When I was in seventh grade my choir teacher left North Lake School. She was the fourth choir teacher we had while I was there. So when we came back in the fall going into our eighth-grade year we had a new guy. His name was Mr. William Krieger and he was the first male choir teacher we ever had. About 4 weeks into the school year we had a school trip and he came along with us. This trip was to a place called Camp Lakota and all the eighth graders would go during this trip everyone got to know Mr. Krieger a lot better, especially me. 

After the school trip, I had Mr. Krieger for a music tech class. While my mom is a music teacher I never really got into music, I would really only sing around the house but nothing past that. Mr. Krieger opened my eyes to the different types of music. 

When I said I didn’t like music before eighth-grade year I meant it. I was in a band from fifth-eighth grade and never learned a single song. So it's safe to say that Mr. Krieger did something if he took me from not learning to wanting to do more with music. In this class he taught we learned to read basic musical notes, play songs on a mini keyboard, harmonize, and do other things to do with music. Mr. Krieger would spend time with some students after school as well, his daughter went to the same school that he taught at so he was able to spend some time with students after school. Whether that be for music or even would stay for a bit and play basketball with kids but everyone loved him.

Mr. Krieger was not the type of teacher that doesn’t want to be your friend. He treated his students like they were friends. I had his class the two periods before lunch and right before his class I had science. We had a strict no-gum rule at school and you would get written up if they found out you had gum. So one day I went to my counselor's office and she saw I was chewing gum. She told me, “I don’t care but just don’t get caught." So I took that as she didn’t care at all so during science I gave a friend of mine some gum and after class, he got caught and snitched on me. So when my teacher confronted me about it I told her what my counselor said(which wasn’t a good idea) and that got me in even more trouble because my counselor acted like I was speaking Chinese. So when I went into his class after this happened in a terrible mood he talked to both teachers and was taking my side about it and eventually got the write-up taken away. This doesn’t seem like an amazing thing but to me in eighth grade with no write-ups getting my only one taken off my record was amazing.

Mr. Krieger was the reason that I actually enjoyed going to school. When COVID hit during the second part of eighth-grade year he and I didn’t have class together anymore because we couldn’t do the class from home. I haven't seen him since but I imagine he is still doing a great job inspiring kids to pursue music as he did to me.