Mission Success! Former MFM Students

Diana Neebe

Diana Neebe, MFM student from 1990-1996, is a high school English teacher who sings in a community choir and integrates music into her students' lessons every day.  In her own words, Diana describes the role of music in her life today:

"It's a typical Monday night – I arrive home refreshed at 10pm, humming a glorious run from Brahms.  As I sit down to finish planning my lesson for the next morning, I consider which musical pieces I will pair with the journal prompt my sophomores will be writing about.  I love surprising them with a lesser-known Chopin piece, and playing 'name that tune' at 8:00 in the morning.  My day-to-day life is set to a soundtrack of familiar tunes – some I learned as a young girl when my mom was a Music for Minors docent in my classroom, others I learned from caring music teachers along the way (my grandmother among my favorites), and the newest ones I continue to discover each week in my community chorus.  My early exposure to music appreciation, and later, my studies of music theory, have instilled in me a deep love for that which most aptly augments the written and spoken word.  I owe a debt of gratitude to Music for Minors for helping to cultivate that love.  Now, in my work as a high school English teacher, I'm looking for my own little ways to play it forward."