Meet Ms. Shine-Flaus

Michelle is a Pittsburgh kid who left and came back. She earned her Bachelor's in Music Education from Duquesne, then spent eight years with Arlington Public Schools teaching K–5 general music and directing 4th and 5th grade band and orchestra — which means she's handed an instrument to a nine-year-old for the very first time more times than she can count, and she still loves that moment. She's played with a number of ensembles along the way, including the Arlington Concert Band.

Her teaching starts with the student, every time. The first lesson is mostly her asking questions: What do you already listen to? What have you tried? What's the song you wish you could play? Everything after that gets built around the answers.

And she thinks lessons should be fun — not as a reward at the end, but as the actual method. If a student walks in wanting to learn a song from a movie, that's where they start. The scales and the reading and the breathing all find their way in, and they stick better when they're attached to something the student picked themselves.