New Teacher Profile: Mr. Cawley

Mr. Devin Cawley is the music teacher here at CHAH, but as a kid, he wanted to be a cook. “One of my uncles owns a restaurant and I thought it was really cool to be a chef where I had a restaurant and made food for everybody,” he said. 

In his free time Mr. Cawley says, “I train Judo ( a type of martial art), running and now I’m training for the New Jersey city half marathon right now.”

“I play rocket league, a type of game, I read not too much,but in the summertime I read a lot,” Cawley said. “I also like hiking and packing.” 

He became a music teacher here at CHAH because he likes music. “It’s calming, it can be motivating, it can reflect a lot of our emotion,” he said. “I also like the subject of music because you can study it a bunch of different approaches.You can study popular music, classical music, music production, so many branches, and Avenue off of one subject that really blends itself to be studied by anybody.” 

His favorite instrument was the trombone, “because it’s the one I played the longest and the one I’m best at,” he said. “I also think it’s the most unique brass instrument in the brass family.” 

Mr. Cawley said, “My least favorite instrument is the piano because it’s the hardest one for him to play cause there’s so many to think about using all 10 of your fingers at the same time different time, going across the entire keyboard. It’s the one that’s given me the most trouble.” His favorite subject is music.                                                                                                                

Mr. Cawley wanted to be a cook and he was a cook. “One of my uncles owns a restaurant and I thought it was really cool to be a chef where I had a restaurant and made food for everybody,” he said.

Mr. Cawley’s favorite semester is the fall semester “because it’s when a lot of people come in school’s just started and you just kinda have to start from scratch and go up,” he said.

Mr. Cawley’s favorite artists are Sammy Rae and Friends. They are Brooklyn base like pop, funk, jazz groups and he said that he has gotten to see them about 4 times in New York City.

Mr. Cawley said, “I acquired this job, by first working in a charter school in Brooklyn and I wanted to find a public school to work at because I had just gotten my license so I went online to find the public school database and basically looked at any school that was hiring a music teacher. This school was one of 5 that I interviewed and this was the first school to get back to me. It was a great neighborhood, a great school and it had all the things I was looking for.”