Autobiography Script

Many summers ago, in 2010, I returned to Northwestern Montana to teach part-time K-8 music, band, and choir at Marion School in Marion, where I also taught computer technology and P. E. and was formerly the school counselor for five years. This position began only as vocal music in 2010 and for 2 days a week, but gradually expanded into more subjects and then up through full-time work status in 2019. During those first 9 years, I also taught in other school districts, to equate to full-time teaching years, as I will summarize below. I have also successfully re-opened Klassy Music Studio in the front or West room on the ground floor of my own home, just Southwest of downtown Kalispell.

Until recently, I also sang tenor in the Valley Voices Community, for which I have also been president and section leader and was proud to be the interim artistic director in the Fall of 2013. I was also the part-time K-6 music educator at Creston School near Kalispell for a school year. I was also the part-time organist at Central Christian Church in downtown Kalispell, for over 5 years. I was also the seasonal part-time organist and occasional choir director for Eidsvold Lutheran Church in Somers from 2014-2018, until being regularly scheduled as part of a monthly or twice-monthly service accompaniment rotation. I was also the school counselor for Olney-Bissell K-8 School near Whitefish, where I also taught general music and directed the band and choral program for 4 years. I was also recently the interim music co-director, choir director, and handbell director at Bethlehem Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Kalispell, where I have also been singing in multiple choirs and play in the Gosbells handbell choir, and do some solo handbell, voice, and piano playing there. I was an auditioned 2nd tenor, and recent accompanist and substitute accompanist, for the Glacier Chorale and formerly the Chamber Singers. During the past five school and summer vacations, I have worked in multiple clerical functions in multiple temporary locations through LC Staffing of Kalispell. For 3 prior years I was a volunteer organist, elected vestry clerk, Red Door Bells director, and eventually choir director and music ministry director, at Christ Episcopal Church in Kalispell. I also have taught K-8 music for two years each both at Smith Valley School, West of Kalispell, and at Kila School farther West in Kila.

Without being enrolled in any specific program, I am also working on graduate-level courses, mainly for recertification and eventual raises in pay, and have accumulated eighty-one and two-thirds semester-hour graduate credits. I am an active member of the American Orff-Schulwerk Association particularly the Treasure State Chapter in which I was recently elected to the Board of Directors as Member-at-Large. In the Black Hills American Orff-Schulwerk Association, I served as Member-at-Large and Co-Librarian on their Board of Directors. I am a current member of NAfME (formerly MENC) and have served in the past as Membership Chair and Database Manager on the Board of Directors for the South Dakota Music Educator's Association, and produced practice audio files for South Dakota High School All-State Chorus. I volunteer as treasurer for I am also a recent member of the Music Teacher's National Association, American Choral Director's Association, the American Guild of Organists, and Handbell Musicians of America (formerly AGEHR).

My oldest daughter Katie (Kathryn Elizabeth) was born on February 24, 1998, and recently attended Flathead Valley Community College, majoring in Psychology and has been immersion baptized after her profession of faith. My middle daughter, Hannah Victoria, was born on November 25, 2003, attends Flathead High School here in Kalispell. My youngest daughter, Sarah Julianna, was born on December 13, 2004, 6 weeks early, and with Down Syndrome and she attends Kalispell Middle School.

I mainly grew up in Lexington Park, Maryland, located near the N.A.S. (Naval Air Station) Patuxent River, located on that mouth of that river into the Chesapeake Bay, about 60 miles southeast of Washington D.C. and 85 miles south of Baltimore. Thanks to the U.S. Navy, from which my dad is retired after 20 years, I was born and spent the first year and a half of my life at N.A.S Whidbey Island, near Oak Harbor, Washington, on Whidbey Island, which is about 100 miles North of Seattle. Then we spent a little less than a year at N.A.S. Memphis near Millington, Tennessee, just a few miles north of Memphis. It was during the time there that I reached age two, on August 16, 1977, the same day that Elvis Presley died at his home in Graceland, approximately 25 miles South of my home. Later that year, we moved to Maryland.

After leaving Lexington Park, in Southern Maryland, I lived in Jefferson City, Talbott, (near Morristown), Knoxville, Clinton (near Oak Ridge), and Wartburg (near Harriman) in Eastern Tennessee during a 6-year period. I later moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma for 1 year, then lived in Fort Worth, Texas for 6 months, then to Azle, Texas for 2 years, then to Plains, Montana for almost a year. Living in Plains was a stepping stone towards a trial period of living and teaching in Alaska, something I thought I'd want to try, but being at least an hour from the nearest fast food and large discount stores and club warehouses (Kalispell or Missoula were 75 miles away), the beautiful country of mountainous Western Montana was not enough, so I moved on yet again. For most of my life, I'd wanted to reside in the same state my paternal grandparents and many other relatives call home--South Dakota, but I'm back in Montana!

