Sitting on the couch, I watched the school bus pass our house and continue down the block. "Here we go," I thought, as we began our first year of homeschooling.
When a Job Finds You
After eight years of teaching band and choir in public and private schools, I had reluctantly set down my baton to homeschool our children in 2004. In our third year, we moved to Black Mountain, North Carolina. The parent who ran the local co-op told me, with a heavy heart, that they used to have a homeschool choir.
"You don't happen to teach music, do you?" And with that, I picked up my dusty baton.
Necessity, the Mother of Invention
Within a few years the choir had split in two and grown to about 60 kids, meeting Fridays and sharing two concerts a year. When my oldest fell in love with the music of John Williams and wanted to play French horn, I wondered who else might want to learn an instrument. Our first Beginning Band started with 21 students, including a mom who had always wanted to play oboe. A tin whistle class followed for younger siblings. We were no longer a co-op class. We were a homeschool music program.
Building & Growing
In 2013 we moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, and a new Troubadours program was embraced right away. We began with 80 students in two choirs, a Beginning Band and a small chamber ensemble. By 2018 we had outgrown our room and bought a small church building. On Fridays, families pack schoolwork and lunches and spend the whole day on campus. Today the Valley Troubadours serve about 800 students.
A Covid Story
When the 2020 school year ended with no concert and no closure, my wheels wouldn't stop turning. We live on five acres surrounded by corn fields. My husband and I turned our backyard into a band and choir room: percussion, chairs, keyboards and stands on the patio, with a grassy slope for seating. Choir members brought beach towels and lawn chairs; band students brought clothespins to keep their music from flying into the corn.
Tuesdays were choir days, Thursdays were band days. At the end of July, a family offered the hill below their big red barn as our concert stage. We kept rehearsing outdoors into the fall until fingers were too cold to play.
The next spring, our whole community transformed my backyard into a theater, with rigging, sound, lighting and a stage, and striped a football field in the grass. In two weeks we performed Bugz!, Oliver Twist and The Sound of Music, and then our very first marching field show.
We weathered the storm because out-of-the-box thinking synced well with out-of-the-box families. I've never worked harder or been so rewarded in my music career.
Why NAHME
Homeschool music programs tend to fly under the radar. The National Association of Homeschool Music Educators exists so families can find them, and so directors can find each other. If you lead a homeschool ensemble, or want to start one, we would love to hear from you.