North Coast Section Update

NORTH COAST North Coast Section Update Collin Kirkwood , North Coast Section President & Dan Sedgwick, Del Norte Unified School District

A Message From our President - Collin Kirkwood

My name is Collin Kirkwood. I am in my third year teaching and second at Del Norte High School, where I primarily teach choir but also have a beginning band and a jazz band. North Coast CMEA is coming out of the pandemic and rebuilding our traditions. We offer multiple festivals, and an All-Counties Festival with honor ensembles that include 6-12 grade students from Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, Del Norte, and Curry (Oregon) Counties. In addition, we offer professional development opportunities for our membership throughout the year. It is an honor to be President of North Coast CMEA and I look forward to seeing everyone at CASMEC!

Instrument Repair

by Dan Sedgwick

Del Norte County Unified School District is nestled in the heart of the Redwoods and is the last county along the northern coast in California. Currently the district employs seven full time music teachers that run a comprehensive instrumental, choral, and classroom music program for nine schools. Music instruction begins in Kindergarten, recorder instruction is in the 4th grade, and band is introduced in the 5th grade. At the middle school level, ukuleles, choir, and various levels of band, including percussion ensemble are offered. At the high school level (the only high school in the county) we have two full time teachers with a student population of about 1,050. In addition to choir, band, marching band, colorguard, percussion, steel band, and jazz programs, we now are offering our newest class in instrument repair.

Instrument repair in our school district has always been difficult. When I first started teaching 15 years ago, we had a road rep from the closest music store in Grants Pass over 70 miles away. This was a valuable resource but still had its problems. Our repair budget was very limited and we always had to prioritize major repairs and never had the budget to do more than a handful of instruments a year. The other major problem was that we had to wait…the turnaround time was about 30 days to get a solder joint put back on a trumpet.

I had a little knowledge in repair coming from a music store background in college. I worked at Nick Rail music in Santa Barbara, and during my four-year stint working for the company, I did some basic repairs. I mostly did woodwind repadding and clarinet tenons, but did a little bit of everything where needed. It was enough for me to help subsidize the district shortfall in the instrument repair when I started work for DNUSD in 2008. When I was hired at DNUSD and the other teacher found out I could do a tenon cork…Let’s say, I have done a few! As the years progressed the instrumental program grew to about 3,000 active instruments a year and we had a problem. Preventative maintenance was never a thing. We sent out what we could per year, but mostly we had to put band aids over band aids.

About seven years ago a colleague, Sara Rogers, and I started investing some of the district’s yearly music budget into a few basic and some more advanced tools to fix instruments. Trombone slides were always the worst. In the early days, a dent in the slide meant we retired the horn. That is not the case now!

As we gained traction and proved to the district that if they invested into the program we, the teachers, could help keep the budget in line, interest grew in the program. We also received a very generous donation from Nick Rail of an entire repair shop from a closing music store. Thus, instrument repair as a class was born! I am in my third year of teaching this class. The first year (during covid) we had six students and we had a closet to use for the shop. It wasn’t glamorous but it was awesome! Two of the students in