I am a June 3, 1993 graduate of Great Mills High School, in Great Mills, Maryland. My career ambition has been to pursue full-time work in music education with a bi-vocational music ministry position and earn extra income in clerical work during summer vacations. I am also a May 10, 1997 graduate of Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, TN. I have earned a Bachelor of Music, having majored in Music Education--K-12 Choral/Vocal, and having added coursework for certification in K-12 Instrumental and having applied Keyboard as my main instrument. During my college education, I completed student teaching in secondary choral music at Halls High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, and in elementary general music at Powell Elementary School in Powell, Tennessee. I also completed practicum experiences in secondary choral music at Morristown-Hamblen West High School and elementary general music at Lincoln Heights Elementary, both in Morristown, TN, and general and choral music at Carter Middle School in Knoxville, TN. I have also completed weekly night classes in both Indian Education at a Lake Andes site for Ihanktonwan Community College of Marty, SD, serving the Sinte Gleska University of Rosebud, SD, and Human Relations for Multicultural Teaching at Dakota Wesleyan University, in Mitchell, SD, in order to obtain my full South Dakota teaching certification. I also have recently taken graduate-level courses through the University of Sioux Falls, and Augustana University, both in Sioux Falls, SD, two courses in music at Northern State University in Aberdeen, SD and am currently completing coursework through the University of Montana, Missoula.

Before moving to the Flathead Valley, I was living in my parents' hometown of Rapid City, SD, where I served part-time as a bi-vocational music minister at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. I have a total of 13 years of previous public school career teaching experience. Before these last 4 Montana years, I was employed a year by New Underwood School District as the K-12 Vocal and 5-12 Instrumental Music Educator there. Prior to this, I taught K-8 Vocal/General Music and 5-8 Instrumental Music at the three satellite schools of the recently reorganized Kadoka Area School District in Interior, SD, Long Valley, SD, and now Midland, SD, with an office at the main campus. Before this, I assisted Mitchell Christian School as accompanist for their students in the regional high school vocal music contest. I have also assisted with South Dakota High School All-State Chorus music preparation in the Mitchell Christian School and 3 Sioux Falls High Schools. I also did some recent temporary clerical work in a bank's corporate headquarters and in a marketing agency's office in Sioux Falls. Before that, I supervised an aide while teaching Kindergarten through 12th-grade vocal/general/choral music, and 5th through 12th-grade instrumental music at Mount Vernon 17-3 School District in Mt. Vernon, in western Davison County, South Dakota.

In between teaching at Kadoka and Mt. Vernon, I was a full-time photo center specialist at the Wal-Mart Super Center in Mitchell, SD. During that time I also was the music director for the Congregational United Church of Christ also in Mitchell, where I was the organist, accompanist for the choir, and director of the handbell choir. I was also the artistic director for the Palace City Women's Chorus, also out of Mitchell, SD and formerly a part of the "Sweet Adelines." I also worked as a Tuesday through Saturday early morning single-copy carrier, delivering from 700 to 1200 copies of the Daily Republic newspaper to over 50 local vendors and vending machines in Mitchell. Though I didn't consider this as a job of employment, I was also recently the pianist for the Mitchell Area Community Theater (ACT) production of "Godspell" in early Spring of 2007 and previously for "Meet Me in St. Louis" in Spring 2006, "Anything Goes" in Fall 2005. I also played Marcellus Washburn in ACT's Spring 2007 production of "The Music Man" and filled a small acting part in their December 2005 production of "Miracle on 34th Street". When I first came to South Dakota, I had charge of district-wide elementary vocal/general music at Bon Homme 4-2 School District in Southeastern South Dakota for two years where I also taught beginning band at two elementary schools, up through 8th-grade music at a Hutterite Colony, taught some Middle School vocal music, assisted with High School Choir and vocal lessons, and some study hall monitoring.

When I lived in Montana before South Dakota, I was teaching band to students in grades 5 through 12 and choir to grades 9 through 12 at Plains School District #1 in Plains. For the 2 1/2 years prior to then, I was a shipment management coordinator for Ryder Integrated Logistics, and for the year before I worked in some temporary clerical, and administrative positions. For the 2 school years before that, I taught choral and general music to over 800 students in grades Kindergarten through 8 in 2 elementary schools and a middle school in Roane County, Tennessee. At the same time as this teaching placement and during my last two years of college, I served as minister of music at Liberty Baptist Church in Wartburg, and Callahan Road Baptist Church, in Powell (near Knoxville), TN. I have held other church music staff and supply positions, some volunteer, in ten other churches in Maryland, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, South Dakota, and Montana resulting in a total, so far, of twenty years of church music position experience over a period of twenty-five years.