Yorkregion.com - Markham - Note for note with musical educator
Note for note with musical educator
Amanda Eason
Markham
May 17, 2008 09:27 PM
By: Simone Joseph
Amanda Eason had a swell time at band camp.
But not for the reasons popularized by the sexually graphic teen flick American Pie.
For Ms Eason, band camp summons pleasant but innocent memory fragments: campfires, outdoor concerts and playing instruments at the water’s edge.
Ms Eason, 59, comes from music-loving stock. Her father played with American swing era jazz musician Glenn Miller, she said, and her mother is a cello player.
Ms Eason’s resume drips with musical notes.
She was head of the music department for seven years at Toronto’s East York Collegiate, a teacher at Richmond Hill High School, Unionville High School, Markham’s Robinson Public School and Reesor Park Public School and head of music from 1989 to 2004 at Milliken Mills High School. She has taught subjects ranging from Grade 9 to 13 in band, choir, piano, English and family studies.
But in 2004, her tenure of teaching ended when she retired under a deluge of paperwork. These days, she explores her passion for travelling, which has improved her talent for creating opera costumes on a shoestring budget for Opera York, where she also serves as wardrobe mistress, storing everything from the simplest peasant outfit to the most elaborate diva’s dress at her Thornhill home.
Q: Do you ever secretly try the costumes on?
A: Oh yeah. Not necessarily trying them on for fun but just to try them on to see if the arm hole is the right shape or if the zipper works. I have my son or husband try on the guys’ jackets. One of our (Opera York) stars, who is in quite a few of the operas, is really, really tall. He is 6-ft-5. I get to know all of their measurements. There are a bunch of wonderful Italian men in the chorus on the other side of 60 (years old) and they all think I am wonderful. They say “come measure me”. They want a hug or something. I get to measure all the men. They think that is great.
Q: Did your husband also teach music in Markham?
A: No, he taught music in North York and then he went into guidance. He was a guidance counsellor. You can only last so long in music because it is really noisy and really hairy. You burn out.
Music teachers had an (informal) club. I know all the York Region music teachers. It is not just the workload per se, there is always extra stuff. We went through a couple of strikes and those work-to-rule things with teachers coming in at 9 a.m. and going at 4:30 p.m. That wrecks the whole music program. It was music teachers and physical education teachers who had to give up the fun part of the job for politics. The science teacher, he does not care, he can come in 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Q: If you could make the decision again, would you still want to be a teacher?
A: Oh yes. I have wanted to be a teacher since I was in Grade 5. I brought my teacher home for lunch and my mom made her lunch. I guess I was a teacher’s pet. I was the only one in class who could sing harmony in the choir. She thought I was wonderful and she encouraged me.
Q: What would you say, based on your teaching experience, is the biggest issue facing teachers today?
A: The system. That is actually why I retired. In this progressive Ontario, I went through quite a few governments, Rae Days and the Mike Harris era. They have got the system so complicated so teachers have to justify everything they do and it has taken over from the interaction with the students. The paperwork is just unbelievable. Report cards are unreadable by anybody but superintendents and teachers and it doesn’t mean anything. No one else can decipher them. Most parents want to know, how is my child doing? The whole idea of teaching is to facilitate learning and you can’t facilitate learning if you are busy writing report cards that nobody is going to read. Unfortunately, my son-in-law is a teacher and that is why he is trying to get out of teaching, because he has to spend an extra 80 hours (per term) on report cards.
Q: What did you think of the depiction of kids at band camp in those American Pie Movies?
A: Well, yeah. That is kind of over-the-top. Being a Canadian, you take it with a grain of salt because everything the Americans do is bigger and better. None of that ever happened to me. Just nice things like campfires, outdoor concerts, playing your instruments at the water’s edge with the echo and girls’ cabins. The parts I loved, I tried to pass it on, to make it fun for my students. For quite a few years at the last school, we took the students on trips, that is how you build memories, especially in York Region ... When I first moved up here, I was a supply teacher. (One day), I went to this school and ... there were two Korean students, two Greek students, two Jamaican students, four Chinese students, all these different nationalities and colours all playing together in the school yard and they are all happy and it was a perfect melting pot. That was what I really loved about Markham.
Q: Which school was it?
A: It was Miliken Mills Public School in the 1980s.