November 29, 2023

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Buzz The Music

Get to know the nominees for the MusiCounts Instructor of the 12 months Award

These 5 new music teachers are nominated for the 2023 MusiCounts Teacher of the 12 months Juno Award. (MusiCounts)

They are employed to perspiring it out and cheering on their new music pupils at recitals, concerts, choral activities, and contests. Now it is really time for the audio college students to cheer on their instructors on Canada’s greatest audio phase.

Because 2005, the MusiCounts Teacher of the Calendar year Award has acknowledged 17 incredible Canadian new music teachers, honouring and awarding their effect both equally on students and the broader songs schooling profession, and for promoting songs instruction in their educational facilities and communities through their enthusiasm.

This yr, MusiCounts, CBC Music and presenting sponsor, the CST Foundation (Canadian Scholarship Trust), are very pleased to spotlight these 5 awesome nominees from throughout Canada:

  • Jewel Casselman, Lakewood School, Winnipeg.
  • Susan Evoy, St. Teresa’s Elementary AND Waterford Valley Significant College, St. John’s.
  • Stephen Richardson, École St. Joseph University, Yellowknife.
  • Kelly Stronach, Mitchell Woods Public University, Guelph, Ont.
  • Heidi Wooden, Joane Cardinal-Schubert Substantial School, Calgary.

One particular of these nomineess will gain top honours — and a trophy of their own — during the 2023 Juno Awards broadcast on March 13 from Rogers Place in Edmonton. It’s a fitting area, since a massive percentage of profitable songs instructors from MusiCounts and CBC Music’s once-a-year Canadian Tunes Course Challenge have occur from Edmonton-region faculties. It will also be a poignant reminder that this year’s Juno Award winners likely started out out with a teacher, like these nominees, who influenced them to master tunes.

In addition to their quite personal Juno statuette, the winning teacher will also obtain a $10,000 dollars prize and a grant for their university by the MusiCounts Band Help System.

”It is a delight to acknowledge these five excellent educators as finalists,” mentioned Kristy Fletcher, president of MusiCounts, the official charity of the Juno Awards. “Educators throughout the state devote their time, electrical power, and expertise to keep the beating coronary heart of a college — the audio classroom — alive. Congratulations to this year’s nominees, who represent the maximum accomplishment and dedication in their job.”

Moreover the significant night time at the Junos, you can also catch the Instructor of the Year nominees in a livestreamed round table discussion about the greatest difficulties dealing with new music instruction in Canada, on Mon. March 6 at 4pm E.T.,1pm P.T.

Get to know year’s nominees underneath:

Jewel Casselman, Lakewood University, Winnipeg

Jewel Casselman is nominated for the MusiCounts Teacher of the Year Award.
Jewel Casselman is nominated for the MusiCounts Instructor of the 12 months Award. (Submitted by Jewel Casselman)

Casselman is a music educator with comprehensive experience in Orff (pitched percussion) instruction for elementary-aged little ones. She’s been training audio due to the fact 1988, and is a intense advocate for empowering children with an early start off. She’s successfully advocated for music to be extra to kindergarten programming at a number of educational facilities in the Winnipeg region, aiding little ones establish a foundation of musical awareness to have them via their life.

Casselman sits on quite a few committees (at the nationwide and provincial levels), promoting diversity, inclusivity and equity in music training, and believes that regardless of a kid’s race, economic position, or studying design and style, they must have obtain to excellent music schooling.

This is Casselman’s fourth nomination for the MusiCounts Teacher of the Calendar year Award. She was earlier nominated in 2019, 2020, and 2022.


Susan Evoy, St. Teresa’s Elementary and Waterford Valley Substantial University, St. John’s

Susan Envoy is nominated for the MusiCounts Teacher of the Year Award.
Susan Envoy is nominated for the MusiCounts Trainer of the 12 months Award. (S. Envoy)

Evoy delivers pleasure and empowerment to college students at not one but two faculties in St. John’s. She has her fingers total teaching string orchestra, live performance and jazz band, and choir to pupils ranging from grades 2 to 5, and 10 to 12 — requiring a vast set of competencies, which she juggles with ease and pleasure.

St. Teresa’s Elementary welcomes a wide demographic of students, including those who typically see their desires go unmet. When it grew to become obvious that some households were not in a position to manage instrument rentals, Evoy reached out to the area radio station to engage them in an instrument push to make confident each and every little one experienced an instrument to use without the need of owning to share.

