What My Life Taught Me About Teaching

 

What My Life Taught Me About Teaching is not a how-to manual. It is a lived inquiry into how identity, artistry, struggle, and experience quietly shape who we become as educators. Drawing from a life shaped by movement, instability, music, faith, and reinvention, Dr. Richard A. Fields traces his journey from aspiring classical trumpet performer to K–12 music educator, scholar, and teacher of teachers. Along the way, he confronts the unseen costs of excellence, the fragility of identity built solely on performance, and the profound ways teaching is formed long before we ever step into a classroom.​

 

Rather than offering prescriptions or frameworks, What My Life Taught Me About Teaching invites readers into moments of formation—childhood transitions, artistic mastery and loss, early teaching failures, and hard-earned growth across urban, suburban, and higher-education contexts. Through these stories, the book reveals how teaching is not merely a technical skill, but an identity shaped through endurance, reflection, and care.