Teacher with a twist: Former ski bum makes music interesting

This is the story of a ski bum turned music teacher.

That is not to say that Joe Mohr, the music teacher here, doesn’t still look like, well, a ski bum. He’s easy to spot: the guy with a mop of curly blond hair clad in a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and sneakers and holding a guitar. His looks are emblematic of the 41-year-old’s many years of an easygoing lifestyle, years he spent living out of his truck, roaming the West in search of a cliff to scale or powder to ski.

But nine years after serendipitously landing a job as Gateway’s music teacher, Mohr said he couldn’t think of doing anything else. It just took him a while to find his gig.

"Before I started teaching, if I wasn’t skiing I was out climbing rocks," Mohr said recently. "Heck, for the first five years of my marriage we lived out of our truck."

It’s hard to believe that Mohr once had a tough time talking to kids. In a class with a bunch of first-graders, he’s a natural, strumming tunes while leading the kids singing rock songs.

Mohr connects with the older students, too, by teaching them how to play instruments, record music and sing.

"There are no limits to things," said seventh-grader Ashley Stock, who plays guitar, bass, drums and piano and sings. "When you want to do something, he’ll teach you how."

Full story: http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2005/02/13/build/state/40-teacher-with-a-twist.inc