Ah, the trumpet…

Alone, the trumpet commands great respect as the only musical instrument to be able to play the military tune of dusk and mourning, “Taps,” as it was written. When set inside the brass section of a band, the trumpet’s showy pitch sets perfectly against the softer tones of the woodwinds, the steady beats of percussion, and the dainty chimes of a xylophone.

Perhaps it’s because her older brothers played it, or because she pretended to play it as a young child, or simply because her parents wouldn’t have to purchase a new instrument, but the trumpet was always the first choice for Sheila Pinkelman when she was a fifth grader at Coleridge Community Schools, eagerly waiting to start the band program. It was the trumpet that began her path toward a career in music and teaching. Changing lives both for the young and old.

Or was it?

Early Roots

“I have had a love of music for as long as I can remember.

Looking back on my childhood, I remember how my sister and I would watch Disney movie after Disney movie and sing every song right along with our favorite Disney characters,” not unlike so many children, said Sheila Lange, having since married a farmer from Fordyce, Neb. She and her five siblings would accompany her parents to their church choir practices, deepening a family love of music. In elementary, Lange’s favorite subject was music, so joining the band was a natural move for her. But it was not particularly easy.

“I was not top of the class,” Lange said.

By eighth grade, however, she had worked her way up to first chair, which is where she stayed until she graduated.

Throughout junior high and high school, she also tried out for many honor bands and honor choirs, further strengthening her love for making music.

“It wasn’t just listening to the music,” Lange said. “It was being a part of a larger group that creates the music that I love so much; all of these people from different backgrounds who may interpret the music differently but who then come together to make a work of art.”

Among her fondest school memories were swing choir and marching band.

Lange recalls one annual competition in particular that required the band to board the bus at 4:00 a.m., sometimes the night after Homecoming.

“You take 60 sleep-deprived junior and senior high students on a three-hour trip and see what you get!” she said.

As she neared high school graduation, Lange knew that her future would definitely need to include music but also teaching.

“I have always had a connection with people,” she said. “I’ve always had the ability to sit beside a complete stranger and talk to them like we’ve always known each other.

Often, people felt comfortable coming to me if they needed to talk something out. These qualities are so important in a teacher. As many teachers will say, sometimes it feels like music or math or English is such a small part of what we actually teach.”

Lange’s desire to teach began at about the same time as her passion for music.

“Whenever asked what I wanted to do, my answer was always ‘teach,’” she said. “In first grade, I wanted to be a first-grade teacher. In second grade, I wanted to be a second grade teacher. And so on, until junior high when I realized that I really had a love and a talent for music.”

Lange chose to attend the University of Nebraska in Kearney, transferring to the University of South Dakota in Vermillion for her junior year, student-teaching in South Sioux City, Neb., and graduating in 2011. She then started at Bloomfield, Neb., Community Schools in the fall of 2011 as a junior high and high school band instructor and high school vocal instructor. At the beginning of this school year, just a couple months after her son’s birth, Lange took on the entire K-12 vocal and instrumental music program. And then the town began to talk.

Core of Discipline

When Lange first talked to the school administration in Bloomfield, it was clear that she was facing a difficult task: The band had a mere 20 members; the choir, only nine voices.

“They wanted a program,” Lange said of the Bloomfield Community Schools administration.

“They have followed up on their words. What I need, they have given me or we have discussed what I will get in the coming years. They attend our events and compliment our efforts. I could not possibly ask for more support than what I have received, from the administrators, from the community, from colleagues, from parents, and from students.”

When she began at Bloomfield, the music program had very little structure and vision. The students were accustomed to a style of teaching that put an emphasis on student autonomy but without guidance.

“No matter how much the students fight it, and although you may lose a student or two along the way, kids like to be pushed,” Lange said. “I could be the coolest person in the world, but if we don’t come out and put on a good concert or play a solid night of pep band, no one will want to join our program. No matter how much fun you have in class, no one wants to go out, perform, and be embarrassed.”

At the same time, Lange has adopted a policy of transparency coupled with specific expectations and accountability.

“When I started, I had a handbook. The students understood that simply showing up to class didn’t qualify for an A in my class.

Not that it’s hard to get an A, but you have to earn it,” she said.

“This made the kids nervous at first, and although I still don’t think they all love it, we at least know where everyone stands. The students knew from the beginning that I’m a big softy, but when I mean something, I mean it. I only have their best interest in mind.”

“Sometimes, I’m too honest,” Lange continued. “I tell them that I don’t like to call people out, that you’ll probably get a lot of chances, and that you can talk as long as we can bring it back together again. I try to strive off of a mutual respect between myself and the students. Often, you will hear from mentors that it is best to come out and be really tough and loosen things as you go. It is always harder to gain control after you’ve lost it. Even though I completely agree with this, it does not match my personality.

I need to have a relationship with people before I feel like I can be really firm with them. Granted, when I came in, I was still twice as strict as the previous band director.”

Still, Lange hasn’t banished the need for students to feel a sense of autonomy. She finds that discipline needs not suffer in the goal of empowering students.

“We work on compromise,” Lange said. “If I truly had my way, we would be doing all classical music and really striving for the soul behind the music. This is a really big idea to try to teach to students who, in years past, voted a piece of music out that they didn’t like. So, we have pop concerts to do music that the kids know well, and we continue to work toward understanding and appreciation of music that isn’t heard on the top 10 list on the radio.”

She pushes her students to work through songs they may not like, songs that they would have refused to learn in years past, and instead to learn to play them well. As a result, the students went out “for our first few pep band games, got everyone in the band to show up, play as one, and they completely blew away the community with what they could really play like, because they worked together,” Lange said. “Following our very first pep band performance my first year of teaching, I cannot count the compliments I received from many members of the community. The community likes seeing a full band there having fun and playing together. They expressed how much they missed it and how proud it made them feel to hear their band at these games with neighboring towns there to compete.”