Evoy’s philosophy is “songs provides joy to our lives, and new music is for everybody.” 

This is Evoy’s to start with nomination for the MusiCounts Trainer of the Calendar year Award.


Stephen Richardson, École St. Joseph University, Yellowknife

Stephen Richardson is nominated for the MusiCounts Teacher of the Year Award.
Stephen Richardson is nominated for the MusiCounts Instructor of the Calendar year Award. (S. Richardson)

Richardson is a passionate advocate for new music in the North. As the K-12 new music educator, he demonstrates determination, develops group, and empowers college students to get to their whole potential by tunes. In Richardson’s course, music can appear like everything from rock to jazz, to band. He encourages the use of technologies not only to maintain songs instruction through the challenges of the pandemic, but to enable children build techniques like recording, grant-creating, video manufacturing, and additional.

Richardson contributes to the job by mentoring school staff members and academics in instruction, and provides artists touring the North to the college for performances, workshops, and Q&As. He is researched inclusive apply, mindfulness, self-regulation and mind-dependent investigation in order to further more the effectiveness of his songs pedagogy. Inclusivity figures prominently in his educating by applying sounds-help equipment and apps, he attracts pathways to achievement for neurodivergent college students and learners with exceptionalities. Richardson is also a crucial supporter of people college students who pick out to go after a vocation in songs. He is an case in point of how a healthful audio field can begin in the classroom.

Richardson was formerly nominated for the MusiCounts Trainer of the Calendar year Award in 2021.


Kelly Stronach, Mitchell Woods General public University, Guelph, Ont.

Kelly Stronach is nominated for the MusiCounts Teacher of the Year Award.
Kelly Stronach is nominated for the MusiCounts Trainer of the Yr Award. (K. Stronach)

Stronach exemplifies excellence in new music education and learning. She’s an adaptive, multi-competent educator who understands the pivotal role songs performs as the coronary heart of any school. At each individual new college, she operates with pupils to compose an official school song, instilling a feeling of pleasure and faculty spirit.

Stronach operates to deliver chance for college students, no matter if it be a field journey to see a stage display in Toronto or the founding of a gay-straight alliance to advertise inclusivity and local community inside the college student population. She teaches a broad range of musical models and devices, from guitar and ukulele ensemble to rock band, choir and wind ensemble, and ensures that learners are listening to a wide variety of musical kinds.

Her perseverance to fostering school and neighborhood spirit touches every single institution she functions with. When her situation at Elora Community College was manufactured redundant, learners and their families notified the media, expressing outrage at the decline of these an critical determine — a testament to her effect on her college.

Stronach was beforehand nominated for the MusiCounts Teacher of the 12 months Award in 2022.


Heidi Wooden, Joane Cardinal-Schubert Significant School, Calgary

Heidi Wood is nominated for the MusiCounts Teacher of the Year Award.
Heidi Wood is nominated for the MusiCounts Trainer of the Yr Award. (H. Wooden)

Wooden is a committed and partaking superior college, neighborhood, and submit-secondary choral music educator, adjudicator, vocal coach, pageant organizer, clinician, curriculum marketing consultant, soloist, arranger, editor, and chorister.

She is equipped to uncover accomplishment and link with college students of all capabilities. She is similarly comfortable in the regular choral earth, in modern day choral styles, and in both of those solo vocal jazz and vocal jazz choirs. In the course of the top of constraints in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wooden tailored her practice to consist of composition and arranging working with digital resources and percussion programming.

Exterior of the classroom, Wood is a leader among the choral directors in the province where by she is sought right after as a clinician, session presenter, adjudicator, and visitor conductor. In addition to her qualified affiliations, she has already been recognized by colleagues, students, and mother and father by way of nominations for an Alberta Excellence in Instructing Award (2016) and, in 2022, she was awarded the Con Spirito Award from Choir Alberta for her dedication and contributions to choral music.

This is Wood’s 3rd nomination for the MusiCounts Trainer of the Yr Award. She was previously nominated in 2018 and 2019.


Simu Liu is back to host the 2023 Juno Awards on Monday, March 13, at 8 p.m ET. Tune in on CBC, CBC Gem, CBC Radio A single, CBC Tunes and CBC Pay attention, and stream globally on cbcmusic.ca/junos.

For further data on MusiCounts, visit musicounts.ca.

An image of actor Simu Liu, lying on the ground, holding a Juno Award, with the words "Join host Simu Liu at the Junos live on March 13."
(CBC)