For Teacher Appreciation Week, May 4-8, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin shadowed teachers and is sharing their stories with our readers.
As a river of students swirls through the hallway of Ashwaubenon High School, teacher Ellen Moon stands in her office doorway, picking out student after student with two words: “jazz lab.”
Moon teaches band at Ashwaubenon, where she got her own high school diploma in 2007. Ahead of Teacher Appreciation Week, the Press-Gazette spent a morning with Moon as she conducted, played and walked students through the most musical parts of their days.
And first, that means jazz. Saxophones and trumpets are warming up to the steady beat of the drum when Moon walks in, ready to go. With a wave of her hand, warmups stop.
“There’s a rumor starting to circulate,” she said, “that we’re going to State in a week and a half.”
It is, of course, more than a rumor. Dozens of Ashwaubenon students made it past regional competition and are participating in Wisconsin State Solo and Ensemble, held for Green Bay-area students May 2 at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. It’ll be the first time the school’s jazz band has gone to state two years in a row. Moon and her students are working on the finishing touches, and they don’t have many practice days left.
But still, she keeps it light. They joke about “hatching,” which is how they describe students breaking out of the habit of playing timidly, and how they have to make sure they’re hatched before State. Moon starts to hum the solo for a student who’s out that day, and several students join her.
She’s quick to reward students who play well, mouthing “ooh, good” when a saxophone player hits an especially snazzy phrase of her solo. If there’s ever a slight mistake, you don’t see it on her face.
Band ‘feels like home’
Moon has taught and led the Ashwaubenon High School Band since 2021, when she moved back home after teaching in southern Wisconsin. She was taking on a family legacy – her father, Greg Sauve, led the high school band for nearly 40 years, including during her own tenure as a high school French horn player.
Now, she’s teaching in the same room where she played with him: “It just feels like home to me.”
She’s always been a music person, but she loves Ashwaubenon’s program specifically. The students all want to be there; it’s “their place,” she said. They’re like a family to each other.
“I make a point to try to foster that, too,” Moon said. “No one’s in this alone. We’ve all got each other’s back.”
Moon loves teaching music. But being a teacher, even a band teacher, isn’t just standing in front of a class. Moon also has to pick the music her students play, plan the trips they take and handle paperwork. There are shirts to order and online classrooms to manage.
Leading ‘Moana’s’ waves in symphonic band
After jazz, Moon’s musicians shift younger. She has two sections of symphonic band, which consist of mostly freshmen and players with less experience. They’re working on pieces for their spring concert, songs from “Moana” and “Gravity Falls.” (In case you can’t tell, the theme is “animation.”)
Band can be hard in the early years. Students have to learn to balance the melody and the supporting parts without as much control over their volume or their tempo. Some have more experience, while others are still having trouble reading some music or landing on exactly the right note.
Moon’s job is to polish that sound, day by day. And as she asks students to hold notes to fine-tune a chord and heads to the back of the class to help percussionists find just the right one-two-three rhythm, the Disney songs start to pop.
That’s a mixture of Moon’s planning and her musical knowledge. She knew beforehand that she wanted to work with the percussionists, she said. But other corrections came down to having read the music over and over again and identifying which parts would be especially tricky for the kids.
And when there are mistakes, she and her students don’t dwell on them.
“That was kind of beautiful in, um, a modern way,” Moon jokes when several students play their parts at the wrong time. “But let’s fix it.”
Building culture and motivation
For Moon, band has always been a melting pot. You have athletes, artists and AP students (and some who are all three) in the same room, choosing to play music together. Students rarely drop band; this year, she has a 100% student retention rate.
She likes to get to know her students. They often lean on her for support, and there are days where she feels like she spends more time mediating than teaching. Still, she sees it as part of the job, and she values the culture they’ve built in the band room.
“She’s so easy to talk to, and if you ever need to talk about something, she’ll talk to you,” said Aubrey Rotter, a sophomore clarinet player. “I don’t think I’ve ever left in a bad mood after I talk to her.”
Playing music isn’t about instant gratification. It takes time, effort and motivation. As the teacher, Moon has to help with all three.
She does so by working with them individually and breaking things into manageable pieces. Each concert, Moon picks out slightly more difficult music, pushing the students to improve each time. Or, if they’re struggling, she’ll go down a notch.
“Our last concert … they didn’t think they could do it at first, and we sounded really good on it. So now, I can give them harder music and [they’ll know] ‘oh yeah, we’ll get this. We’re going to work it out,’” Moon said.
Private lessons, two French horn players and a dream job
Next – and last before lunch – comes Ashwaubenon’s wind ensemble. That day, teacher Marc Jimos takes the conducting stand, and Moon pulls students aside for private lessons. Jimos has taught music for around 35 years; Moon, herself, had him as a teacher and mentor.
They work together and balance each other out. She’s better at brass instruments; he’s better at woodwinds. He has the institutional knowledge, and she takes on more of the organization.
“Our teaching relationship, I can’t imagine it being much better,” Moon said. “I think my strengths and his strengths play off each other really, really well.”
So while he starts to lead students through “Friend Like Me” from “Aladdin,” she pulls aside Kayla Vogels, a French horn student, to run through her State solo. Moon is accompanying Vogels on the piano; she can’t do that for every student, but she already knows Vogels’ solo. She performed it herself when she was an Ashwaubenon student.
Then comes a trombone quartet for a quick practice before the bell rings. The bright, brassy sounds layer over each other, with Moon pausing to go over individual students’ parts. Even when things snag, they keep the mood light.
After that, practices are over, but there’s always more to do. In the 10 steps from the band room to Moon’s office, a student asks for help dislodging the mouthpiece of her trumpet. Any of her 176 students can book her for private lessons throughout the afternoon, and she’ll squeeze planning in between. At some point, she’ll find time for lunch.
It’s her dream job, she said. She wouldn’t change it.
“Every day, there’s something exciting,” Moon said. “We’re going to get better at something every day.”
Contact Green Bay education reporter Nadia Scharf at nscharf@usatodayco.com or on X at @nadiaascharf.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: She learned music from her dad at Ashwaubenon High. Now, she teaches it there
Reporting by Nadia Scharf, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
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