As a result, the attendance at concerts has increased, as well, to where community members whose children aren’t involved in the ensembles are also coming to enjoy and support the music program.

In addition, the Bloomfield music program receives many calls asking for small student groups to perform for community meetings and special events.

“Sometimes, people argue that people don’t come to music concerts because the community can’t get involved in the way they can at a ball game,” Lange said. “Music really provides an important opportunity for community service. Bloomfield’s mission statement is all about teaching our students to be responsible citizens.”

Lange thanks the community for their support, both in appreciation of the students’ hard work and payoffs in enjoyable music, and through their financial contributions. Last year, the community of Bloomfield gave nearly $10,000 to buy risers for the choir.

The Bloomfield music program also added an annual fundraiser, the Music Dinner Showcase, in which students serve lasagna to patrons and then entertain them with their work. This school year’s Music Dinner Showcase will be held on St. Patrick’s Day in March of 2013.

Where the Credit Lies

Lange is humbled by the revitalization of the Bloomfield music program. She welcomes the praise and the appreciation. But, like any good coach, she prefers and does her best work behind the scenes.

“I often tell people that I didn’t teach these kids to play the way they do. I just gave them a little direction to be able to play the way they already could,” Lange said. “Let’s be honest. I taught my seniors last year one eighth of their entire band career and one-twelfth of their entire singing career. So what they knew, they learned from their previous teachers.”

“Many people see what has happened with the music program in Bloomfield as something I have done, and I often don’t see it that way at all,” she continued. “I genuinely feel that I could have come into a similar situation in another town and not had the same response.”

Lange also thanks her fellow teachers for their support. She prefers not to interrupt other classes, but many have allowed band and choir students to cut out of the last 15 minutes for a one-on-one lesson with Lange or practice time.

In addition, Lange appreciates parents for their involvement.

She asks parents to drive their not-yet-driving junior high and high school students in for pep band performances. And also to sign off on required practice times at home. “They like to know what is expected of their children, so they can help them be the best they can be,” she added.

Most of all, the real influence behind the Bloomfield music program has been the students’ own enthusiasm.

“The students have really stepped up,” Lange said. “I continually keep raising the bar, and although they don’t always do it willingly, they have always met my expectations.”

She tells of changing the practice schedule for the Conference Honor Band, requiring members to put more emphasis on the competition than they ever had before, coming in before and after school to practice. In the end, 75 percent of the band came home with medals.

The Bloomfield choir program went through a similar transformation. The choir now numbers 30 students, three of whom earned the title of Nebraska All-State, another one as an alternate, and four students chosen for the Conference Honor Choir.

“It started with struggling to get the kids together and on pitch, and ended with the students being only a few points away from getting a Superior rating at Districts,” Lange said.

What the Future Holds for Bloomfield Lange only sees the Bloomfield music program growing in the coming years.

“I am finally starting to get the classroom I always envisioned having,” she said. “The students come in, we play a scale, we tune, we play another scale, and then we really focus on a specific element of music. It could be dynamics, articulation, rhythm. Then, we’ll do another exercise to get them really paying attention to me and to each other, so we work as one unit, not individuals. Then, we go to our music and see if we can pull these elements in. It takes such great concentration, and everyone has to be on the same page.”

“Once you can get to this point, which takes time, you can really start to teach to the meaning the composer tried to put to the music and how we, as an ensemble, will portray that,” she added.

“This is a very powerful feeling. I myself have truly experienced this for the first time here at Bloomfield in just the past week or two.”

Lange wants to add more band and choir opportunities and competitions. She envisions students regularly achieving Superior ratings at competitions within five years.

“I want my students to grow an appreciation for all kinds of music,” she said. “I want my students to know what it feels like to play a piece of music that really touches our community in ways that they didn’t know a high school band or choir could. I want my students to appreciate the true effect that music can have and how to get there. I want my students to realize the hard work it takes to truly have this effect but to also understand what it feels like when they achieve this.”

Lange is turning more attention now toward the elementary music program. She has plans to begin teaching the intricacies of reading music as early as kindergarten, phasing in an elementary curriculum that directly correlates with that of the junior high and high school program.

“I am very excited to see the impact of the seamless music education these students will receive,” Lange said.

What the Future Holds for Public School Music Programs With ever-tightening school budgets looking for sustainable ways to move forward, non-academic programs come under scrutiny in many school districts. So how can schools justify spending money in music when they’re looking to make program cuts?

“If music is taught correctly, it can teach the students things that other subjects don’t have the opportunity to,” Lange said.

Like sports, music teaches teamwork, work ethic, consistency, self confidence, emotional regulation, and other valuable life skills. However, rather than using competition to develop these skills, music teaches students to use creative expression.

“Our goal as musicians is to get the audience to feel what the music is saying,” Lange said. “This can be anything from sadness to happiness to sorrow to love to anger to disappointment and so many, many more.”

One life skill in which music excels in teaching is self discipline, Lange says.

“You can argue that you can practice every element of a basketball game on your own, but at the end of the day, you need an opponent,” she explained. “With music, you can practice every element of the song from articulation to dynamics on your own and bring it to the ensemble for refining. Not only that, but you can create a complete piece of music completely on your own and still reach the same emotions.”

Finally, involvement in music is timeless, Lange says. People eventually outgrow sports, even if they make it the professional level. The gift of music is a gift for life.

“You can be a part of music for life,” Lange said. “You never get too old to be a part of music. You can always participate in your church choir or community band. You never get too old to be a part of music. I see more students graduating from Bloomfield seeing the importance of music and finding ways for music to be a part of their lives after graduation even if they aren’t following a music career.”