Submitted by Moy Eng, Community School of Music and Arts (CSMA)

As I reflect on the holiday season and the pervasive, rampant gift buying, the greatest gift we can receive is love.  Love given openly, freely, generously.  This is what I love about working at a music and art school.  Every day, every single day, a teacher gifts a student with how to spark and nourish her/his creativity.  A thought… a suggestion… a question… or sometimes showing a student how to sing that phrase or draw that line.  And in the spirit of gift giving, the student receives the lesson and inspiration, and makes it her/his own.

What do I mean by that?  As a voice student, in that moment, I can sing that phrase not only technically better, but in my voice and in my own way.  And, that is the gift that teachers everywhere, especially at CSMA, give us when they do their “job” to guide and inspire us to simply become ourselves.  Isn’t that at that heart of love?