Ethan Chessin teaches music at Camas High School. Since his arrival, enrollment in choir has exploded, growing from 45 students to nearly 200. Driven by the belief that music connects and engages students, Ethan has expanded his school's music department, adding four choirs, songwriting and piano classes, and a student orchestra.
Ethan inspires his students to achieve excellence. His ensembles have performed around the Northwest, including featured performances at the Washington Music Educators' Association Convention, the PICA Time-Based Art Festival, and the World Affairs Council of Oregon's Teach Latin America Youth Forum. With Ethan as music director, the Camas theater department has won numerous statewide awards, including Outstanding Overall Musical for their 2015 production of Cabaret. All students excel under Ethan's instruction: he has invited students with developmental disabilities to conduct in concert, while many of his students have received top honors in festivals, scholarships, and auditions.
Ethan's mission as a teacher is to bring the world to the school and the school to the world. Dozens of musicians and community leaders have visited his classroom as experts and culture bearers, including Sufi mystics, capoeira troupes, indie rockers, klezmer bands, and composers from Mexico and the Czech Republic. He developed a recurring yearlong project that pulls back the curtain on the music industry so students may compose music, plan logistics, publicize, and perform music for live concerts and recordings. The Portland Mercury called the culminating concert of 2016's project "the most life-affirming night of music I've experienced in some time, leaving me downright aglow with joy."
Ethan's career is an affirmation of the power of music to bring people together. He uses music to teach every subject: lessons on race and prejudice, Islam, poetry, and current events enhance students' understanding of music as well as their common humanity.
“There were moments in my high school career where graduating seemed impossible,” writes Camas alum Taylor Hudson. “In the midst of discouragement and poor grades, Ethan never doubted me. In fact, my conversations with him reminded me of my own imagination. To be believed in and respected as a thinker by a person of influence in one’s adolescent life is a gift. Especially by a person as brilliant as Ethan. This gift has served me well as I have gone on to academic and artistic success at Seattle Pacific University.”
