Music: Mr. Werdon

From the Great Lake State of Michigan to Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes, Mr. Ryan Werdon has traveled the midwest to join the BSM music department. 

Werdon grew up immersed in music. “My mom is a pianist and a piano teacher, so I was always participating in the music at church and performing piano recitals,” Werdon said. 

Attending college at Northern Michigan University, he earned his business degree while minoring in music. He later went to the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he graduated with a degree in music education. “After college, I found myself at a white-collar, cubicle-type job for nine months. I couldn’t see myself doing that for a very long time, so I eventually started substituting and ended up subbing for my original high school choir teacher.  I liked it so much that I decided that was what I wanted to do,” Werdon said. 

Now, in his tenth year teaching, Werdon has noticed the open-mindedness the students at BSM carry. “There has been really great reception from the students. Everyone that I’ve interacted with have been very respectful, a great representation of BSM. It is evident that, being a private Catholic school, BSM is very unified, which sets this school apart from my last teaching experiences,” Werdon said. 

Werdon is taking his past experiences and implementing them into his own teaching style within his choir classes. “I bring a lot of ideas from different schools of thought regarding music and singing that are probably new to students,” Werdon said. 

Werdon, while enjoying most everything about being a choir teacher at BSM, favors the times when he can see the excitement in his students about the way they sound. “Especially after we’ve worked on a difficult piece and put in countless hours of work to refine it, seeing the end result make everything worth it,” Werdon said.