Elections 2024 President-Elect Candidate Dr. Jeffrey Malecki

ELECTIONS 2024

President-Elect

Dr. Jeff Malecki University of San Diego

Things are great at the bottom of the state!

So goes our traditional opening from Southern Border Section for at least a decade. I look forward to telling you more about that, and myself, as I humbly accept the nomination to be President-Elect of CMEA!

I’ve come to California via a windy road of music education. I was raised in a northern suburb of Detroit, and had my first experience in MENC (throwback! Young folks — that’s old-person NAfME) as the collegiate rep on the Michigan MEA board. After teaching high school band and orchestra in Phoenix, I burned out and left the profession. While it was a turbulent time full of questions, I now view it as an invaluable experience that helped me balance work and life, something so important especially for our younger colleagues. The burnout year also brought the famous Jax the Dog into my life, who just celebrated his 18th birthday like a champ! After grad school and teaching on Chicago’s south side, I started at the University of San Diego in 2015. I had the opportunity of beginning the formal band program from scratch, as well as designing our Music Teaching and Learning degree. I’ve also had the opportunities to work part time in three local K-12 public school districts, keeping in touch with “real” music education “in the trenches.”

As the Southern Boarder Section president for five years, I enjoyed being an active part of a handful of state-level CMEA meetings per year. I believe CMEA’s greatest strength is advocacy at the highest levels, as well as a truly progressive mission on how to move education forward. I believe I have a background that would help cultivate the many things CMEA does extremely well, and also work to improve our listening, communication, and efficiency.

With such a large and diverse state, listening is not easy. In friendly chit-chats with diverse colleagues leading up to this article, I found an abundance of out-of-the-box and insightful “What if CMEA did __?” Whether we look at ways to involve voices not currently represented, tweak existing programs, or build new programs altogether, CMEA’s greatest resources are its people! Building on listening, communication can also grow. Navigating Prop 28 funds and the proposed AB238 grant for student teachers are just two hot topics — can we energize our communication beyond CASMEC and the (amazing!) magazine you’re currently reading, at a local and individual level? Finally, I recently saw a meme that read, “If a meeting doesn’t have food, it should be an email.” This may oversimplify things… slightly… but I would strive to find ways to invest our resources, especially time, as wisely and efficiently as possible.

In my nine years in California, I have embraced and enjoyed learning the lay of the music education landscape. I would look forward to balancing more of an outsider perspective with the existing frameworks that make CMEA and music education in our fine state (wait for it)… great!