This spring, PHS students will not be the only ones learning in the band room, as a new student teacher will be alongside them.

Student teacher David Phebus was welcomed to the halls of PHS this semester. He is currently majoring in music education at Indiana University Bloomington. At IU, Phebus is very involved with the band. He has been in the Marching Hundred and concert band for five years and has participated in many extracurricular activities, such as pop culture orchestra, basketball pep band and soccer band.

“I chose Paoli because I heard it has a really great program and I also heard that Mr. Laughlin is a fantastic educator, so I really wanted to learn a lot from my cooperating teacher,” said Phebus.

Although he is new to Paoli High School, Phebus is not a new face to the band students. He has been assisting the band since band camp in July. As a student teacher, he will now have more responsibilities during the school day when it comes to teaching students about music. As a student himself, Phebus will be learning from former Band Director Bill Laughlin as well as the newly hired Band Director Matthew Crozier.

“There are many skills I have learned and many tasks I have performed while being a student teacher like classroom management, putting stuff together to mail to parents, attending a band booster or even teaching a fifth grade band class. My job is to watch, learn, study and to hopefully gain a ton of experience so that when I graduate I am setting myself up for success,” said Phebus.

After graduating from college, Phebus plans on finding a band directing job somewhere in Indiana. 

“I hope I will be able to gain a vast amount of knowledge about how to be a teacher, a band director and also how to become better as a whole,” said Phebus.