Success Achieved Through Teamwork
Nominate a candidate from your school!
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"Taking pride
in achievements" Joann Kekula
Bowler
Wittenberg-Birnamwood
Education Association
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| Joann Kekula takes pride in helping her band students succeed.
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Success is achieved through teamwork
| What is one of the best things someone has said about you as a teacher? One of my colleagues, whom I’ve looked up to for advice and guidance my whole career, attended our concert and was working on one of the same musical selections with his band. He said that he was going to raise his expectations the next week in rehearsals because of how good we sounded that night. What is something you're most proud about? I’m proud of our band program. It takes hard work, perseverance, and determination. A good band program takes time to build and I continue to work to improve every year. What is the top issue facing education? The role of the school is changing. More and more is asked of the schools and the teachers, but there isn’t more and more time or more and more resources to help. We are asked to do more and more with less and less. |
For Joann Kekula of the Wittenberg-Birnamwood School District, success is achieved through teamwork.
An instrumental music teacher for grades seven through 12, she’s dedicated to the belief working together is essential for creating an award-winning band. “Band is one of the largest group projects that my students will work on in school,” Kekula said. “It teaches them how to work together to achieve the same goal.”
A great school also takes teamwork, she said. “When all staff buys into the discipline policies and rules, then the expectations are more uniform,” she said. “Communication, discussion and follow-up are all important in the decision-making process.”
Kekula, who has been a teacher for 22 years, is similar to other band teachers throughout the state in her dedication to students in and out of school. “I most enjoy seeing my students’ progress,” she said. “When I can see it in their eyes that they understand, or when they have just performed well, it’s extremely fulfilling. I also like to see pride. When they are proud, it shows. And my students have a lot of successes to be proud of.”
Indeed.
The Wittenberg-Birnamwood High School band consistently performs in Class A, and last year, every student in the high school band went on to compete in the State Solo and Ensemble Festival. Though small in size – the middle school has 150 students and the high school has an enrollment of 425 – the district’s bands have performed at Disney World and at Downtown Disney in Orlando, Fla.
Kekula has a lot to be proud of personally, as well. She is building representative and head negotiator for the Wittenberg-Birnamwood Education Association and has received the WEA TSA Trust Certificate of Recognition for mentoring younger teachers. She serves on the board of directors for the National Band Association-Wisconsin chapter, also volunteering as newsletter editor. She is a Wisconsin School Music Association adjudicator and was a staff member in 2006 and 2008 for the Wisconsin Ambassadors of Music to Europe.
Keeping her own musical skills sharp, while she helps students develop theirs, is important to Kekula. She is a proud member of the Gary Kuchenbecker Old Lager Orchestra – an 11-piece dance band – and has been pianist and organist for her church for more than 25 years.
Through all of her hard work, Kekula will likely inspire her students in the same way her teachers inspired her when she was a teen. It was those good teachers as role models who in part drew Kekula to the field of education.
“My most important responsibility as a teacher is to hold the students accountable so they learn responsibility,” she said. “If they are responsible, then they will also be dependable and productive in whatever they do later in life. I also hope that I teach them about respect. Respect for each other and respect for themselves.”
WEAC’s Great Schools Member Spotlight features WEAC members who are making a difference in the lives of others every day in their schools and communities. Member Spotlight profiles appear on OnWEAC, and one profile is selected each month for the OnWEAC In Print newspaper. To submit a suggestion for a Member Spotlight candidate, send an e-mail to the WEAC Public Relations Department.
Posted March 28, 2008