Miller teaches with joy, receives teacher of the year nomination

Coppell High School band director Gerry Miller leads a nationally-recognized band program by pushing students to reach their limits and to contribute to the band program as a whole. Miller is one of four Coppell High School 2019-20 Teacher of the Year nominees. 

What made you begin to teach band?

I didn’t start as a music education major; in college I was actually a jazz major, and I thought I would spend my life playing jazz. I grew up in New Orleans, and that seemed like a great fit for me. But as I started college [Loyola University] – I was just a few days into classes – [I realized] that I was really being called to be a teacher. My mom’s a teacher so I kind of knew what that life was like as a teacher, and it just felt like the right fit. As soon as I started taking classes, I knew it was absolutely the right thing.

What is your favorite part of teaching band?

My favorite part would be the relevance of what we do to their real lives. Ninety percent of our students will go on and hopefully be great consumers and appreciate music, and I love the relevance we’re able to bring to their lives. There’ll be 10% of them who will go on and be great performers, and it’s wonderful to work with that level of students, but so much of it is about creating a rigorous environment for them. It’s about creating something that’s relevant to them, and it’s about developing strong relationships, you know. Those three R’s – rigor, relevance and relationships – those absolutely are my teaching philosophy. Our the whole band philosophy depends on how we work with students.

What do you hope you instill in students?

I want them to learn the challenges of working as part of so much of their lives. It’s not going to be a one-person environment when they go on to work, and so often they’re going to have to work with a team of four or five people, and they’re going to learn that some people have different tendencies, you know, whether it be some people are stronger morning people and other people are evening people. There are going to be, you know, people who are very creative but not very organized and vice versa. We want our students to learn their contribution matters tremendously, [for] the overall quality of what we’re building.

What is different about being a band director?

The most different thing for me as a band director is that I get to do my curriculum. Every single day, every single week, every single year, I never have to repeat anything. My mom taught English for 40 years, the middle school level [Griffin Middle School in Frisco ISD], and she would tell you that in 40 years she probably went through seven or eight different versions of the curriculum for middle school. Every year is different for me as we plan different pieces of literature. We approach them through different ways. Our ensemble collaboratively has strengths and weaknesses in different areas. As students graduate students come in. We’re very fortunate in that we don’t ever have to repeat on ourselves very much. We’re not really beholden to a curriculum. This year, we have some benchmarks along the way. But we’re not tied so tightly to a timeline that we can vary things up just a little bit to keep it fresh for our students but also to keep it rigorous.

How did you feel when you won the teacher of the year?

I was really honored. You know, I don’t think there’s anyone in teaching who does this for the acknowledgments, but it’s nice when someone takes notice of what you’re doing. For me, the reward is in the work. Some people in the community will tell you that the reward is in the concert or theplacement in the rankings, and I will tell you that my favorite days are really grinding rehearsal days, where we’re just getting better and better and working. Having some type of external acknowledgment of what we’re doing as a band staff – I mean I don’t think they were just giving the nomination just for me, but you know for all the guys that I teach with. It’s a real honor for us to be seen that way because we know that we don’t exactly fit into the mold of, you know, a teacher of the year- so for somebody to see that out of the box and realize that was so important.

What is hard about teaching band?

I don’t think anything is – it’s an absolute joy. I mean, I’ll be the first to say that I think you have to love and do. In general, I think teaching is the greatest profession, because I think you have to be called to do it but I think once you’re called to do it, you love it so much, it never feels like work. I don’t tell my wife I’m going to work as I leave the house every day, I say I’m going to school because it’s like I’m always learning. I don’t really have a negative to the job.

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