First they find their voice. Then they can't stop singing.

I grew up in a Goa house where tuning a guitar was a household chore like filling water. I assumed every child had music the way they had lunch — and my first week as a teacher, meeting fifteen-year-olds who'd been told to mime in choir, radicalised me permanently. Sixteen years later, my job is repealing that instruction, one child at a time.

My programme runs on volume — of participation, not decibels. Three choirs, a concert band that arranges its own Bollywood medleys, a keyboard lab with 40 stations, and 120 concerts staged everywhere from proper auditoriums to the school corridor on a Tuesday. Nine Trinity distinctions last year; more importantly, zero children mouthing the words.

If your school wants music to be a daily subject with a heartbeat — exams passed, festivals won, and the staff choir slightly too competitive — raise the baton. I audition well.