More Than the Music: How Great Band Directors Leave a Lasting Mark

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week and we know that the marching arts doesn't exist without the educators who pour themselves into it. Band directors, caption heads, and instructors shape not just how their students perform, but who their students become. The best ones leave a mark that lasts decades, echoing through the way their former students teach, lead, and show up for the people around them. MAASIN member and band director Sam Chase reflects on the teachers whose voices still show up in her own, and why this week is a good reminder to tell them so.

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.”
-Chuck Palahniuk

I’m a high school band director, which is as rewarding as it is difficult. This is my first year at my current school, and through performance injuries, financial difficulties, and a few bad jobs, it was definitely a tumultuous journey to get here. While my path was not an easy one, I am finally in a position where I feel like I’m supposed to be. Now that I feel like I can relax into who I am, both as a person and as an educator, I’ve had more time to reflect. Teacher Appreciation Week (May 4th - 8th) has inspired me to reflect on the people who have helped me along my journey as an educator.

In his 1999 novel Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk wrote, “Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.” While it is difficult to determine the true origin of this interpretation, this sentiment is often expressed metaphorically as you being a mosaic of everyone you have ever loved. Musically speaking, your life is a symphony woven out of the leitmotifs of the people who have ever meant something to you.

I love this idea because I think it’s a beautiful way to think about who we are and how we affect people. I make cinnamon toast the same way my best friend’s grandmother taught me to in the 6th grade. My handwriting resembles that of my mother, who was my first teacher. I swear the exact same way my ex does when someone neglects to use their blinker while merging.

And I love much of the music that I love because someone important to me loved it first.

“Thinking Out Loud” always hits me in the chest because I sang it at the wedding reception of two of my dear friends. My college band’s fight song makes me awaken like a sleeper agent, bursting at the seams with school spirit even though on a regular day I couldn’t care less about college football. When I listen to “Lincolnshire Posy,” I get goosebumps every time, because it makes me think about my high school band’s performance of it, which remains one of my most memorable musical experiences even today.

I can’t keep the smile off my face when I hear “Georgia on My Mind,” because hearing Spirit play it live was the reason I decided to pursue my drum corps dreams. As I sat in the audience at the Show and Tell of my first-ever audition camp, I felt defeated. As a clarinet player who badly needed physical therapy, I felt so badly outclassed that I didn’t have a chance. But when the hornline played “Georgia,” I almost stopped breathing.

I decided in that moment that no matter what it took, I would play “Georgia” one day. And even though I never marched with Spirit, I did with Atlanta CV, which shares the same corps song. It may not have been the route I imagined, but I still got to play “Georgia” and live that dream.

“Georgia on My Mind” doesn’t just remind me of why I fell in love with drum corps; it puts me right back on the field in my rookie season, when I felt simultaneously in over my head and starstruck by the experience. It puts me back in the hornline, alongside every person I ever marched with. It carries the echoes of so many people who meant so much to me that, over a decade past my age out, I still tear up every time I hear it.

And “Georgia on My Mind” connects with me not just through my own experience but also through the influence of my high school assistant director, who was a Spirit of Atlanta alumnus. It was his influence and encouragement that gave me the courage to take that first step onto the field. His impact on me has extended far beyond drum corps, as he has remained a consistent, positive presence in my life, to the point of walking me down the aisle at my wedding.

This is the first year since my first year of teaching that I am back on the podium as a high school band director, which has made me think about how my former teachers have shaped me. In an interview with MAASIN, composer Sarah Connelly Makiyama said,

“They say one day you’ll wake up and you’ll hear your mother or your father come out of your mouth… But in teaching, it also… I’ve been astonished to have something come out and go, ‘Huh, that’s from that one brass caption head that I had.’ At this point, 15–almost 20–years ago, and it’s good to know they’re still a part of me.”

No matter how much time goes by, our former teachers’ influence shines through in us and in our own practice as educators.

As a teacher, I love receiving cards, notes, and heartfelt words from my students, whether it is Teacher Appreciation Week or not. I keep them taped up on one of the walls in my office, and I read them on the bad days to remind myself why I do what I do. Most teachers feel the same way, so I encourage you to let the teachers whose melodies have woven their way into your life know what they mean to you this Teacher Appreciation Week.

Most teachers are teachers themselves because they had an influential teacher in their lives, and I am no different. This phenomenon of opening your mouth and hearing the voice of the teachers who influenced you is something that I feel like shows up in my own band room quite often. Whether it is my band director’s signature, “Yay Band!” after a hard day of practice, my assistant director’s plentiful words of encouragement, or my applied clarinet professor’s ominous “Take no prisoners,” as the last thing said before the downbeat, I can clearly hear how the leitmotifs of my teachers echo throughout my own conducting, teaching, and performance.

This echo doesn’t happen with every teacher I’ve had, but with the ones who believed in me. The ones who made me feel valued and like I mattered beyond the music or the drill. The ones who saw potential in me that sometimes even I could not, and pushed me in the ways I needed to grow.

I do love and cherish every card or message I receive from my students. But now, I’m at a point in my career where I am starting to hear my own voice coming from my students, in the same way the voices of my beloved former teachers echo through mine.

And that means just as much to me.

Sam Chase
MAASIN Member

Sam Chase (she/her) is the Band Director at Social Circle High School in Social Circle, Georgia. She graduated from Columbus State University in 2017 with a Bachelor’s in Music Education, from the University of Georgia in 2019 with a Master’s in Music Education, and from Augusta University in 2025 with a Doctorate in Educational Innovation with a Concentration in Music Education. She is a core member of MAASIN, where she serves on the research team. Her research interests include ludomusicology, marching band/drum corps, teacher identity, teacher leadership, student leadership pedagogy, leadership studies, and the experiences of female band directors. She is also an alumna of the Atlanta CV Drum and Bugle Corps, where she has marched in both the horn line (baritone) and the front ensemble (synth).