Oliver Diez thought his teaching career peaked when his fourth- and fifth-grade students were invited to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York in March as the only elementary school band on the bill.
Actually, he was just getting started. The 43-year-old music teacher was named teacher of the year in Florida's Miami-Dade School District.
"Of all the concerts I've prepared for over the years," Diez said in his acceptance speech, "you're never prepared for something like this."
Diez has spent all two decades of his teaching career at Palmetto Elementary in southwest Miami-Dade, building a fledgling music program into the largest elementary school band in South Florida. He helped launch a booster club, now a registered nonprofit, for travel expenses for performances. More than a third of the school's roughly 600 students are involved in the program.
Diez starts his students young, learning to play their introductory instrument, the recorder, in first grade. From there, they can join one of the many before- and after-school offerings at Palmetto Elementary: chorus, concert band, jazz combo, orchestra and drum line.
In his speech, Diez compared the students' learning process to a music rehearsal.
"It will be messy at times and mistakes will be made that will need fixing," he said, "but in the end we need to unite our students to work together for that final performance."
To bring his lesson to life, he instructed half the crowd to stomp and the other half to clap. Together, they created the beat to Queen's "We Will Rock You."
