What is your name and occupation? My name is Jennifer Page, and my occupation is being the director of the orchestras here at Niles North.
How do you feel about getting Teacher of the Year? I’m just so grateful to have been chosen by the students. It’s all the more meaningful to have been chosen by my students and the students of the school. It’s been really exciting just to get congratulations from the other staff members and from the students, and being a teacher of a subject that’s a little bit more under the radar, I’m hoping to shed a little bit of extra light on the orchestra program because the students deserve it.
What’s been your favorite part about teaching at North? Well, my favorite part about teaching orchestra at Niles North is definitely the students. I absolutely love and invest in every single one of them, trying to choose music and create opportunities that will be memorable for them. I really don’t take it for granted that we have so many amazing options for students to choose in terms of electives and classes—every single student who’s in [one of] my classes has chosen to be there, and I try to think about that every single day to make every class that I teach meaningful.
How do you choose what kind of music to play? Well, that’s a great question. There is a lot of music out there, and I’ve played a lot of music with students over my 22 years of teaching. Some stuff I’ve already played, and I know, so I’ll bring back something that I liked in the past. I also will sometimes give students [a] choice, so maybe we’ll sight-read a couple of different pieces, and then I’ll ask them what’s their favorite one. And there’s different new music that comes out every year as well, so I’ll listen online, and then things that sound interesting to me, I will choose. I try to pick stuff that the students will be able to find emotion in, so [that] they’re not just playing notes on a page, but they’re also able to get out emotion, whether it’s happiness and joy or sadness or frustration or anger throughout the music.
What would you tell incoming freshmen thinking about joining orchestra? That I think that joining orchestra is one of the best decisions you’ll make in your entire life. I have never met someone who’s played an instrument all the way through senior year who has found it to be a waste of time, but I meet adults all the time that’ll be like, “Oh, I wish I would have played an instrument when I was younger.” Or, “Oh, I used to play, and then I stopped, and I really wish that I hadn’t.” And so I would say if you like music, and strings specifically, to give it a shot, and I think that you’ll really love it.
Is there any specific person or group of people whom you’d want to shout out for helping you become Teacher of the Year? I would shout out my seniors, because they are a very, very special group of students. I feel like we’ve bonded throughout the years, and I’ve relied on them for different tasks and been dependent on them for things. So, I definitely want to shout out my seniors. Also, I do a special group after school called the Viking Strings where we play what I like to call alternative styles of music, so not just your classical stuff but [also] more current or pop songs. So, my Viking Strings group, which is helping me live out a dream that I had since high school of sharing different types of music with my students.
Do you have a favorite song that you guys have played? Mmm, there’s so many. This year in particular, I loved, we did music from the movie E.T. by John Williams, and we did it with the full orchestra, which means that members of the band and the wind ensemble were playing with us, and it was really epic. And we had a student who created a video of the movie that we projected. So, we were playing the music while the video of the movie was playing. So that was really a lot of fun this year.
Is there anything specific like you’re looking forward to doing with orchestra next year or in the coming years? Yeah, I look forward to continuing to build the program and seeing all the new students coming through. Also, we do trips through the orchestra program. So, next year, we have a trip scheduled for Disney World, so we’re going to be going there and enjoying the parks, but also doing workshops and performing at Disney World. So I’m really looking forward to that.
Is there anything else that you’d like to include that I didn’t mention? I don’t know—I mean, there are probably a lot of things that I could say. I mean, I’ve been here for 12 years, and I was really, really lucky when I got this position. I’d always seen Niles North when you pass by on the highway, and would think, “Oh, that would be a really cool place to teach.” And it just so happened that right when I was looking for a new job, was when the woman who had been here for 30 years or something was retiring, and so that’s when I applied, and then I was fortunate to get the position. So, yeah, I just feel very, very lucky and grateful to be here. I love the staff and the music department, and especially the students who make coming to school every day really fun. And that was something that, when I was in high school, I would always tell myself, like, I need to have a job that I’m excited for every day. So many people are in jobs that they are so unhappy in, and so I can really truthfully say that I get up and am excited to come to school every day and work with the kids.
