Bailey Brown (’17) has joined the Maplerun Unified School District staff as Fairfield Center School’s new music teacher. According to Brown, they teach pre kindergarten-eighth grade general music classes, as well as chorus and band classes for fifth-eighth grade. This will be their first year teaching.

Brown said that they were nervous on the first day of school due to only having student-teaching experience at the high school level.  They said that this year was their first time “really working with students younger than ninth grade.” However, their nerves died down over the course of the first few days.

Brown grew up in Bakersfield, Vt. before moving to St. Albans during high school. After graduating from BFA in 2017, they went on to major in Music Education and minor in Education for Cultural and Linguistic Diversity at the University of Vermont. They graduated from UVM in the spring of 2022. They currently still live in St. Albans.

Before coming to FCS, Brown worked as a long-term substitute teacher at Mount Mansfield Union High School, subbing for the choral teacher while he was out on paternity leave. Before becoming a substitute teacher, they student taught with MMU’s band teacher.

Brown said the reason they applied to FCS was because of an old Fairfield music teacher, Mrs. Scott, whom they used to take lessons with in high school. “We used to joke when I was in high school that I would kind of take over her jobs, not realizing that would end up being the case,” Brown said. Brown added that they are still in contact with Mrs. Scott to this day.

Brown said that their experience at Fairfield has been great. “The school is really awesome,” they said.

They added that their Pre-K-third grade general music classes have been their personal favorite, something they “weren’t expecting to enjoy…coming from a high school background.” They said that it’s been a “lot of fun” teaching the children by singing songs and playing games with them.

The Mercury also asked Brown about their experience as a non-binary teacher. Brown said that their experience has been “pretty good so far.” Although they were “a little nervous” about how their identity would be handled at FCS, they said that they were “pleasantly surprised [that] a lot of [their] colleagues are very supportive.” They said that their students are also accepting of their identity, and that everyone at FCS “tr[ies] very hard to recognize [their] identity.” 

“There aren’t many of us around, so I think I recognize that as important,” Brown said. “I’m a representative of a community that’s not necessarily well represented.”

Brown said that their new position has been a joy for them to fulfill thus far, and they are excited for the rest of the school year.