hours preparing for rehearsals. First, selecting the appropriate music for the ensemble is a huge challenge. It must be challenging, but not too challenging. The text must be age appropriate, occasion appropriate, and provide a contrast with the other music on the program. In educational settings, I’m always selecting repertoire that challenges the skills that make the choristers better singers. They need to learn to sing music from a variety of style periods, languages, cultures, and traditions. Repertoire should challenge their vocal ranges, articulation abilities, harmonic palettes, rhythmic skills, and their abilities to sing unaccompanied and accompanied melody and harmony.
After I put in all the effort to do an excellent job, it’s really disheartening to have that effort disrespected by students. As a high school and middle school teacher I have been disrespected so many times it is painful to recall. I’ve been called names and been lied upon several times. Parents have cursed me out for treating their children unfairly. I felt the responsibility not only to teach them music, but to teach them resilience, character, honesty, and hard work. Some resisted, and yet I had to find positive energy to motivate hundreds of students every day to be excited about our task of performing choral music. Sometimes it was really difficult to “put on 5 shows per day” (as I used to say). Every few years I considered giving up teaching to sell insurance or to be a realtor or something. I pushed through and the rewards were very satisfying, most of the time.
Since the proliferation of cell phones it has become next to impossible to get teenagers excited about analog/real life. They crave the dopamine hit of their messages and notifications, and see school as less and less relevant. There aren’t even classes on social media content creation! I write this knowing the risk of sounding like a person who says “the kids these days.” However, I crave the dopamine hit too, and find it more difficult to persist with longer periods of focus, longer readings, and delayed gratification. It’s not the kids, it’s the distractions of the environment in which we all live, making it difficult for us to persevere in pursuit of skills, knowledge, and truth. Today’s children are born into very difficult circumstances so I don’t blame them for losing focus in school and disrespecting their teachers and school administrators. We must seem like prison wardens to them, who take them away from their passions and interests and force them to engage in irrelevant labor.
It is very difficult to convince young people that there are a lot of glorious experiences and achievements on the other side of boredom, discomfort, and frustration. Growth only comes with discomfort. A seed becomes a beautiful flower, but not before the strenuous and uncomfortable process of breaking through the seed coat. One of my goals as a teacher has always been to help students face the reality that there will be a lot of things in life that we don’t want to do, but developing the self-discipline to persist through them is the only way to be happy, satisfied, accomplished persons. Most people don’t want to take out the trash, clean up the dog poop, do the dishes, exercise, meditate, but one must embrace these tasks to enjoy the fruits of life. Every job has parts that feel like chores, but most jobs also have satisfaction. That’s how I told students to see school. Every dream requires some suffering to become reality. Graduating sure beats dropping out. Embracing the frustration develops one’s steel and resolve, making long term goals possible.
I used, and still use, music performance as this tool to help develop people. I’m a coach and my team’s goal is to create beautiful things together, even if it is difficult and sometimes scary. When a chorus walks on stage they are taking a risk. They are risking embarrassment and failure to stand before an audience and attempt to give them an artistic, joyful, awe-inspiring, thought-provoking, beautiful experience of live performance. That’s what a performance is, a gift. No need to be nervous because singing is just glorified breathing.
The gift of live music performance benefits the audience and the performers. In rehearsal, the performers must work hard and persist through challenges, building their reservoir of resilience, which better enables them to achieve their goals. The work of preparing a choral performance requires the singers to listen closely to each other and compromise in real time with their teammates. Together they strive to tune, to align their rhythms, to unify their sounds, and to articulate text clearly to the listeners. The singers learn to breathe deeply and simultaneously, and they use fine motor skills to create sometimes angelic, sometimes booming sounds with their dime-sized vocal chords. They learn how to read music, not an easy task, and develop techniques to faithfully bring a composer’s ideas on paper to life. A chorus of 20 people has the same goal as a chorus of 120 people, to make beautiful music and give it to listeners.
How do you define success?
To me, success is when one engages their limited time on Earth in activities that better oneself and others. Now, the definition of betterment is best left to each individual, but surely must be more meaningful than the simple satisfaction of basic animalistic desires and vain pursuits. Betterment that brings satisfied happiness is not just being high on a drug. Improving oneself and others is about virtue. I’ll allow the philosophers to take it from here…
Pricing:
- Donation at www.harmoniaatlanta.org
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.harmoniaatlanta.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harmoniaatlanta?igsh=MXExNTZ2eXE0bjhwMA==
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HarmoniaAtlanta
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXPenSfpf5k
Image Credits
Music Feeds the Soul – concert graphic poster by Karen Griffin of karengriffindesign.com
