My Teaching Inspiration

There are so many factors in a child’s life that can influence future paths. First and foremost should be parents, but there other influences as well; close relatives, peers and of course teachers. We know that not every child is blessed with positive influences; negatives in the environment can change a child’s direction completely. Those include lack of parental nurturing, poverty, drug use and criminal activity, bad peer influences and all the rest.

I certainly had every opportunity to end up as many of the kids I grew up did, but my parents were a strong and insulating presence in my youth. I talked about them in a previous article so I won’t repeat myself, except to say that because of money, which was always short, we lived in poor areas of Chicago when I was growing up. I saw many, many bad things in my youth but the strength of my family’s support and love kept me focused on the lessons they were teaching me.

So what inspired me to go to college and become a music teacher? The musician part is easy; my parents were professional musicians. Live music was always in my home and it was natural for me to pick up a horn. First it was the trumpet and later the trombone.

I’d become pretty good by the time I hit high school without benefit of private instructors. I was a rough talent that needed refining, but as a high school freshman I was not even thinking about making a career teaching band. That’s when I met my high school band director, Robert Novalich.

Mr. Novalich was droll, cynical, pessimistic and quite unlike anyone I’d ever met before. For one, he was a white man. Honestly, I had not had much experience with white people, having been raised in a mixed Mexican and black home and living among Hispanics and blacks all my life. And nearly all my elementary and middle school teachers were black or Mexican. I didn’t know many whites, and certainly did not expect Mr. Novalich to become the role model and influence that he was to become.

He had small bands at Carter H. Harrison High School, mostly because the choirs were so important in this predominantly black school. Yet we played challenging music and his odd personality somehow endeared me to him. I became a band geek; I was in the band room as often as I could be. I practiced and talked to him about music, teaching and the problems he faced trying to keep instrumental music alive in my school. I learned a great deal about life and music just listening to his rants and complaints about people who were in our band’s way.

And his band rehearsals were a hoot. His temper was notorious; he could reduce a student to an inch high with nothing more than a withering glare. Once I recall that my sister and I (she played alto saxophone) brought a tape recorder to class and secretly taped one of his railings against a recalcitrant student, who was being a total jerk in the rehearsal. Mr. Novalich shut him down fast and his lecture to the band was memorable. I wish that I had preserved that tape!

So I announced in my junior year that I wanted to be a band director, he characteristically asked me why on earth I would want to do that? But then proceeded to do everything he could to teach me what he knew. I ran sectionals, was captain of the ROTC band (which came from our band), and tutored students needing help. Mr. Novalich even gave up his planning period so that I could take study hall with him rather than “waste your time in study zoo”, as he called it more than once. As a teacher today I know how valuable these prep periods are in processing grades, grading papers and paperwork, yet he sacrificed it so that I could take my study hall during his free period. I filed music, re-wrote parts at his direction as needed, and practiced.

After graduation I came back to see him during my sophomore year and arranged to do 100 hours of classroom observation with him, as part of my degree program at De Paul University. I didn’t student teach there, but he recommended another teacher to student teach with, the legendary Adolph Erst at Bogan High School in Chicago. He had been a student teacher with him too.

By then I think Mr. Novalich knew that I would be okay, so we never saw each other again after that final 100 hours of observation. But we stayed in contact, sending Christmas cards to each other for years afterward. The cards stopped in 2000, I have do not know if he is still alive. But the lessons he taught me still endure to this day.